Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Review of the Defence Annual Report 2007-2008. Any review of defence activities in the period 2007-08 or indeed to the present time would have to acknowledge at the outset the very heightened tempo of activity with which the Australian Defence Force is engaged at the moment. Deployments abroad and commitments at home are at a very high tempo, requiring the dedication of all the men and women of the defence forces.

In the brief time available, I want to refer to some of the recommendations and issues surrounding the report. The committee has made a recommendation about the importance of Defence looking to buy military off-the-shelf equipment wherever that is able to be done, in effect as a default position. Over the years, the defence committee has looked at a number of acquisitions that have been problematic for Australian defence forces. It does not reflect on who happens to be in government or indeed who happens to be running defence at the time, but there is a pattern which emerges, which is that those defence acquisitions which have been the most problematic, those that have had the greatest time delay and those that have been more prone to cost overruns have been those where Defence and the government of the day have determined to acquire what is, effectively, a one-off solution or to be first of type. It is not surprising that that should be the case. Common sense would tell us that that would be so. There will be a number of occasions when Australia’s unique geographical circumstances and our unique strategic environment will in fact require us to have a one-off type solution, and I can think of a number of examples where that is the case. One of the areas that has had difficulties over the years is the combat system on the submarines, yet in truth there is no submarine in the world that would have met Australia’s needs. The typical submarine is designed for operation in the North Atlantic, more in a European context than the circumstances confronting Australia. That is an example of where a military off-the-shelf solution is unlikely to meet our needs. That said, we need to mitigate the risk wherever we can.

There are other first-of-type acquisitions that come to mind which have also been problematic, such as the Airborne Warning and Control System. That has been a particularly plagued program. It is now some three years overdue, and a review of the circumstances surrounding it would raise a number of important questions about whether the best decisions were taken at the outset. There have also been acquisitions of military off-the-shelf equipment, the most recent best example of which is the heavy airlift capability that the Australian Defence Force has recently acquired. It has clearly been the correct decision to get a capable, proven platform off the shelf for what is effectively an air cargo freighter—a fancy air cargo freighter, but nonetheless an air cargo freighter. In making this recommendation, it is important to note that it is not intended to be a statement with respect to any particular acquisition that may currently be under consideration. I say that advisedly, given some of the debate surrounding one of the acquisitions that is presently being touted—or, at least, one of the bidders places great store on that as their selling point. That is fair enough, but, in making this recommendation, the committee is not engaging in any assessment of current acquisitions. Rather, it is making a broad point of policy.

There is one other recommendation that I want to turn to that has been a concern of mine, and that is the situation with the submarine escape training facility at HMAS Stirling. This has been a very sad and sorry episode in recent government management of naval assets. The escape training facility at HMAS Stirling is world-class, specifically designed as part of the HMAS Stirling submarine fleet base. The training for escape from submarines is an essential part of any Navy operating a submarine fleet. Originally, that training was done by naval and defence personnel. A decision was taken some years ago that that should be outsourced. I am yet to be persuaded or to see the evidence that that was the correct decision.

In any event, when it was time for that contract to be renegotiated, apparently nobody able to provide a contract was seen as satisfactory for the purposes. As a result, for some time now we have had a world-class facility for submariner escape training effectively sitting idle and we have needed to send Australian submariners overseas to be trained, in facilities in Canada, in survival and escape from submerged submarines. This is, in my view, completely and utterly absurd and unacceptable. We need to ensure that the facility at Stirling is brought back online as quickly as possible. I understand that the government has been actively engaged in recent times in bringing HMAS Stirling back online; I will be interested to see under what circumstances that occurs and indeed what assessment is done of the relative merits of those services being provided in-house rather than by contractors.

Related to that is the submarine rescue vehicle Remora, which has also been unavailable for some time. It and its delivery vehicle have to be operational as a matter of urgency. We cannot in all good conscience operate a submarine fleet without having an indigenous rescue capability on hand. There are other alternatives that may be available in case of emergency, but I think we owe it to the men and women in the Navy, particularly those who crew our submarines, to ensure that we have a domestic capability to do all within our power to rescue them should the need arise.

The final point I want to make is covered by recommendations 6 and 7. The committee, I think for the first time, engaged Defence on the question of oil supply and alternative fuel sources. Whether it is a short-term dislocation of oil supply or whether it is addressing the peak oil issue that we can argue about occurring 30, 50 or 60 years down the track, there is an important matter confronting the Australian Defence Force, which is the need to guarantee the supply of energy, whether it be oil or some alternative type of fuel, for the ADF’s purposes. The committee made two recommendations—one that deals with the short-term oil shock issue and another that deals with the long-term alternative fuels issue. The United States and other countries are engaged in research on alternative fuels for military application. Australia has had some limited engagement in that process. It is integral to the future security of this nation that we engage more fully in that research, and I would recommend to the government increased activity in that field.

In conclusion, I want to thank the members of the Defence Subcommittee for their work in the course of the last year and particularly over the months involved in the review of the Defence annual report 2007-08. I have made this observation in the past, but I think it is worth repeating: the Defence Subcommittee is fortunate to have among its members a number of senior members of parliament and members who have a genuine interest in national security matters. It is important that it operates on the bipartisan basis that it has throughout my experience in this place. I think we owe it to the men and women in the defence forces to ensure that that is the case.

