Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

when they gave part of that contract to a tin-pot company in North Queensland that had two employees. They tasked a company that had two staff members with building our air warfare destroyers. I'm proud to talk about defence any time.

Twenty-eight major projects, 97 years late. Let's go through some of the highlights: $1½ billion on battle lift aircraft that can't fly into battlefields. That's my favourite. Goldfish lasted longer than defence ministers under those opposite. Let's go through some of the other projects: helicopters where the door wasn't wide enough to fire a machine gun while soldiers came out. That's another good one. If they want to go back further: the Seasprite helicopter, where those opposite spent $1.4 billion and delivered zero helicopters.

So we're proud to have delivered the air warfare destroyer. We're proud to be making record investments in defence. We're proud to have members in this government who actually want to be in this portfolio. By contrast, they had a defence minister who said he wouldn't trust the workers of Adelaide to build a canoe. That's why they wanted to send the submarines off to Japan. That's why we're building the submarines in Adelaide. That's why they wanted to build the submarines in Japan. We're proud of our record. They are all press release, not about delivery at all—

Opposition members interjecting—

See this speech in context