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

I thank the member for Makin, from the great city of Adelaide, for his question. The truth is we face the greatest strategic uncertainty since World War II, and it's critical we have a defence procurement system that works efficiently to deliver the equipment the ADF needs. We also need a sovereign Australian defence industry to support that, but the truth is that we inherited a mess. There were 28 major defence projects running 97 years late. There were battlefield airlift planes that couldn't find a battlefield; helicopters running more than 10 years late and available less than 50 per cent of the time; and patrol boats built with imported, substandard aluminium that—get this—rusts in salt water. This was a mess driven by the incompetence of those opposite. There were nine years of defence and defence industry ministers asleep at the wheel.

By contrast, the Deputy Prime Minister and I took immediate action and announced six significant reforms to defence procurement. This included driving greater ministerial focus and energy through regular ministerial summits to fix projects of concern. I will be conducting the second ministerial summit this month—the second summit in four months. That second summit in four months compares to six summits in a long nine years by those opposite. I can also inform the House that today the Independent Project Management Office has been established within Defence to help drive reforms to the defence procurement system, delivering to the ADF the equipment they need.

Complementing a procurement system is a sovereign Australian defence industry. This is something the Albanese government is deeply committed to. Whether it's through the National Reconstruction Fund or our commitment to building nuclear-propelled submarines in Adelaide, we want our defence industry to prosper. It's good for Aussie jobs and it's great for our national security.

I've recently returned from the Munich security conference, where I met with the German defence minister and the global head of Rheinmetall. We had great conversations about Rheinmetall building Boxer vehicles in Queensland to export to Germany. This will be the biggest export deal in our defence history. The Albanese government is working hard on this, and that's the difference between the government and the opposition. We want to grow jobs through defence exports; they want to export defence jobs. We saw that when they tried to send the submarine contract to Japan, and only last week the Leader of the Opposition surrendered on Aussie jobs and advocated building our nuclear submarines overseas. He cut Adelaide loose. Only the Albanese government can be trusted to fight for an Australian defence industry, because we know it's vital to our national security. (Time expired)

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