Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

So I start? Happy days! This is a great opportunity—to have the minister present to answer some searching questions about his portfolio. But, before we get to the questions that I want to put to the Minister for Defence Industry, it is worth appraising how this government has performed in the area of Defence industry since its election in 2013, because the truth of the matter is that, from that moment onwards, this has been a government which has had no commitment to Defence industry at all. Indeed, in its first term, the government's Defence industry policy was about everything other than Defence industry. What we found was that the supply ship contract was being bandied around to try and close the Korean free trade agreement. We had the submarines being put on the table to try and close a free trade agreement with the Japanese. Defence industry was being leveraged for every purpose other than actually building a Defence industry in this country. There was no better example of that than when we saw the appalling spectacle of the submarine build in South Australia being tossed around the government party room at the beginning of 2015 as a pawn in a play in respect of a challenge of the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Of course the opposition welcomes the fact that there is a commitment from the government to build the submarines in Australia. That is an important commitment. But what we absolutely understand from the way in which the single biggest procurement in Australian history was being tossed around the government party room in this way is that this is not a government which has a commitment to Defence industry. This is a government which has a commitment to politics and playing politics, and Defence industry has found itself a part of that.

What also occurred in the first term of the Abbott government—and it has continued since the election in 2016 of the current Prime Minister—is that this country has experienced a real haemorrhaging of industry more generally. The car industry is the example which tells the story of what has happened to industry more generally across Australia. In my electorate, we have seen this firsthand with the car industry but also with the close of Alcoa's Point Henry smelter. That is just one example of what we have seen around the country, particularly in the states of Victoria and South Australia.

It seems to me that what we are witnessing now, as to Defence industry, from this government, is an attempt to make Defence industry the government's industry policy more generally. You get that from the fact that the industry minister became the Defence industry minister. It is, if you like, what the government seeks to do as to its industry policy more broadly.

Again, we welcome the fact that the government has found itself in a place, now, supporting Australian industry in the way in which it participates in the building and procurement of equipment for the Australian Defence Force. Sovereign capability matters. This is something Labor has always understood. The government is a late converter to this, but we will take it. It may be a shallow conversion, but that is fine as well. The concern now is that, given this, we have seen the Minister for Defence Industry, to his credit, active in various announcements in relation to a number of the projects. Right now the projects that are on the books of the government are the future frigate project, where there is an expectation or a commitment that steel will be cut in 2020; the OPVs, where steel will be cut in 2018; and the Future Submarines, in 2023.

I want to ask the Minister for Defence Industry: is he confident that those timetables are going to be met? Can he be confident that all the tenderers—the three tenderers for the future frigates—would be able to meet a date of cutting steel in 2020? Has the work been done to ensure that, on that time frame, Australian industry content is maximised in the supply chain of all of those projects and particularly the future frigates?

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