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

I thank the member for his question and acknowledge his local support to Australia's defence history. On Thursday in Washington, President Biden completed the last step in the establishment of a licence-free defence export zone between America, the United Kingdom and Australia, and this is the achievement of a generational dream.

It will open the door for more Australian companies to participate in the American defence supply chain—companies like VEEM in the member's own electorate, which makes precision alloy components for US Navy ships and employs 200 people in high-tech, high skilled, well-paid jobs. This will also make it much easier for technology to flow from America to Australia, which is so critical for Australia's building of our future submarines, but which is also important in other areas like guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise.

Lockheed Martin will begin the manufacture of guided land based rockets in Australia from next year, and this is a direct result of the work that we've been doing with the United States, along with a more than $16 billion investment over the next decade. There is such a contrast between what this government is doing and the smoke and mirrors that we were so used to from those opposite, because the Liberals only allocated $1 billion towards GWEO, which meant that there was no realistic prospect of seeing the manufacture of guided weapons in this country for more than a decade.

When it comes to matching Labor's increased defence spending, the shadow minister for defence is desperately clinging on to a text that he's received from his beloved leader. But as to his text to the shadow treasurer, there he is definitely being left on red because the shadow treasurer has made abundantly clear that coalition defence spending will stay within the envelope which they took to the last election. That means that there is a $50 billion difference between what's in Labor's budgets and what's on the coalition's books. That means that the Liberals are now dangerously close to the kind of failure that, to quote the shadow minister, would be 'leaving Australia's defences so weak that we provoke aggression'. On this side of the House we're making concrete decisions to improve our nation's defences so we that can keep Australian safe.

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