Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her questions. When I came into this job, I examined this issue and I received advice from quite a number of my colleagues who had been speaking to ADF personnel. I am delighted to acknowledge the members for Bass, Solomon, Ryan and Herbert—who are all here—as being amongst those colleagues who spoke to me on this matter.

The reality was that we increased the offer and made it two per cent. That two per cent is above CPI, and it is above projected CPI. But at the time the Prime Minister and I made the announcement about increasing it from 1.5 per cent to two per cent we said that if that turned out to be below projected CPI in the future then we would look at it again. We want to ensure that our Australian Defence Force personnel are well looked after through their pay and conditions into the future.

The honourable member attacking the government neglected to mention Labor's record in government on Defence. This was a previous government that reduced expenditure on Defence in this country to its lowest level since 1938. Defence spending in this country had not been as low as it was in their last year in government since just before the Second World War, when it fell to 1.56 per cent of GDP. We have promised to increase Defence expenditure in this country once again to two per cent of GDP by 2023-24. That reduction to 1.5 per cent by the previous government included slashing 10.5 per cent from the Defence budget in 2012-13 alone. In fact, the previous government stripped $16 billion out of Defence over the forward estimates. They were $30 billion short of delivering on their two Defence white papers. The reality is that Defence became the personal ATM for the previous Treasurer, Mr Swan. Any time that he wanted to find savings, the first place he went to was Defence. As I said, $16 billion was stripped out of the Defence budget over the forward estimates by the previous government.

I mentioned naval shipbuilding before. In six years, Labor did not commission one single naval vessel from an Australian yard. The so-called valley of death is Labor's valley of death so far as naval shipbuilding is concerned. They broke their promise to grow Defence spending by three per cent to 2017-18. I could go on and on, but I will finish with just one more example of the total neglect of Defence. Under Labor, 119 Defence projects were delayed, 43 projects were degraded and eight projects were cancelled. That is a sorry record.

See this speech in context