Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If there were ever a time for a lesson in psychology, it would be today. If there were ever an MPI that highlighted the human capacity for denial, this one would be it. I'm actually floored that those opposite would seek to put up an MPI on the current government and talk about mismanagement when we can clearly see that the historical record of the last nine years of coalition government is the actual gold standard, the perfect example, of mismanagement. Psychological experts characterise what they're doing as something called 'projecting'. It's a condition from which those opposite are clearly suffering, amongst probably many other psychological maladies, which we've seen play out in the ABC documentary Nemesis. This condition of projecting is where those opposite want to externalise their own incompetence, negligence and mismanagement onto others—in this case, the current government. It's a sad psychological state of affairs, but they do it because—and this is the experts speaking—it helps the individuals protect their self-esteem and avoid confronting the uncomfortable truths about themselves and their own traits. I think that's a little bit late, given what we've seen on the ABC.

The primary projector is none other than the opposition leader himself, Peter Dutton, who was a former minister for defence. We know that Mr Dutton oversaw the worst failures in the coalition during their nine years. We've heard it from previous speakers—the whopping $3.8 billion on the MRH-90 helicopters for the Army and special forces that cannot even fire their own weapons because the doors were too narrow. The coalition government spent $1.16 billion on new battlefield airlifter aircraft that can't fly into battlefields. Under the former government, poor-quality manufacturing led to pipes being contaminated and our sailors not even being given access to quality, safe drinking water. Perhaps, with all of that actual mismanagement—the facts of that, the historical record—the opposition leader may have to answer for that in the next doco.

The current shadow minister for defence is Mr Hastie. I acknowledge his service to the country. I respect it and I acknowledge it. He himself is a former Assistant Minister for Defence, and he said this about his own party:

… we squandered a lot of opportunity through leadership changes … which led to inertia institutionally…

Mr Hastie also said that under his government defence had too many ministers.

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