Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset, I will acknowledge the member for Solomon's service to our nation. I thank him for most of the content of his speech. He, like me, wants our nation to be the most secure it can be. He, like me, wants the very best in capability and the very best in defence personnel. Whilst he was in uniform, he was one of those. He was the very best our nation could offer to be prepared to go and fight, if necessary, for our nation. Again, I thank the member for Solomon for his words.

The price of peace, as has often been said, is eternal vigilance. This legislation and the entire AUKUS framework is based on being well prepared and ever vigilant. As I speak, we have Greens party members throwing manure at police horses in Melbourne. The Greens want horseracing stopped. Just bear with me; this is relevant. The Greens want horseracing stopped in Melbourne, which is the home of the world's greatest handicap horserace, the Melbourne Cup, yet they are at an antiwar, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protest at the moment, throwing manure at police horses. That is a disgrace.

In a moment, we're going to hear from a couple of Greens on this particular bill, the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023. If the defence of this nation—the security of Australia—is left to the Greens, then God help us. What we see from the Greens—their antics in the House of Representatives and the Senate and at protests not just in Melbourne and not just in our capital cities but, indeed, in regional centres right throughout Australia, including in my home town of Wagga Wagga at the moment—is nothing short of abhorrent. I truly worry that, after the next election, we will be left with a government which has to rely on Greens votes to get legislation passed, so it's good that we're passing this legislation today or in the not-too-distant future. When it comes to ensuring that national security is, as it always should be, the No. 1 priority of a government, there are a lot of commonalities between Labor and the coalition.

Australia is an island nation. We are surrounded by water. Ensuring the safety and security of our coastline and our nation is going to be underpinned by our nuclear naval capability. The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill is integral in ensuring that we have the right fleet, the right personnel and the right build going forward to ensure that we meet our commitments to keep Australian people's safety as our No. 1 priority.

This is a legacy of Scott Morrison. When he met in the margins of the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay on 12 June 2021, I was the Deputy Prime Minister at the time. I'm very proud to say that this had been months in the making. The AUKUS arrangements, the agreements that we have entered into with the United States of America and the United Kingdom, were vital to our nation, not just in the here and now but for decades going forward. I want to commend former prime minister Morrison for the work he did, the negotiations he managed and the ability to achieve this historic deal.

Prime Minister Morrison and President Joe Biden discussed a number of issues of mutual concern, including the Indo-Pacific region. I was fortunate enough to go to the Australia-America dialogue after being invited to do so by former speaker Tony Smith. When we had the briefings with the US at those particular meetings, the need to have a good Navy presence in the Indo-Pacific became even more apparent. President Biden and Prime Minister Morrison agreed that the strategic context in the Indo-Pacific was changing—and it is. It's very much altering. They agreed that there was a strong rationale for deepening strategic cooperation between the three governments: the UK, the US and Australia.

Of course, they welcomed at the time the forthcoming visits and exercises in the Indo-Pacific by the carrier strike group led by HMS Queen Elizabeth. What our Navy does—indeed, what our Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force do as well—is have the very best training exercises. They do a lot of those over the Top End, in northern Queensland and in the Northern Territory. The presence in Darwin of our ADF personnel mixed with the finest American Marines is quite integral and important to our future defence operations. Speed is of the essence with the Australian Naval Nuclear Safety Power Bill and the transition and making sure we get on and build the subs.

We support this bill. The coalition agrees with this bill. Obviously, this will be followed by Senate scrutiny, and it's vital to our long-term defence capability and the security of Australians. It's in the best interests of our nations that AUKUS succeeds. It's in the best interests of our nation that the Greens do not succeed, because they are bringing to this parliament and to our nation a change in the social fabric of society. They want to tear down all those traditions that we are, quite frankly, proud of. I worry. Even in Wagga Wagga, where we've got a local government election this Saturday, the Greens are already on the council. They've had a deputy mayor in recent times.

