Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the Prime Minister that my electorate of Paterson contains many defence industry businesses, Defence personnel and their families. Will the Prime Minister inform the House how the government has encouraged innovation, investment and jobs growth in Australia's defence industries?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. As honourable members know, last Thursday the government launched the most comprehensive defence white paper in Australia's history. We are committed to delivering a more potent, agile Australian Defence Force ready to respond whenever our interests are threatened or our help is needed. We will increase defence funding by $29.9 billion over the next 10 years, which delivers on our 2013 commitment to return defence spending to two per cent of GDP within the decade.

As part of that commitment, we are investing an additional $1.6 billion over 10 years in programs to build industry skills and drive competitiveness while harnessing Australian innovation and expertise. These commitments are fully costed and fully funded. They provide the certainty that the ADF and our defence industries have needed for a very long time. This is about sound economic management. This is an integral part of our innovation strategy. It is an integral element in ensuring that we remain a prosperous First World high-wage generous social-welfare-net economy, that we seize the opportunities of the 21st century. And they will deliver a growth dividend across the country including in regional Australia, where so many of our defence forces and defence contractors live and work, such as the RAAF base in Williamstown in the member for Paterson's electorate.

Today the Defence minister and I, along with the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Materiel, visited the local Canberra company CEA Technologies. CEA Technologies is an innovative Australian technology company that produces the world's best radar systems. They are selling to the Australian Defence Force and they are exporting now to the United States. The government continues to invest in the technology of CEA for research and development of radars. They are at the cutting edge.

We want to ensure that not only CEA and other companies like it continue to do well but also the next generation of technology companies and the next generation of innovative defence contractors come up. That is why we have set up, as part of the defence white paper, a method and a system for encouraging the smallest businesses in this sector to come forward so that they will get even greater opportunities than CEA did. Innovation, science and technology: that is how we make our Defence Force the best. That is how we secure Australia's future.