Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. In every one of those efforts, we acted in the face of the opposition of those opposite.

As I said on Tuesday, everywhere I have been and everything that I have done has been in pursuit of my duties acting on behalf of the Australian people. I stand by every flight that I took on the special purpose aircraft or commercially. But I would also make this point. The question we just heard from the shadow minister is the eighth question that he has asked since the election. Since that time, we made a decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. That was quite a big deal—not a single question on that. We made a decision to engage in the single biggest reposturing of Australia's Defence Force—not a single question on that. But now we have had three questions on the special purpose aircraft. Those opposite get 70 minutes each and every parliamentary day to raise the most significant questions facing the Australian people, and this is what the shadow minister chooses to raise. It says everything about a party which gave us seven different defence ministers in the course of the last decade who could not make a decision in relation to our submarine capability, opening up enormous capability gaps. It's never about the policy; it's always about the politics.

But we didn't need to know that to understand this. On 4 January 2020 we absolutely understood how they were about the politics when in the face of the biggest bushfires that we'd had as country they used the Australian Defence Force to cut an ad to raise money for the Liberal Party. It's always about the politics, never about the policy.

Honourable members interj ecting—

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