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

These are the massive vessels that the opposition, when they were in government, offshored. They allowed these vessels to be built in a foreign country because they didn't believe in Australian manufacturing, and now we're seeing serious issues with the quality of work. We have just discovered that metal is leeching from some of the pipes into the drinking water in parts of the ships. This is now so serious that our brave sailors can't access drinking water in parts of these very important vessels, all because of the incompetence of the opposition leader when he was the defence minister. That's what we see from when they were in government.

We're also fixing issues through our reforms to the defence procurement process. We will repair the damage done by the opposition leader when he was in government. Days before the last election the defence minister at the time, the now opposition leader, announced he was throwing out a tender process and sole-sourcing a particular drone, a drone used by a particular number of countries. Those countries were Russia, Myanmar and China. That's the quality of the work from the opposition leader. We have now taken action and reversed that decision. Our government is serious about taking reforms on defence and fixing the projects that he allowed to slip. Under his role as defence minister 28 major projects were running 97 years late and $6½ billion over budget. By contrast, the Albanese Labor government is committed to defending the nation, reforming defence and delivering the capabilities the ADF needs, unlike the opposition leader, who can't be trusted on defence.

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