Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. There is no finer representative of the strong directions and mainstream values of this government than the member for Lindsay. She herself had a distinguished career in the Royal Australian Air Force.

The first responsibility of the government is the defence of Australia and the protection of Australia and its interests. Ten years ago when this government came to office and found that we had been left with a $10.3 billion deficit—accumulated and given to us in part in no small way by the now Leader of the Opposition—the first and only area of government expenditure that was not subjected to bringing spending below income was that of Defence. At the same time what the Howard government did was to shift $800 million from the back end of Defence, from the desks, to the front end of Defence, from the tail to the teeth. In the year 2000 the Prime Minister released the white paper on defence which set the 10-year vision and strategic direction for defence in Australia and added another $28½ billion to defence expenditure out to the year 2010. Since then we have now approved 141 major capability projects which include—

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