Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. He was talking to me over the weekend about the troops who were deployed from Townsville to the Solomon Islands. I know that, like everyone in this House, he wishes them a safe trip. The work they're doing in the Solomon Islands obviously augments the work the Minister for Home Affairs has just commented on with regard to the Australian Federal Police. It provides a security overlay, and it provides the ability to airlift and for people to be safely transported on some of the roads in and out of Honiara.

As you'd be aware, Mr Speaker, the ADF personnel have come from 3, 17 and 6 brigades and from 4 Squadron RAAF, and they have provided support, including air combat controllers, the RE combat team and further supporting elements. I say thank you to all of those personnel. It's a very significant effort that they're making. It follows a request from our near neighbours in the Solomon Islands, and it says very clearly that Australia will always be there in the Indo-Pacific, standing by our partners, our friends and our family in this part of the world to help them, particularly in their hour of need, and to make sure that we can see peace prevail in our region.

The RAAF responded very quickly last week. We are able to deploy rapidly to incidents like this, whether it be for a humanitarian disaster or civil disorder or under the bilateral security treaty that Australia has with the Solomon Islands, through which we are able to provide them with assistance. The reason we can do that so rapidly, and the reason that we are resourced so well within the Australian Defence Force, is that we've put significant additional funds into the ADF. What would make that very difficult, as we know from what Labor did in their period in government, would be reducing the amount of money into the Australian Defence Force. They reduced it to 1.5 per cent of GDP. The fact is that it's now up over two per cent.

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