Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this bill. I'm heartened to hear that the shadow defence minister has alerted the House to the fact the Labor opposition will support the bill in the lower house. One of the important truths of 2020 has been that, in times of crisis, leadership is incredibly important. Across the world, we've seen that the countries which have best dealt with the relentless onslaught of COVID-19 have been those that, like Australia, have enjoyed responsive and decisive leadership. True leadership, shown in spades by the Prime Minister during this terrible pandemic, inspires unity, confidence and resilience. We've seen time and again that, when Australians have a clear understanding of what they are facing and what they're trying to achieve, when they have the information they need to take action and when they have confidence that the nation's direction is right, they stand up and work together to achieve incredible things. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what the Prime Minister has achieved during this COVID crisis. He has delivered absolute clarity on where we are, where we're headed and how we're going to get there. He has delivered a firm plan at every stage. Where circumstances have changed and the plan has had to adapt to meet them, he has been clear and transparent in explaining those changes. He's been focused, decisive and endlessly energetic. He has given all Australians confidence, whether they're on the front lines in our hospitals, trying to run a COVID-safe business or doing their bit to keep their distance and stop the spread. With that confidence and that clarity, Australians have had everything they have needed to get through this crisis.

On behalf of the people of Fisher, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Prime Minister for his tireless work and his exceptional leadership during the crises that we have faced over the past 12 months. Indeed, one of the most common things I've heard from the people in Fisher has been requests for me to tell the Prime Minister how pleased they are with him, and also the Treasurer, and to extend their best wishes.

One important part of the leadership the Prime Minister has shown, not only during the COVID crisis but through the black summer of bushfires that tragically preceded it, has been his willingness to take the bull by the horns and rapidly deploy the Australian Defence Force. The ADF had been supporting efforts to deal with bushfires since the first fires began in September 2019. However, as December progressed and the fires began to grow quickly, the Prime Minister took an unprecedented step. He asked the Governor-General to call out the ADF Reserve and create the largest peacetime disaster response operation in Australia's history.

Operation Bushfire Assist involved 6,500 ADF personnel, including the call-out of 2,500 reservists and hundreds of others from Australia's Defence Force partners overseas. More than 60 vehicles from three joint task forces were deployed alongside fixed wing aircraft and rotary wing. The Royal Australian Navy's largest vessel, the LHD HMAS Canberra, was also deployed. The difference the ADF made was immense. By the middle of March this year, ADF personnel, as part of Operation Bushfire Assist, had cleared 4,848 kilometres of roads and 240 kilometres of firebreaks. They repaired 1,286 kilometres of fences. They delivered 5,409,500 litres of water and 73,300 litres of fuel to firefighters on the front lines. For those whose lives were devastated by the fires, they purified more than 10 million litres of drinking water on Kangaroo Island and in Bega, and delivered more than 1.3 million kilograms of fodder for animals. They provided more than 77,000 meals to emergency service personnel and evacuees. It has, by all accounts, been a staggering effort.

Yet, as Operation Bushfire Assist wound down in March 2020, the Prime Minister and this nation asked the ADF to step up once again. Faced with a second crisis of international proportions not seen since the end of World War II, the government once again took clear and decisive action and ordered a smaller but no less important mission. Within weeks, on 1 April 2020, the Minister for Defence announced the establishment of Operation COVID-19 ASSIST. As of last Thursday, a total of 2,657 ADF personnel had been deployed as part of this operation. I ask that we take a moment to reflect on the fact that 91 of these members of the ADF have contracted COVID-19. More than 700 ADF personnel are deployed to Victoria, where they are supporting police checkpoints, assisting with COVID testing, managing logistics, and working on contact tracing and the response in Victorian care homes. Regrettably, the ADF's assistance in controlling hotel quarantine was not accepted by the Victorian Labor government, despite multiple offers being made, and we are now witnessing the aftermath of Australia's biggest public policy failure as a result.

In New South Wales, more than 650 ADF personnel have worked on border checkpoints and police quarantine in Sydney hotels. In my own state of Queensland, more than 550 have supported quarantine compliance at all airports and hotels and, until last week, were also assisting police at the borders.

