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

It's a privilege to participate in this debate this morning alongside the member for Menzies, the member for Herbert and those opposite as well. We don't question your motives. Certainly, we think that you are here for the same reasons we are—you want a stronger Australia. We just question your competence, your sense of mission, your sense of purpose and your drive. The Minister for Defence Industry, who spoke only 10 minutes ago, said, 'Rhetoric must be matched by action.' We will judge you by your actions. Sadly, there is a yawning gulf between Labor's rhetoric and the actions they are taking to defend Australia and to build us and our security over the next decade.

Last month, the Deputy Prime Minister, with all the usual fanfare, pomp and pageantry, announced the National Defence Strategy at the National Press Club. He had a glowing press gallery. He got up once again and said, 'Australia is facing the most dangerous strategic circumstances since the end of the Second World War.' And he said—again, to use his highfalutin language—'We will use impactful projection across the full spectrum of proportionate response.' The question is, though, how are they going to do that? How they going to fund that? You'd expect after giving the Australian public such a dire warning about strategic circumstances that there would be immediate investment, there would be crash action, there would be all hands, they would be mobilising defence industry, there would be a sense of mission and there would be immediate funding over the forward estimates. Well, they've made announcements about defence funding over the next 10 years, $50.3 billion, which is three electoral cycles. The Deputy Prime Minister, I doubt, would be in parliament 10 years from now. He may well be but it's unlikely given the pace of modern politics. So he can't actually ensure that the money will be spent that way nor can he guarantee that the projects he is promising will be delivered.

Let's come back to the forward estimates. There is $5.7 billion from this government over the forward estimates, and $3.8 billion of that $5.7 billion is invested in year 4 of the forwards. There is less than $1 billion spent over the next three years in each year, so they are not actually serious about getting us ready for the challenges that we are facing as a country. I think the sad truth is that the Deputy Prime Minister is a show horse and not a plough horse. He likes trotting out when people are watching but, when there's work to be done, he will not come out of the barn, and that's the bottom line. This government is about smoke and mirrors.

Yesterday, at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Deputy Prime Minister sat there on the stage regaling us about his time at Shangri-La. He said it's Disneyland for defence ministers. I think we can agree that the defence portfolio is not Disneyland, because, if you fail on the battlefield, your opponents will crush you. This is very important stuff we're talking about and this is not about gloss and good times; it's about serious planning for the country and about making sure that we are ready, which is why I'm concerned that he got up in the National Defence Strategy and said the 10-year warning time is no longer valid. Yet, if you look at the budget, that 10-year warning time planning assumption is baked in, because all the money is in the next 10 years, not the forward estimates, and that is a big problem.

So what are we seeing across the board? We're seeing a decline in morale. We're seeing an understrength ADF. The CDF only minutes ago said that ADF numbers are 5,300 short—a 10 per shortage for their workforce. Recruiting is going backwards. We're not retaining enough people, and what did we see yesterday? We saw a very ham-fisted plan to fix the problem hatched by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence Personnel. It was quite amusing to watch. They got up with, again, lots of fanfare and lots of trumpeting this great news. They said it's crossing the Rubicon. Well, they are crossing the Rubicon, and it turns out they can't swim and they don't have a life raft either, because the Minister for Defence Personnel got up yesterday and said, 'From 1 January, we're going to be recruiting from all countries. Permanent residents from all countries will be able to join the ADF and get citizenship within 90 days.'

It turns out that, this morning in Defence estimates—after the Deputy Prime Minister tried to unsuccessfully clean this up yesterday—Defence officials couldn't even confirm who is going to be eligible for enlisting in the ADF from 1 January. So, in the biggest Defence recruiting policy change since Federation, we still don't understand what this government is on about. They have botched this policy, and it just shows that they're all about the message but not about delivery. Their rhetoric is big and bold, but in the end they don't match it with the competence, the drive and the sense of mission we expect from these people sitting opposite.

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