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

That'll increase the average IQ in the chamber! I thank the member for La Trobe for his question. We do take national security in this country seriously, unlike the member for Wakefield and unlike the members of the Labor Party. We do take defence and national security seriously. They think it's a joke. They think it's something to make fun of. That's what they think. That's what the member for Wakefield and the Leader of the Opposition think. They think that national security and defence are a joke in this country, and that's why they've subcontracted it out to the coalition to do national security and defence in this nation. Some of the members of the Labor Party used to take defence seriously, and they must hang their heads in shame and embarrassment that the member for Wakefield and the Leader of the Opposition think it's something to laugh about.

I was asked about national security and our beliefs. Our No. 1 belief in defence is to keep the service men and women of the ADF safe. That's our No. 1 priority. Our second priority is to give them the capability, through the procurement that we make into the Australian Defence Force, to make sure that they win, which keeps them safe. And our third priority is to use that defence heft to grow our economy, to grow our defence industry, to grow our defence industry sovereignty. That's why this government invested $200 billion over the next 10 years—$200 billion—in building that military capability to keep our service men and women safe, to keep them alive, to make sure they have the capability to win and to grow our sovereignty in defence industry. And it is working.

By contrast, when Labor was in power, they took money out of defence. They'd made big promises. I found that in the Labor Party's election manifesto in 2007 they promised to keep defence spending increasing in real terms every year at three per cent until 2016. They made the promise in 2007 that they would keep spending on defence increasing by a minimum of three per cent in real terms. What was the reality? The reality—and everyone's heard this number before—is that they reduced spending on defence to 1.56 per cent of GDP, the lowest level since 1938, the last year of appeasement. But I also found out that in 2010-11—

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