Critically, behind the scenes, there are also dozens of ADF personnel in key advisory roles embedded in national and state government agencies, including the Department of Home Affairs and Services Australia. There they are providing the benefit of their unique skills and the decades of experience in the mass mobilisation of security personnel and disaster relief efforts to help ensure that our civilian administration can respond to this crisis with the efficiency of a military operation. Right across the ADF's responses to these crises there have been incredible numbers, which show what a vital role they have played.

In this country, only the ADF has the capacity and the training to deliver more than 6,000 kilometres of repaired roads and fences in a matter of only a few weeks. Only the ADF can immediately feed tens of thousands from a standing start. Only the ADF has the flexibility to simultaneously take up hundreds of roles as contact tracers, logistics planners, quarantine officers and border guards, with little or no notice. The decisive, timely and significant deployments of the ADF made by the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence have made a critical difference in supporting our emergency services, our public servants and our health professionals to do their jobs during two of this nation's most difficult challenges. We thank each and every one of them for their sterling service and their outstanding professionalism.

However, while these deployments have been absolutely the right thing to do and another sign of the strength of the Prime Minister's leadership, it was not a simple matter. As the Prime Minister himself said in February this year:

During the Black Summer bushfires, we entered a constitutional grey zone by directly initiating defence force deployments, utilising the first ever compulsory call out of Reservists … without clear rules.

The bill before us today helps to clarify those rules and streamline the process so that we can ensure the ADF can provide all the assistance we need in emergencies to come.

In particular, the bill will ensure that we can roll out and call out our ADF Reserves when they are needed and that, when we do, they're adequately protected and remunerated. First, the bill will simplify the process of calling out the ADF Reserve by giving the Governor-General the ability to act on the advice of the Minister for Defence, in consultation with the Prime Minister, whatever the circumstances and not only for reasons of urgency. This will ensure that there are no unnecessary administrative delays in any future call-outs.

Secondly, once called out, this bill will give the Chief of the Defence Force the power to determine what kind of service is required from each Reserve member, rather than requiring continuous full-time service from all Reserve personnel. This will allow the Reserve to deploy more flexibly and meet the specific needs dictated by the crisis. Not every emergency is the same. They come with different risks and different requirements, while the skills and personal circumstances of each reservist mean that the length and type of service appropriate to them varies. This bill ensures the Chief of the Defence Force can get the most out of all personnel and deploy just what we need to face down any emergency at home or overseas.

Thirdly, the bill ensures that we'll not ever have to see the unfortunate spectacle of ADF members providing emergency aid being sued or convicted for simply doing their jobs in good faith. Emergency service workers are rightly given immunity from civil and criminal liability for doing their jobs in good faith and in line with the rules that govern their work. Remarkably, ADF personnel who are engaged in supporting disaster preparedness, response and recovery are not afforded the same immunity. Although one would hope that Australians would not choose to pursue such a case against our dedicated and professional service men and women, we cannot rely on that goodwill, and we must enshrine this protection in legislation.

Finally, the bill ensures that all our reservists will be properly remunerated for their work in emergency response. As it stands, reservists who provide continuous, full-time service under a reserve call-out, including those 2,500 who assisted with this year's bushfires, are not lawfully entitled to superannuation benefits for the time they served, despite paying tax on their pay. This is clearly not what these committed reservists deserve, and this bill would resolve that loophole. Importantly, the new provision would be backdated to November 2019 to ensure that the thousands of reservists who gave such incredible service during the black summer bushfires do not miss out. That alone would be reason enough to support this bill.

During times of crisis, more than ever, we need excellent leadership. Over the course of the past 12 months the Prime Minister and the cabinet have delivered that leadership in spades. However, for great leadership to be effective our leaders need access to the tools and resources to get the job done. One of the most effective tools available to the federal government in helping our community through its darkest times is the Australian Defence Force. This bill makes is easier for the government to call on that resource. It makes it easier, fairer and safer for the dedicated service men and women who answer. Although I hope it will be a long time before we need it again, if ever, now is the time to plan for the moment we will turn to the ADF in an emergency. Now is the time to pass this bill, and I commend it to the House.

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