Defence Minister Richard Marles will hand down the 2026 national defence strategy on Thursday, which will lay out the path forward for Australia's armed forces and projects it will pursue over the next two years.
Mr Marles will reveal in a speech at the National Press Club an extra $14 billion will be spent on defence in the next four years, compared with estimates laid out in the previous strategy from 2024.
An additional $53 billion will be set aside for defence over the next decade.
The figures mean Australia's total defence spending will rise to three per cent of GDP by 2033.
The federal government previously announced it would aim to reach 2.3 per cent by the 2033 deadline.
Australia has been facing calls by the US to lift its defence spend to 3.5 per cent of GDP as the Trump administration pushes allied countries to boost their military capabilities.
Mr Marles will say an increase in money allocated for the military was necessary given the shift in the global environment.
"Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode," he will say.
"In the face of this, the Albanese government is pursuing every avenue of increasing defence capability quickly, mostly through bigger defence appropriations but also through accessing private capital.
"The result is that we are now seeing the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending in our nation's history."
The government said the three per cent spending mark for defence was measured using methodology as defined by NATO.
That definition of defence spending goes beyond just military equipment and includes all areas such as veteran pensions.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the announcement on spending was only an artificial boost.
"Creative accounting does not defend a single Australian. Creative accounting does not defend our country," he told reporters on the Gold Coast.
"There is nothing I have seen coming from the government today, other than creative accounting, as a way of getting the defence spend up."
The coalition went to the 2025 federal election pledging to lift the defence spend to three per cent.
Mr Taylor said the three per cent target by itself, without using the broader NATO definition, was the only proper measure of military spending.
"That's the benchmark that puts us in a position where we can invest not just in the in the submarines that we need ... but also in the drones, the missile capability and in the people we need in our war fighters," he said.
"You don't defend any Australian by changing the accounting rules."
The defence minister will also lay out priority areas for the Australian Defence Force in the speech.
Already, billions of extra dollars have been earmarked for drones, given their successful use in Ukraine and the Middle East.
"Delivering this strategy is not only about investing more — it is about spending better," Mr Marles will say.
"It puts Australia on a path to strengthen our defence self-reliance. It reinforces the industrial and national foundations of defence, and it situates Australia firmly within a network of trusted regional and global partnerships."
