Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

On a very important issue, it gives me great pleasure to be able to rise and contribute. We were talking about time frames, and I think I'll take the time frames back a little. We'll go back to the Peloponnesian War, 411 BC, and the Thucydides effect. This is really important because, as we see, there is always a concern that the clash of two empires—as one is rising and one is falling—can inevitably bring about, through uncertainty, a move that has cataclysmic effects. I don't think the United States is falling. I think that is a huge mistake that people would make, and I think it's a mistake that has been made about the United States twice before—that being during the First World War and prior to the Second World War.

What I do believe is that it's incredibly important that we understand the uncertainties of our area. I'd go to other dates, and especially around 4 March 1942 and 7 March 1942, when the Japanese imperial command were making decisions about whether they would invade Australia. They came to the decision—it came under the terminology 'Operation FS'—that they weren't going to invade Australia; they were just going to choke us to death. They were going to starve us out, they were going to psychologically torment us, they were going to bombard us and they were going to bring us into subjugation. One of the reasons that that this was delayed was submarine interdiction, which was, basically, the destruction of supply lines that the Americans were able to deliver to the Japanese.

Why is this important? Because it drives Australian policy in such a way as to understand the pre-eminent platform that you need to secure Australia, which is submarines—nuclear submarines. And I'd like to commend the opposition—as they were at that stage—for supporting that decision for Australia to go to nuclear submarines, because it's incredibly important. Australia does not have the time to bicker or to go into an internecine debate because the threat is before us right now.

Yes—but right now. It's really important that we understand that this belittling by the government of the efforts that we both have, to try and make this nation as strong as possible, as quickly as possible, has to be taken into account.

When the Minister for Defence, day on day, comes to the dispatch box and his contribution to the defence of our nation is to belittle the combined task that we both have to make our nation as strong as possible as quickly as possible, he undermines and debases the purpose that should be part of his job. We see that Minister Wang Yi of China goes to Dili, to Port Moresby, to Kiribati and to the Solomons. He has conversations with the Cook Islands, wants to be in Fiji, and goes through the process that is exactly what the Imperial Japanese Army would have done for the encirclement of Australia. That is what is before us right now. If you don't take it seriously, if you smirk and smear with funny little grins at the back when the future of your nation is before you, then you don't understand exactly what the job is of the people on your front bench.

We have to make sure that the effort to make Australia as strong as possible as quickly as possible is not just on the military platforms. We must have baseload power. We must have the capacity at least to entertain a civil nuclear capacity with decisions and things like—if you're going to have nuclear submarines, you're going to have to have nuclear technicians, and if you're going to have nuclear technicians, you've got to consider things such as small modular reactors. You've got to have the skillsets. But if you say, 'No, the world is going to change for me. The world is going to live to different rules. I will live in splendid isolation from history and splendid isolation from the world which is so apparent around me,' then you put Australia in a confounded threat from which no great speech at this dispatch box will ever get us out of. So I commend this resolution, and I commend you to the task that is before you.

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