Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member, the former brigadier, for his question and I acknowledge his many decades of service in defending Australia both in uniform and as a senior defence department official.

The security of Australia and its people is this government's highest priority. It is our paramount responsibility. The defence white paper released today is a plan that will deliver a more potent, agile and engaged Australian Defence Force that is ready to respond whenever our interests are threatened or whenever our help is needed. It is a program to become more powerful on land and in the skies and more commanding both on the seas and underneath them. It involves undertaking an historic modernisation of our Navy, including building a new force of 12 regionally superior submarines. This will enable us to boost our capacity, independently to deter and defeat threats to our country, continue to be a constructive and influential player in our region, and make more effective contributions to international coalitions that support our interests in maintaining the rules-based global order.

We will, as a result of the plan we have set out and its implementation—fully costed and externally verified—be more resilient, more capable in cyberspace and more innovative in technology. Significantly, Mr Speaker, the plan will ensure that much more of our defence dollars are spent here in Australia and much more of the development behind our defence technologies is done here in Australia. To achieve those goals we have to adequately fund our defence effort, and we commit in this plan to grow defence spending to two per cent of GDP by 2020-21. For the first time, the investments in a white paper have been fully funded and externally cost assured. There is a funding certainty that the Australian Defence Force has needed for a very long time.

During Labor's time in government, by way of contrast, they delayed 119 Defence capability projects and cancelled another eight, slashed $16 billion from Defence and reduced spending to the lowest level of funding, according to the work from ASPI, since 1938.

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