I also want to place on the record my thanks to the committee secretary, Dr Margot Kerley, the secretariat, and especially Wing Commander Dave Ashworth. Dave has been the defence adviser throughout this year. His appointment will soon cease and he has got to go back to one of those real jobs, in a uniform, at Air Force. But, as I commented to the committee itself, the Defence Subcommittee could not operate nearly as well as it does without the support of the defence advisers. We have been very lucky to have as defence advisers—through all the years I have been engaged in this—people of a really high calibre. Their advice, their input and their suggestions are instrumental in allowing us to do our work. I do hope that in the course of their engagement with the parliament and the committee they manage to pick up a few ideas about this place that might help shape their thoughts into the future and perhaps change some of the preconceptions they had when they walked in on day 1. But on behalf of the committee I want to sincerely thank Dave again for his outstanding contribution.

I also want to place on record my thanks to the other support staff who have been engaged with the committee over this period of time, Muz Ali, Dr Brian Lloyd and Paul Zinkel. I also want to thank the other people who actually ensure that our committee can function and that the documents and everything are where they should be when they need to be. Mrs Donna Quintus-Bosz as office manager is, dare I say, someone I have known since childhood in Brisbane. Donna does a superb job, not just in this committee but in the intelligence and security committee, which I also chair. Her work in that area is greatly appreciated. To Sonya Gaspar and also to Gillian Drew, thanks for their support. None of the committees in the parliament would actually operate were it not for that administrative support, and I think it is appropriate that we should from time to time acknowledge it. I am happy to put that on the record and thank them for their service.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to lend some comment to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry into the Defence annual report 2007-08. Let me first of all acknowledge Arch Bevis, member for Brisbane, as chair of the committee, who is certainly a wasted talent sitting on Labor’s backbench. If the Prime Minister had any sense at all, he would seek to promote a talent such as Arch Bevis, who has led the committee so incredibly well. I certainly pay him the respect he deserves. I also thank the defence adviser, Wing Commander David Ashworth, for all his work. I can only hope that in coming here he has learnt a lot about how the committee works, indeed how the parliament works, and can take that experience back to his professional career as an Air Force officer. I also thank the secretariat for the hard work they have done not only on this report but also throughout the year as the defence committee gets across the vast portfolio which is Defence within the Australian security environment.

The Defence annual report ostensibly looked at four key areas and its recommendations are factored around those. They have to do with procurement, with Defence pay systems, with issues involving our submarine facilities and with fuel. I wish to make a few comments with respect to those four areas.

First, with procurement, the committee recommends that, in the absence of a clear strategic case for high risk, first of type lead customer, we go with a MOTS program, MOTS being military off the shelf. In a corporate sense we would go with COTS, commercial off the shelf: that we would buy, we would borrow and then build as a last resort. The committee recommends this strongly for Defence as well. Buy off the shelf first. Borrow it second. And if you must, for clearly identified reasons, then go for a build option. We know with Defence’s top 20 projects 16 of them are first of customer, first of type—an incredibly high-risk strategy. We also know from questioning Dr Gumley over the best approach that we should be an aggressive follower, in his words slightly behind the power curve; second or third customer first of type, to give an example. It is something we would impress upon the military, notwithstanding their ability on a strategic case-by-case basis to go for a build in the first instance.

Secondly, the Defence annual report inquiry recommends strongly that a high priority is placed on fixing the current pay disputes. KPMG has quite rightly identified a range of issues that need to be resolved quickly. The minister needs to take this as a high priority. There is probably no greater crime in the military, having served there for many years, than not paying the soldiers, sailors and airmen. It is important that we pay them on time. They have commitments, they have families and they need to have confidence in the administrative systems that support them, especially when they are fighting on the front line, which is the front line of freedom for all Western democracies.

Our third series of recommendations has to do with our submarine fleet. I believe personally we need an inquiry into the current state of our submarine fleet, its operational readiness, its capacity to deploy, its crewing issues and where the whole submarine fleet is going. Notwithstanding that as my personal belief about where we should go, we as a committee are recommending that the submarine escape training facility at HMAS Stirling be resolved, be re-established and function as a dedicated requirement to allow the training of our submariners in how to flee a sinking submarine. I can think of nothing more harrowing than being in a tin can as it descends to the bottom of the ocean when we do not have the facility to train our men and women on how to get out of that can. And, of course, we have a range of deployability issues with the Australian Submarine Rescue Vehicle Remora that need to be resolved without delay.

The final set of recommendations that the defence committee looked at had to do with fuel. With respect to the climate change debate, wherever one sits on the spectrum, what is important is managing the risks. One of the risks as we move forward is reliance on fossil fuels. I have a vision that one day this nation can rise up and be fully reliant on its own source of renewable energy and domestic fuel, that we can move away from reliance on Middle Eastern oil and that we can treat fuel as a strategic resource and have energy security as a priority within our nation. Our defence needs to have an assertive strategy on how it deals with its own energy security, especially with respect to fuels. There are a range of risks that need to be mitigated in our high dependence on oil and other fuels that go with it. The committee are firmly of the view that we need to mitigate that risk and set an agenda for the next 10 years on how we do that.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is an outstanding committee. It has taken a bipartisan approach to all issues that I have been involved with over the term of this parliament. Its view on these four recommendations is strong, and it looks forward to Defence’s response.

Debate (on motion by Ms Owens) adjourned.