Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday in Senate estimates the Chief of the Defence Force made it clear that he was intending to extend the length of deployments that Australia currently makes with its overseas forces. Currently, deployments are typically six months for members of the Army and some units in the RAAF. But, for special forces and some units in the RAAF, the deployments are four months. Men and women of the ADF would prefer shorter deployments, but there are very good reasons why the Chief of the Defence Force indicated that he intends to extend deployments from six months, typically, to eight months.

As I represent Australia’s largest Army base, in Townsville, and the men and women of the ADF at the Royal Australian Air Force at RAAF Townsville, I have done some looking into this and I think that there is a case to be made for the chief to also extend the out-of-country leave that is currently provided. At the moment, for a six-month deployment, in the middle of the deployment, men and women of the ADF get to come back to Australia for about 10 days. There is a bit of travel time on that either side as well, and it depends on whether or not the aircraft are flying as to what it actually turns out to be. But I am advised that it would be relatively easy to extend the out-of-country leave by another five days to allow the ADF members to have more time with their families when they come back to Australia and to do it without disruption to the mission that they are on.

If deployments were to go back to four months—the mission rehearsal exercises would still have to be performed, all of the training would still have to be done—it would make it very impractical, I believe, and I think the commanders and the soldiers know this. But there is a bonus in all of this. In extending the deployments to eight months, the chief has guaranteed that the time back at home between deployments will be extended to 16 months. This gives the men and women of the ADF more time for training and more time for promotion courses and the like, and more time with their families back home. So I ask the senior leadership of the ADF to consider extending the out-of-country leave by another five days. I think that would be very much appreciated by the men and women of the ADF but also by their families.

I am also very pleased to see the expansion of the Wideband Global Satellite Communications capability for the ADF. Under the previous government, arrangements were made with our allies in the United States to participate in a six-satellite wideband system around the world. Currently, as those of you who have been on placement with the ADF on parliamentary attachments will know, in some locations the bandwidth is extremely tiny. On some ships at sea and some bases, you get dial-up speeds, and generation Y, gen-Y, finds that it cannot do its university courses when it is deployed overseas, for example, because things are just much too slow. This new satellite system, the Wideband Global Satellite Communications system will add much more bandwidth for our forces who are on deployment. Access to the capability will also enable the next generation of military capability such as air warfare destroyers, amphibious ships, multimission unmanned aerial vehicles and land patrol platforms to operate in a network-centric environment. Of course, this partnership further strengthens the Australia-US alliance and it will enhance the interoperability between Australia and US defence forces.

Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would just like to alert you to something that appeared on a small explanation statement that I had, and this came from AXA. On the back, it said ‘here’s the detail of the account activity’ and ‘investment earnings for the last 12 months, $1,274.65’, but it was in the deductions column. This was a loss. I think this is an attempt to cover up the fact that the funds are losing money and I think it should be put up for what it was—a loss. (Time expired)