Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The Naval Shipbuilding Plan has been very well received, particularly by industry, by the defence forces, by all of those in Australia who want advanced manufacturing, highly technical, highly valuable jobs. Even the Leader of the Opposition was on 5AA with Leon Byner the day after the release of the Naval Shipbuilding Plan. Leon Byner said, 'Wouldn't you say that that's a good initiative?' The Leader of the Opposition said, 'Of course we would—it's our initiative.'

I almost blew a gasket laughing as I was listening to the radio. Apparently the Naval Shipbuilding Plan, the national project to build 54 vessels, was all Bill's idea. It was all the Labor Party's idea. This man does stand-up comedy better than Pete Helliar on The Project. He is like Rapunzel at the top of his tower, completely disconnected from reality, cut off from the world.

We have 54 vessels that we have commissioned in four years of this government. How many were there under the Labor Party? Not one—zero, absolutely nothing in six years. Labor had a naval shipbuilding plan—it was called the valley of death. It was like a B-grade movie title. What they left in naval shipbuilding was a desert—absolutely no commitments to one ship to be built in this country in six years. We have 54 vessels driving 5,000 jobs in naval shipbuilding alone. That is $90 billion in naval shipbuilding, $200 billion across the build-up of our military capability. This is a government that takes defence and defence industries seriously— (Time expired)

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