David Feeney (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

Quite right. No-one knows, because this report remains secret. Despite the minister's undertakings to deliver this report to the Australian people, it remains a secret.

There we have it, a defence minister who has been in the witness protection program for quite some time, who is not trusted with serious responsibility, who is not allowed to make serious decisions and with whom senior retired personnel from the ADF cannot work. This is a sinking feeling that those opposite are now well acquainted with, a sinking feeling that has been made manifest in the last 24 hours. After his extraordinary remark that he would not trust the ASC to build a canoe—an extraordinary indulgence—we saw the Liberal Party scatter as they sought to distance themselves from this broken reed of a minister. One senior Liberal said, 'Senator Johnston's comments were breathtaking.' We have seen revealed the fact that these comments came just one fortnight after he apologised to the ASC chairman, Bruce Carter, for being critical of the agency's work. That was an apology that did not survive two weeks. We heard another senior Liberal say:

This whole process has been undermined by Johnston and his office from the very beginning.

Another senior Liberal said in the press today that these 'were some of the most stupid words I have ever heard from a senior minister.' Last night, the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Jamie Briggs, said Senator Johnston's comments were just 'wrong'. In the aftermath of Senator Johnston's extraordinary performance, we saw the Prime Minister himself rush to contradict him, saying, 'I have full confidence in the ASC and its sustainment work for the Royal Australian Navy.' Very rarely do we see a Prime Minister rush to contradict a minister so quickly. Senator Birmingham, a South Australian Liberal Party senator, said:

We should be honest about the problems submarines and shipbuilding have faced at Osborne, but that is no excuse for denigration of the workforce or of the extensive capabilities that South Australia has.

Perhaps most spectacularly, we have heard today Steven Marshall, the leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia, say:

Unless he can rebuild some connection, some rapport, some confidence within the industry, then I don't think he has any alternative (but to resign) …

I don't think that his current position is tenable unless he can rebuild that confidence with the sector.

This minister's collapse is manifest to all, and with the Australian newspaper making it plain to us today, it seems that soon we will not be able to read the Australian as well as not be able to watch the ABC. We have a defence minister who has gone from lame duck to dead duck. We have a minister who today is plainly on life support.

In the last year, ASC has transformed its submarine maintenance program. Again and again it has exceeded the Navy's target for submarine readiness. We have seen improvements in the availability of the Collins class fleet to defend our national interests. This has been done on the back of a reform process that the former Labor government was very proud to have initiated and that even those opposite were forced to concede had done the job and done it well. Notwithstanding that, we have a minister who apparently feels that he can denigrate the industry and the ASC without any regard for the fact that the ASC today, right now, is responsible for sustaining and maintaining our submarine capability. There are literally hundreds of submariners under the oceans of this world who rely on the work of the ASC, and they are told by this debacle of a minister that that organisation could not be trusted to build a canoe. This is an atrocity that cannot stand. To add insult to injury he now says it was a rhetorical flourish. This is a man who does not have the temperament to be the Minister for Defence. This plainly is a man who does not have the judgement to be the Minister for Defence. This is a man who has a record of 15 months of inaction and dithering. The words 'blundering' and 'withering' appear again and again in reference to this minister. Over the course of 12 months we have seen this minister do next to nothing. There has been failure after failure to proceed with the important LAND400 project. Those opposite spout about how important is SEA1000, the Future Submarine project, but 15 months down the track we have nothing. We have a shipbuilding industry that is in crisis because after 15 months this government has yet to achieve anything except send our shipbuilding work overseas, feeding the shipyards of foreign nations without any regard to our own and breaking its own promises and intimations to the industry that there would be work and reform in the industry. Again and again we see this minister relying on the fact that, he says, this industry is not up to the job and relying on a report that remains a secret. (Time expired)

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