FORMER army head Peter Leahy has backed comments by current chief David Morrison that cuts to the defence budget could result in a smaller and less capable armed forces.
Speaking this morning, General Leahy, who served as Chief of Army from 2002-2008, said it was important to maintain a sufficiently funded defence force to ensure Australia was not ill-prepared for future incidents.
"He (General Morrison) is concerned as I am concerned that we don't get these imbalances again where the army, the force that is most likely to be used in the future, is just ill-prepared," General Leahy told ABC radio.
"Let's not repeat the mistakes that we made before the Second World War.
"If government gets into (financial) strife, the first place they are going to look is decreasing the size of the army and frankly that would be the wrong thing to do."
In an extraordinary public intervention by a senior serving Australian Defence Force officer, Chief of Army Lieutenant General Morrison will today warn that further cuts to the Defence budget could pose a real risk to the effectiveness of the armed forces and a repeat of "mistakes" made after the Vietnam War.
The Australian revealed the army commander, who has been in the job since June last year, will tell Canberra University's National Security Institute that the current straitened fiscal climate poses a "real risk" to the army's strategy to 2030.
"We are approaching a point where doing more with less risks becoming a cavalier disregard for the ability of forces to survive against credible peer competitors," General Morrison will say.
Cabinet Minister Stephen Conroy said General Morrison was making a "legitimate point" but that the government was still making investments in the armed forces such as the building of new Bushmaster vehicles and lightweight vests.
"I think he is legitimately saying we have to be careful about how we manage the defence budget," Senator Conroy told Melbourne radio 3AW.
Opposition frontbencher Joe Hockey said General Morrison's speech should sound "alarm bells" for all Australians.
"We are getting towards, if not at, the lowest percentage of expenditure of GDP since 1938 on defence and it does leave us exposed," Mr Hockey told 3AW.
"Every time the government is running out of money when it's paying school kids bonuses or the mining tax isn't raising any money they just keep going back to defence.
"Now that the defence force is very publicly saying what they're saying, alarm bells must be ringing. Unfortunately I don't think the government is listening."
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