Dr. Tom McDonnell:

The Senator's question was mostly about defence spending. I did address that. While most areas of public spending are very good for economic growth, for example, education and health, defence is the one area that is unequivocally a bad thing for the economy. Leaving aside any ethical issues or the fact we are willing to break all of our rules for defence when we were not willing to do it for the environment, which is the genuine existential long-term threat, the more we spend on defence, the weaker our economy will be in the longer term.