Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not surprisingly, the problem with this promise was that those opposite would not keep it. A cynic might suggest that they never had any intention of keeping it. By the way, where are all those laptops for the schools? Never mind, we will be here all day and all night if we query every one of the broken promises. Anyway, back to ADF families and that particular broken promise.

As the members opposite are no doubt aware, they did not begin this with a $33.1 million investment, and the government did not start with 12 defence family healthcare clinics. In the current budget the government allocated $12.2 million over four years for this project. Even worse, they set aside $2.4 million for the current financial year. If they could not find the funds to keep their words last year, how are they going to manage to keep it now? Is this why the government wants carte blanche to borrow up to $200 billion? These are questions which require answers from the government, especially following reports which say that they now plan to cut defence spending by up to a billion a year, including the loss or relocation of hundreds of jobs. And news of these cuts came just a few days after the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warned against further reductions in defence spending. ‘In the event of a recession, it would make little sense to withdraw the stimulus of defence spending,’ the think tank said, adding that most defence expenditure remained within Australia. Obviously the government does not care about this. The government would rather make cuts to defence to support their wild one-off payment schemes. They would rather remove a known stimulus to the economy in favour of an unproven measure. And far from the great promise of the sort of health care that Australians can enjoy for ADF families and 12 clinics, according to reports at the time you put a cap of $300 on dental care—no pun intended there—and told the families to find their own doctors and dentists.

The Minister for Defence Science and Personnel pitched in that this dramatically scaled-back program would be limited to just five locations. This was just a trial period, the government said. And last October the same minister said that this ‘trial’ would be extended to include Townsville, Darwin and Puckapunyal, but he also revealed that the government had still not made a start on implementing the program about which they had made such grand promises almost a year earlier when they made lavish, unrealistic commitments in order to get over the line in the election. Last October, adding yet another restriction to the program, the minister said, ‘The initial phase of the trial is set to commence in early 2009 for 2,700 ADF dependants.’ Well it is now early 2009, so where are the lucky 2,700 dependants who are enjoying such largesse? There are 53,000 active service personnel in the ADF, yet only 2,700 are supposedly getting help in the first stages of this project, and we do not even know if that help has yet commenced. Worse still, the minister added, ‘When the trial is expanded in late 2009, it will provide for a total of approximately 16,000 ADF dependants.’ Certainly there are a lot of young, single people in the military, but 53,000 personnel do not have only 16,000 dependants.

Perhaps this reflects the same poor mathematics skills in the government that we have seen in their response to the financial crisis. There appear to be significant holes in this aspect of the bill before us, not least that it fails to specify that the dependants will get free consultations and up to $300 per annum in basic dental care, as promised by the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel. Instead, it makes provisions for regulations to be made to the ADF for medical and dental care of a member, a cadet or a member of the family of an ADF member. In the absence of such detail in the bill, presumably we are being asked to pass legislation which then will be subject to interpretation and implementation by the ADF. Why are we getting no details here? Section 58A of the Defence Act defines a ‘member’ as including someone who has actually ceased being an active service member and even includes them if they are no longer an active service member because they are dead. Likewise, a ‘cadet’ includes officers, instructors and cadets in the Australian Army Cadets, again, even if they are no longer active because they have died or for any other reason. The act says that a ‘member of the family’ includes but is not limited to people who are a member of the same household and a dependant of ADF personnel. This applies to both ‘members’ and ‘cadets’. The key phrase here is ‘included but not limited to’. In the absence of detail in the bill, this could open the door to all sorts of possible claims for health care under the program.

Furthermore, section 4 of the Defence Act defines a ‘member’ as including ‘any officer, sailor, soldier and airman’, so it is not clear in this bill whether reservists are also to be included in the provision of health care to dependants. The reservists themselves are already entitled to ADF health care because it is an operational requirement that they be maintained in fitness so they are always ready for duty. So here we have an element of the bill which not only shows up the government for failing to meet a key election promise to tens of thousands of families but also is so full of holes that, if it were a school assignment, it would surely be returned to the student with an instruction to do it again. The men and women of the ADF and their families deserve better than such shoddy conduct from the political leaders who ultimately control their lives. You ought to be ashamed.

