Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister and suggest to him that an economy-wide deflator such as the non-farm GDP deflator is hardly likely to reflect the rising costs we are experiencing in the defence industry, particularly as it relates to technology. I will leave him to respond to that further if he so wishes.

The second area of questioning is capital programs. On page 9 of the PBS, it shows there were carryover funds under programs of around $1.129 billion. I ask the minister, and again I fully expect he will have to take some of these on notice: which projects relate to the funds being reprogrammed? What will be the impact of this reprogramming on the delivery of capability under these projects? Have any of the projects been scrapped as part of this reprogramming? How many projects have been delayed, and which ones? Can he explain why Defence has had to defer large amounts of planned capital equipment expenditure every year since the white paper of 2000 and the original defence capability plan released in 2001? How much in total has been deferred since 2001? The ASPI budget brief claims it is around $4.5 billion in total, of which only $1.1 billion has been spent.

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