Wagga Wagga is a garrison city. We have the home of the soldier, Kapooka, Blamey Barracks and the 1st Recruit Training Battalion. If you're joining the army as a recruit, you do your training at Kapooka, at Wagga Wagga. If you spend any given time in the Royal Australian Air Force, you will more than likely end up at RAAF Base Wagga. Indeed, connected to and a vital part of RAAF Wagga is a Navy presence, with dozens upon dozens of Naval personnel in Wagga Wagga—very much landlocked, a long way from the nearest drop of seawater, but we're very proud of having those Navy people. The best, the bravest and the finest that the Navy produces often end up at Wagga Wagga as well.

I'm also very proud that, when we were in government and I was the Deputy Prime Minister—indeed, in previous portfolio errors I was Minister for Veterans' Affairs and also Assistant Minister for Defence before that—Wagga Wagga secured $561.9 million for vital upgrades to RAAF Wagga to ensure that it had accommodation that was fit for purpose for 2024, let alone beyond. They were living in quarters that were built in the 1950s. It also received $846.8 million for Kapooka for vital upgrades for the Army base. I say that in the context that we need to be prepared not just on the coastline but, indeed, right throughout our strategic training bases throughout our military presence in Australia.

Now, I won't read all of this—if people want to look at it, they can go on the Lowy Institute website and read it in full. I will selectively quote some of the lines from Sam Roggeveen's article of 12 September 2022, 'AUKUS, one year on', which talked about how details were needed. I don't necessarily disagree with that. Some lines in the article talked about how this was brought about very hastily. Well, it needed to be. You can't have a multipronged tripartite defence agreement and just have a national discussion about the pros and cons of that, because, once the Greens start talking about it, nothing will ever get done. Sometimes these do need to happen behind closed doors and then be worked towards a sensible outcome for the nation. In the article he says:

On 15 September 2021, Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined his British counterpart Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden to announce AUKUS. In so doing, Morrison set Australia's foreign and defence policies on a profoundly new course, a course now firmly embraced by the new Labor government led by Anthony Albanese.

He continues:

If the submarines are all delivered, Australia will join the high table of the world's military powers.

I think that's a good thing.

Nuclear-powered submarines are the apex predators of naval warfare and Australia is proposing to acquire at least eight, more than the UK and France now have, or plan to have. Nuclear power gives these submarines almost infinite range and endurance, and they will carry missiles that can strike targets thousands of kilometres inland. For the first time in its history, Australia will have global strike capability.

There's nothing wrong with that. He writes:

Above all, AUKUS is a profound step because of what it says about the Australian government's attitude to the US alliance.

I'd almost say there's nothing wrong with that either—I would say that, in fact.

He refers to AUKUS being a big bet on America. At the end of the day, I was once told that a definition of a friend is someone who has the same enemies as you have. Whilst I'm not going to detail any enemies that we do have, we do need to be prepared. We do need to be strike ready. We do need to have, not just personnel committed to going into battle if need be—and I hope that is not the case—but we also need to have the weaponry, the equipment and the capability if the need arises. To be able to do that, we need to have a very good submarine fleet, given the fact that we are an island nation, and given the fact that we are in a volatile geopolitical Indo-Pacific region, and things are changing. They are changing fast.

Australia's target date for achieving the sovereign ready milestone is the early 2030s. US and UK nuclear submarines will be forward rotating through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia from 2027. We will want to have our people upscaled and our facilities upgraded by that time. We don't have a day to waste. We do not. Australia has to prove to the US and the UK that we are a reliable partner. I think we have done that in world wars past; we have done that throughout rotations with the US and the UK in recent conflicts. I can recall being with the member for McEwen at Camp Baird where we heard, particularly from the US, about how proud they were to serve alongside Australians and how infinitely more secure they felt when they were fighting along Australians than any one else in the world—I see the member for McEwen nodding. We were very proud of the level of commitment our troops gave and, certainly, of the level of safety and security that others felt in our troops.

We won't let the US or the UK down. We are making a huge investment, and when the government talks about a made-in-Australia manufacturing initiative going forward, this lies at the very heart of it, making sure that we do, very much, use Australian capability and know-how—obviously, in line with the AUKUS arrangements—to upskill our people. I heard the member for Solomon talking about the wonderful job opportunities that are going to be made available because of this. This is a proud Australian moment; it's a team Australia moment. It's also a great legacy of the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. I recommend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context