If this is indicative of the levels of skill and intelligence on the benches opposite, it is a wonder they could find their own way to their own seats, or perhaps it is simply that they do not care. Maybe that is why they are pressing ahead with defence acquisitions which not only increase the risk to the lives of front-line personnel but jeopardise the nation’s very sovereignty. Let us take the purchase of Joint Strike Fighters—a multibillion dollar plan which would become Australia’s biggest single military order ever. Air combat experts around the world have raised grave concerns about the capability of this aircraft in general and many have reservations specifically about its capacity to meet Australia’s unique needs. Nevertheless, the top bureaucrats at Defence have been dazzled by the showmanship of JSF manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s sales team and appear to have convinced the government it is the right choice for Australia. This is despite the US openly admitting that foreign powers such as Australia will only get a second-rate version of the JSF, with Washington demanding only America get the best model.

The problem is in the insular offices of this city where sales hype seems to have become indistinguishable from reality, and where the talk is of ‘magical’ powers in the JSF—and I am serious, they really do use the word ‘magic’—rather than talk about the practical and very real considerations of defending Australia and Australia’s interests. This ‘magic’ was related by Tom Burbage, Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, in Avionics magazine. When asked what was ‘magic’ about the JSF, he responded, ‘There is a lot of magic.’ Asked why Australia is not purchasing a better plane—and who would not want the best when it comes to defending our nation—supporters of the JSF will come back with two excuses. First, they will say that the F22—in this case—is too expensive. Well, the difference in price between the JSF and the F22 appears to be narrowing by the day, largely because of skyrocketing estimates of the JSF’s price tag. If the government would stop panicking and throwing money at every movement in the economy, this margin could easily be covered, especially when you consider the next fighter jet acquisition will be expected to see us through to the middle of this century. Secondly, the claim is that the US has banned sales of the F22. That is not quite right. Congress did order that no funds be spent on marketing that aircraft—the so-called Obey amendment. So the ban is technically on trying to sell it, not on the sales transactions themselves. In addition, given our extremely close defence relationship with the US—and that relationship can only be expected to become closer in the future—we should expect the government to make strenuous representations to our key ally that we be given access to the best of military hardware. Why buy mutton when you can buy lamb?

This brings me to the third and final element of the bill before us, which is intended to further safeguard the security of the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap. Leftist blowhards—who no doubt vote for members opposite, apparently in the knowledge that they share the same disregard for national security—have long been critical of Pine Gap, without even knowing exactly what work is done there. Few do know, and that is as it should be. Successive governments on both sides have been satisfied that it is worth while, and that it is necessary to maintain tight security. We must accept those assurances. What we do know is that it is a key element in our defence relationship with the US, providing valuable intelligence to both parties, and that both enjoy a strategic advantage through its continued operation. Under the Howard government in 2007, the then defence minister, Brendan Nelson, eloquently explained the reasons for maintaining the Pine Gap joint defence arrangement. He stressed the value of the project to our national security and that Australian personnel had full knowledge of all activities at the facility. He said:

The intelligence collected at Pine Gap meets critical requirements of both our nations, providing us with information on priority intelligence targets such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and military and weapons developments.

As such, Pine Gap must certainly remain a secure facility, including against protestors, who, while free to express their opposition, must also be subject to laws protecting national security installations, whether those installations are joint facilities or solely ADF projects. This is beyond dispute. It is just a shame that the government appears to have so little interest—or is it even an active disinterest?—in defence matters. National security should be a priority—in fact it must be the foremost priority—for any government. Without national security, all the flawed healthcare programs, all the missing laptops for schools and all the pork-barrelling, one-off payments will amount to nought. The members opposite should reflect on this as they continue to talk down markets and plunge Australia deeper into ever-more-pointless debt.

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