Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forde for his question. He is a man who understands the impacts of budgetary needs. He is someone who works very hard in his electorate to ensure that his people are well-served and that those who serve our country and have served in the past—our veteran community—are well taken care of. The member for Forde is someone who campaigned relentlessly to see DFRDB indexed in the appropriate and proper manner, all of which has been done. That indexation starts in 13 days. I thank the member for Forde for his continuing advocacy.

He rightly asks the question about Labor's failure when it comes to projects. The failure is extreme. You are cutting $25 billion in the budget and it has to be cut from somewhere. In the defence scheme of things, you normally have a third of your operating costs for personnel, a third for the day-to-day operations and a third in terms of future capability. Under Labor's cuts, future capability dropped down below 20 per cent. It was 18 to 19 per cent of the budget.

They cancelled, deferred or delayed over 100 projects. A hundred! It is the biggest cutback in projects we have seen in the modern age. Let us look at the projects cancelled: ADF Joint Command Support Environment, operational imagery and geospatial support, identity management, joint non-lethal capabilities, replacement air targets, combat identification for land forces and long-range persistent subsurface detection capability.

Let us look at projects they actually delayed: C-130 J infra-red countermeasures—yes, that is something you want to delay while we are at war; that is a cracker; fixed base defence air traffic management systems; leading fighter capabilities; subsequent phases to improvised explosives devices, which is something you want to delay; tier II unmanned aerial vehicles, because we are only running those in Afghanistan; joint intelligence support; and capability alignment for the CH-47 Chinooks. The list goes on and on. There is page after page.

The Night Fighting Equipment Replacement project was delayed by Labor. Future artillery ammunition was delayed. Soldier Enhancement Version 2—Lethality: that is something we would like to see delayed, isn't it! That is the lethality of what our soldiers actually use. The list goes on; it goes on for pages and pages of what has been delayed by the Labor Party.

This side—the Liberal-National parties—are committed to ensuring that our men and women have the finest gear available when they need it. We are not going to cut more than 100 projects of defence capability like Labor did. Labor put together Force 2030, which is a force structure that would be delivered and fully capable by 2030. We are not going to cut it and gut it like they did, and push it out into the 'force never-never'. We will work closely to ensure it is done. Under the Howard government, jobs in the defence industry doubled; under this last wretched government, jobs disappeared by 10 per cent. As the economy grew, jobs disappeared by 10 per cent.

Industry has sustained havoc under Labor, and it is a shock. Under Labor, the defence industry was denied the ability to undertake long-term planning because the defence capability planning under them was not worth the paper it was on. Even when they released the 2013 Defence white paper, they did not approve another defence capability plan—it was not approved. They spent money from it, but the Minister for Defence never approved it. That is complete and utter disregard.

A force structure review comes with the white paper—that is the process. What we had was a 2013 white paper; no force structure review; no planning for industry; no capability planning at all. But then again, what do you expect from a minister like Minister Smith, who never once went to a graduation at RMC Duntroon? Not once. Three years as Defence Minister, and he never turned up once to a graduation at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He never spoke to the Joint Services Command and Staff College—never spoke to them at all. He went to Russell three times—three times the defence minister went there. But then again, under Labor there were three defence ministers, and in total for the ministerial team for defence, there were 15 reshuffles. I think the best was Senator Carr, who was the Minister for Defence Procurement for less than 15 weeks. That is how Labor treated defence; that is how they treated the defence planning; that is how they treated the defence capability planning; that is how they treated defence industry—with contempt.

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