Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for the question. With the approach to market that was put out by the government very recently with an eight-week turnaround for individual consortia to return, obviously timing was an important part of that. The McKinsey report to government which preceded that gave us very good information about a reasonable time frame for any of those consortia to put to the government as to what might be a reasonable time frame for them to propose that time in which manufacture could actually occur. In some reports, media have said, based on information that they've received, that a reasonable time frame would be three to six months. Based on all the information that we've received, we think that that is not a reasonable time frame, that it would be significantly longer than that. Information we've received suggests that a reasonable time frame would be more likely to be 12 to 18 months; four years would be an absolute outside time frame. The view that I've taken on all the information that's been provided is that that is also a very unlikely time frame on the outside, just as three to six months is a very unlikely time frame on the inside. A more likely time frame is 12 to 18 months. We have said to those people who might be submitting as consortia that, if you can reasonably submit that you may be able to do that inside the 12- to 18-month time frame, we would be very interested in looking at the proposition that you would put. But, again, the purpose of having an orthodox, orderly, informed process, informed by a very detailed report done by McKinsey, is that when consortia come to us with propositions about—

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