Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

We on this side take it a little more seriously. As I was saying, I enlisted in the Australian Regular Army at the end of the Cold War. In the 20 years of service that I gave to this country and the years since, I've never seen a more dangerous geopolitical strategic environment.

This environment requires decisive, deliberate, lethal capability to deter our adversaries and to defend our citizens. There's a Latin phrase we use in the military: 'Si vis pacem, para bellum.' That means, 'If one desires peace, then one should prepare for war.' Sadly, this defence budget won't drop money into our defence budget for a number of years. An example comes from my electorate of Braddon in north-west Tasmania where Elphinstone Manufacturing Group are the subprime for Hanwha, who are the successful tenderers for the Land 400 and Land 8116 mobile 155 millimetre howitzer program. Mr Elphinstone tells me he has been frustrated for many years. We initially gave him the indication that he was to build 450 of these hulls right in Tasmania to the highest tolerances. Over the length of that, which is 7.77 metres, he was allowed one millimetre. There are 40 thousandths of an inch to a millimetre, so those are very fine tolerances. He subsequently invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into gearing up to meet those tolerances, and subsequently, as soon as this lot got in, that 450 number was cut to 129, after that investment had already been made by that manufacturer. It is not good enough. He's got to run a business and employ people, and he needs to meet that capability.

We've heard a lot from the other side and, in fact, from many experts—we agree—that missile defence and force projection will underpin our effectiveness as we move forward. I recently visited Israel, and we started looking at the Iron Dome and the David's Sling technology that they have in that country. If they didn't have that, it wouldn't be the case that 99 per cent of those missiles are destroyed in the air, and those missiles not destroyed would hit their targets and destroy Israel's population.

We see manufacturers like Kongsberg, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin again being delayed in their process as they move forward and develop technologies which are aimed at the Australian Defence Force. But, at the end of all this, I look at the recruiting numbers and at the young people of Australia who aren't going into the recruiting office, are being delayed in the recruiting office, are not meeting the requirements for enlistment or are not getting into our training establishments quickly enough. We are going to need a very technical workforce. Make no mistake. If we can't get those young men and women into their Defence Force as quickly as possible then there will be no-one to drive these fancy pieces of equipment.

The other issue that I look at is what we call the C4ISR, the command, control, communications and computers necessary to drive this equipment and the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements, or sensor-to-shooter requirements, that we need to aim these sensitive technical pieces of equipment onto our targets, given the size of our area of operations in the Indo-Pacific region. This is where the money needs to be spent: in the command and control aspects. I think this has been forgotten, along with those who are operating these pieces of equipment, and I call on this government, who should have done something a long time ago, to rectify the shortfalls in recruiting. They are flat-footed when it comes to having operators for this equipment. Overall, it's not good enough. We are heading for even more dangerous times, and I suggest that this government really get on with things, because we are, as I said, extremely flat-footed.

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