Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the significant investment in defence which the government is making in this budget. The budget delivers on the government's election commitments, and defence funding is projected to increase to more than two per cent of GDP over the forward estimates, the highest in decades. I think it's fair to say that most acknowledge that we will need additional investment in coming years, as well, as we contemplate the impact of the DSR nuclear submarines and other things left unfunded by the previous government but are necessary.

We will be waiting a long time, I expect, for an apology from those opposite for the disgraceful scare campaign they ran during the election about what Labor would do with defence. Some $270 billion in defence capability is committed over the decade to 2029-30, with new and targeted initiatives. I particularly note—and the minister may want to provide more information about this—the $5.1 million committed to research and development into biofuels to support renewable fuel production. Fuel security, of course, is so important, but there's a fact that was lost on the former government: you've got to actually have the fuel in Australia, not in Texas. The former government, for nearly a decade, presided over a degradation of our refinery capabilities and a failure to go anywhere near meeting the international benchmarks for fuel storage, and then, in a con trick, they signed a contract for some petrol that's still sitting in America. 'Underwhelming' would be an understatement of their performance.

I welcome the new Australia Pacific defence school to train Pacific island countries' defence and security forces. That is a strategic investment to help our friends in our Pacific family. It is also demonstrably in our national interest. It's a question the minister might have a view on. I wonder whether the minister has any insights into whether the opposition will try and play tawdry politics with this, like they do with climate change and helping the Pacific. Climate change, of course, is a national security issue—a point, again, lost on those opposite. Thank you, member for Bass for nodding. I acknowledge that it must be difficult for the Liberals, after a decade of decay, dysfunction and disgraceful mismanagement of defence, to have to watch competent ministers start to clean up their mess.

They are serious concerns. The Australian National Audit Office and defence data—independent, reputable, reliable data—show that major defence projects totalling $69 billion are facing major delays and overruns. Twenty-eight of those projects have racked up a cumulative 97 years behind schedule. That involves ships, planes, satellites, battle command systems—things that are absolutely critical if we're to provide credible deterrence. There are many examples, but I would suggest to the chamber that defence is the most egregious example of the former government's—and the former Prime Minister's—pattern of announcing things but not actually delivering and not having a plan to deliver. We saw, just before the election, one of those little announcements they popped out, thinking, 'Maybe this will get us a couple of votes.' They said, 'We're going to have 20,000 new members of the ADF over the next decade or thereabouts.' It was a $38 billion commitment with no detail and still no plan as to how they were actually going to deliver it.

This is really critical stuff. As our strategic circumstances continue to deteriorate—the worst position we've been in since World War II—we've inherited a budget that was riddled with rorts, waste and delays. The waste is amazing. There are already $6.5 billion of cost blowouts that we've got to manage in just a small number of projects. Then there are the submarines. In 10 years in office, not a single submarine was actually ordered, but billions of dollars was flushed down the toilet. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, you can't go into battle waving a press release. You can't confront the enemy and say, 'Just hold on a minute, I've got the budget papers, which pencil in a bit of money.' You can't say: 'Please don't shoot! I've got a video from Scotty from marketing making an announcement about something that might happen'—I'm sorry. I withdraw that: the member for Cook. Members should be addressed by their correct titles and be given the respect they deserve. Twenty thousand in 10 years! Unbelievable!

The government didn't make this mess, but we are taking responsibility for cleaning it up, and it will be a long hard road to do so. I would ask the minister to outline to the chamber what steps we're taking to improve delivery and revitalise the projects of concern and interest. The fact is, as we've already seen over six months, that Labor is better on national security and defence than the coalition. We've got the Defence Strategic Review and the force posture update—the most significant strategic review of defence since the 1980s when Kim Beazley did it. We've also had the same four ministers for the last six months. Astounding! You'd need more than fingers and toes to count how many defence ministers the opposition had when they were in government and created this mess. So I commend the budget appropriation for defence to the parliament.

See this speech in context