Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

IE () (): This is a great opportunity to speak on a really important portfolio matter. There's nothing more important than the defence of our nation, and I thank the members for Herbert, Petrie, New England and Braddon for their contributions today.

Last year we began hearing the right things out of the defence minister's office about our defence and about the strategic challenges we're facing as a country. The DSR was announced, and with it the promise of generational transformation in defence, defence industry and the ADF. That's what was held out to the Australian public. Last November, the Prime Minister gave an interview to the foreign editor of the Australian, Greg Sheridan, where he said that his government would spend whatever is necessary to produce an adequate Defence Force that could defend Australia. We were right to expect a lot from the DSR. There was a great buzz about it, about the step change and the conversion of Labor from defence cutters to defence spenders. I think it was a great thing to be hearing all those words. But, alas, the signs were not promising when we were told that the DSR was going to be announced on the eve of Anzac Day. There was a nice window there where the DSR could be announced, there would be no media and the whole thing would sink without a trace.

The DSR has been a disappointment. There are more questions than answers. There are plenty of good things in the document. We welcome the clearer language about the threat and the strategic challenges that our country is facing. After all, it is rock cut from the same quarry as the former government used; with the DSU and the FSP of 2020, there is a lot of symmetry in those documents with the Defence strategic review. But the truth is there was no new money in the DSR. There was cost shifting and there was cannibalisation of capability, particularly of the Australian Army. The member for Herbert mentioned the cuts to the IFE program, going from 450 to 129. What that means in real terms for our soldiers is that they will go from three mechanised battalions to one mechanised battalions—a huge hit to morale and land combat power, which is essential for us to prevail in a close fight. We need to win not just the deep fight but also the close fight.

Interestingly, DFAT was the only department that got money out of the DSR, which I think is more telling about the internal machinations of the Albanese cabinet than the priorities of the minister. Even yesterday, in the Australian newspaper, defence industry voiced their disappointment in the DSR, saying it was 'slow, unfounded and vague', so there's a lot of work to do. There are more reviews, and we still don't have a strategy; a defence strategy document won't be released until 2024.

Now, all of this is really important because the elephant in the room, which we haven't talked about today, is AUKUS, and the clock is ticking. We have fewer than four years to get ready for the first submarine that will come from the US for Submarine Rotational Force-West. There is a whole series of bills that needs to come through both the House and Senate and pass into law to enable AUKUS. There has to be the uplift of HMAS Stirling from a conventional place to a nuclear base. We need to establish all the supporting industry and workforce around the base and we've got fewer than four years to go.

I want to ask the minister: does he still take responsibility for his failure to deliver the adequate funding for the DSR as he said he would in October? What's he doing about recruitment and retention? We are still below recruitment levels. We are bleeding people from the Defence Force. What's he doing to keep them in the Defence Force? The assistant Minister talked about growing the workforce to 20,000 people. How is that going to happen? We've still got no detail about how that's going to happen. How are we going to get sovereign ready by the end of the decade—a crucial precondition for us to receive our first Virginia-class submarine?

I've got to say I'm actually really worried about the state government in Western Australia. A couple of weeks ago, South Australian Premier Malinauskas gave a superb speech at the News Corp Defending Australia forum—probably one of the best speeches I've heard by a Labor figure on national security in the last decade. The member for Herbert was there. The member for Petrie was there. We all agreed it was an excellent speech. Here was someone who actually grasped the task ahead not just from a state perspective; he's leaving the parochialism of the pandemic behind him and actually thinking about this from the national interest perspective. Now that Mark McGowan has gone—and thankfully so, because he did nothing to advance all this, in fact running at cross-purposes to foreign policy and our national interest—the question I have for the minister is: what's he doing to motivate the new Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, to get AUKUS moving? We cannot fail at this first gate. If we don't hit the first gate and establish Submarine Rotational Force-West by 2027, the rest of AUKUS is in doubt. There's a lot of risk here, and I want to see some leadership from the minister on this question.

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