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

I might take both questions together and work my way through each of the issues raised. I thank the member for Blair for his recognition of the importance of RAAF Amberley to the Australian Defence Force, to the country, to our national security and of course to his local area. He takes a deep-seated interest and is constantly in my ear about the future development of that base and its importance to his electorate. We will spend $130 million there in the 2008-09 year further redeveloping the base. He is correct to say we do have four C17s coming. It will be home to the Super Hornets. My last advice is that they will begin to arrive at the beginning of 2010. We are very mindful of the transition from the F111 to the 24 Boeing Super Hornets and the potential impact that may have on the local workforce, both uniform and nonuniform. We will continue to work through that transition as best we can to make sure that it is as seamless as possible.

On the road issue, I have spoken with the member for Blair about this in the past. It does surprise me that we seem to have a lack of coordination between Defence, the Commonwealth and various state governments when implementing these redevelopment plans. Obviously, the significant expansion of Amberley will have a big impact on the local infrastructure. I have asked my office to review what has happened in the past to see whether we cannot get a better model for determining well in advance what the infrastructure needs will be and what contribution state and territory governments should be making towards the infrastructure surrounding these bases. The redevelopment and growth of these bases are good for the local area, good for the local region and good for the local state, and it seems reasonable to me that the states should be making a contribution—of course, in a coordinated and fair fashion. We will continue to take the member for Blair’s interest in those issues very seriously and do what we can to address them.

A very good example in his own area was the effect of the expansion of RAAF Amberley on the local public school there. It was pretty messy pre-election, through bad coordination and planning on the part of the former government, but I am pleased we have been able to follow through on the commitments made by the former government, in consultation with the state government. Hopefully we have resolved that school issue, although I do note it is not to the satisfaction of all parents and members of the school community, because there is some debate about where the school should be located. We will leave that primarily to the state government to determine.

I will take the question about the effects of Army on notice and get back to the member for Blair on that later.

I want to turn quickly to the questions raised by the member for Paterson with respect to air combat capability, and I thank him for the dorothy dixer. I cannot believe I would be so lucky to get from the opposition a question which allows me to highlight the incompetent management of air combat capability that we saw under the previous government. One would have thought that maybe five, six or seven years ago a government would have been alert to the possibility that the F111s may need to retire early. If it had been alert to that possibility, we might have seen some decent, proper air combat capability planning from the former government. But did we see some proper assessment of that situation? We did not.

What the former government decided to do, almost overnight, was to turn the F111 off. That left Air Force in a very difficult position. It had to find an interim aircraft to fill that gap, given the late timing of the arrival, if at all, of the Joint Strike Fighter—I say ‘if at all’ because that would have still been a question of doubt in the minds of both government and Air Force at that time.

Were we critical in opposition of the Super Hornet per se? Never. And I challenge the member for Paterson to produce a statement from me, privately or publicly, which finds me criticising the Boeing Super Hornet. He will not produce such a statement because such a statement simply does not exist. What we were critical of was the process, which denied Air Force planners the opportunity to determine well in advance when the F111 will need to retire, what that means in terms of the timing of our next fifth generation aircraft and therefore what it means in having to determine what gap might need to be filled in the interim. Because of the government’s approach to this planning or— (Time expired)

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