Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Mate, we won our seats. Don't get too cocky over there. Arrogance is not what people want to hear. These young sailors want to be encouraged, not told they can't buy a home in Sydney. Many will agree with me when I say that today we find ourselves in testing times with the prospects for global peace deteriorating. There is no denying the threats and challenges presented by our current strategic environment, which means Australia needs to continue investing in defence capability. We don't need to go back too far in history to see the conflict in the world. In fact, on 24 February 2022, we know the Russian Federation launched a fully-fledged war on Ukraine. Looking at today's world, where geopolitics are at play and our eyes are open to the very high possibility of increased tension and escalation leading to war, and as a shadow minister for defence industry, I believe a strong and capable defence industry is essential to deliver our modernised defence capabilities for our country's needs in the face of the potential challenges ahead of us.

The defence industry needs the Albanese government to take action on issues such as supply chain disruption, skills shortages and maintaining its competitiveness. In November, Prime Minister Albanese said, 'Where are our missile capabilities?'—meaning drones—and that, in general, we need more weaponry. We know that the opposition leader and former defence minister did a lot in this space. He was a very good defence minister, and he was working in this area to secure our industry. If you look back to when I came into parliament, with the shadow minister for defence, the former Labor government had cut the guts out of it, and that's really important. ADF personnel know that the guts were cut out of defence by the former Labor government. You guys have been in for six months. To come in and pretend that somehow you're a big champion in this space begs to differ. We hope you are because defence industry, the personnel sitting behind you and the people in the ADF need our bipartisan support.

Has the Minister for Defence Industry been briefed on sovereign onshore production, missile manufacturing in Australia, its supply chain capacity and its preparedness? More specifically, has the minister been briefed on the critical components and resources required for missile production capability within Australia? Has the minister been briefed on the options and capacity of offshore missile suppliers? If the worst were to happen, would we be able to have, with disruption, the industry that we need to supply the weapons the ADF would need?

See this speech in context