Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is little wonder that the member for Fremantle initiated this motion and then did a runner from the chamber, because it must be an extraordinary experience for her to have to put this motion up when set against the record of Labor's six years in charge of our defence and security. It is another example of Labor failing to match fine-sounding rhetoric with either strategy or resources when it comes to defence. And, as we know, strategy without resources is illusion.

The motion calls for a properly planned short-, medium- and long-term program for shipbuilding. Under Labor, there was a constantly changing plan, insufficient resources and a lack of direction to the defence industry—particularly our shipbuilding industry. Like so many other policy areas under Labor, there is a significant mess to fix up.

Consider submarines. We had the famous Rudd-pluck of 12 new submarines in the Defence white paper 2009. Even then, Labor sat on the plans for the rest of their time in government and did nothing. There was not one key milestone achieved in five years—most notably first-pass approval. The life of the Collins class is being extended, but now there is the potential that these submarines will reach the end of their service life and the new submarines will not be ready. That means a capability gap—two words that no capable government wants to hear.

As Kevin Rudd's Pompeii burned in the dying days of the election, he announced Labor would build two new supply ships in Australia. Again, there was no money allocated or plan provided as to how this logistically could be done. In the meantime, Navy has another capability gap looming as the two current ships are simply not up to the task.

You may recall that the biggest defence thought bubble of Emperor Rudd—again with no policy details or resources—was to move the entire fleet from Garden Island to Brisbane. Let us look at what Labor achieved in relation to defence and shipbuilding.

Under Labor, Defence was an ATM with $16 billion cut from Defence. Former Labor Minister for Defence Stephen Smith was very happy to ring the till whenever Penny Wong or Wayne Swan came asking for money for the budget. Defence spending under Labor fell to the lowest level since 1938. In financial year 2012-13, Labor made the largest single cut to the Defence budget since the end of the Korean conflict—a massive 10.5 per cent cut. The member for Fremantle talks about a sensitive defence industry ecosystem. On Labor's watch, the Australian defence industry shed more than 10 per cent of its workforce because of budget cuts and deferral. So please do not come in here, member for Canberra, lecturing us about how we need certainty in the Defence budget. As a result of Labor's careless disregard of defence funding, 119 projects were delayed, 43 projects were reduced and eight were cancelled altogether. That is the situation that we inherited.

Defence requires a 10 to 20 year time frame for procuring strategic capabilities. A 10 year defence capability plan was never produced by the Labor Party. They never did it, because of sheer embarrassment, and they wanted to conceal the billions that were being ripped out of the Defence budget. Mr Shorten and Senator Conroy consistently avoid answering questions on why Labor in government failed to make progress on the submarine project or the capability gap regarding Navy's replenishment ships.

Bill Shorten claims that, if the Labor Party were in government now, those ships would be built in Australia. The Labor Party had six years to make this decision and did nothing. The reality is that Labor needed to make decisions two years ago to avoid job losses in the shipbuilding industry. Navy's current replenishment ship, HMAS Success, is now in urgent need of replacement. HMAS Sirius provides only limited replenishment capability.

As a result of Labor's management of the Defence portfolio, defence is $30 billion short of being able to achieve the objectives outlined in the former government's fanciful 2009 white paper. We are fixing the mess. We are bringing forward work in the Future Frigates, making decisions on the follow-on for the Pacific Patrol Boat Program, announcing a replacement plan for Aurora Australis, putting the AWD project back on track and tackling the submarine mess in the white paper process. Spare us the lectures, member for Fremantle and those opposite, on what this government should be doing in this portfolio. As we have seen so often throughout our history, only the coalition 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.

Debate interrupted.

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