Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too want to add to the comments that the member for Herbert made. I have high regard for the member for Fremantle, but I am absolutely perplexed that she would bring such a motion into the House today. I rise to speak to the motion pertaining to an issue on which the Labor Party made great announcements looming over the political landscape, and then what did they do? They sat on their hands and did absolutely nothing.

This is about boosting Australia's maritime capability and that is exactly what this government is doing. Labor has absolutely no credibility on this issue, and here they are lecturing this government about what to do. When you look at Labor's record in Defence over six years, it has been absolutely appalling in every single way. This motion refers to the need for a properly planned short-, medium- and long-term program for shipbuilding, and that is what we are doing. We are fixing up the mess that was left to us.

Under Labor there was no money, there was no plan, there was no direction given to the defence industry as a whole and particularly to the shipbuilding industry. Labor's Defence portfolio was a mess. Let me remind the honourable members opposite what they did. They took $16 billion from defence. Their share of GDP fell to its lowest since 1938: 1.56 per cent. In the 2012-13 year Labor made the largest single cut to the Defence budget since the end of the Korean conflict. They shed 10.5 per cent from the budget. The Australian defence industry shed more than 10 per cent of its workforce because of budget cuts and deferrals—119 projects were delayed, 43 projects were reduced and eight were cancelled altogether. This is what we inherited from those opposite. What an appalling mess they left us

The Labor Party had six years to make this decision and they did absolutely nothing. The reality is now that we need to make decisions—decisions that Labor needed to make two years ago to avoid job losses in the shipbuilding industry. Labor was good at making promises but totally incapable of delivering them. The DCP was never been affordable. Labor's legacy is one of mismanagement. Labor left Defence $30 billion short of being able to achieve the objectives outlined in the former government's fanciful 2009 white paper.

This motion mentions the need for a ship to assist in Antarctic operations, but in early 2013 Labor actually chose companies to build the new icebreaker in Europe. They do not tell us that. They failed also to allocate any money towards it. We currently use the Aurora Australis built in 1989 by Carrington Slipways in Newcastle, a shipyard now owned by Forgacs, one of the companies looking for new shipbuilding work. Its purpose is to undertake research cruises in the Antarctic and support Australian bases in Antarctica.

In early 2013 the then government put out a request for tender with no instruction that the new ship be built in Australia and no money for the project in the budget. Two companies were chosen and both indicated the ship would be built in Europe. The Abbott government then had to announce in the budget that the funding, which had not been set aside by Labor, was now provided for to allow this crucial investment to proceed. Labor has no credibility when it claims they would have built ships here.

The Abbott government takes defence and national security seriously. We have taken the first steps to ensure our navy is properly equipped and to provide the Australian shipbuilding industry with some much-needed long-term strategic guidance. Labor did nothing about replenishing ageing ships in urgent need of replacement. But we have taken decisiveness action. This is an absolutely vital capability for Navy to supports the operations of our naval fleet. Construction of these vessels is beyond the capacity of Australia to produce competitively at this time, as our options are either a 20,000- or a 26,000-tonne vessel and the current facilities are struggling to produce ships a third of that size. We need to urgently move on replacing these ships. This is the only option for a responsible government left with a legacy of budget cuts and policy inertia. We are getting on with the job of delivering a sustainable shipbuilding industry in defence.

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