Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my very great pleasure to talk about the 2016 Defence white paper, which will shape the national security landscape for the next two decades. There is no doubt that the 2016 Defence white paper provides greater certainty for Defence and greater certainty for industry, and the long-term relationship between these two groupings, after all, drives the success of future defence capability.

The 2016 Defence white paper also provides greater certainty and assurance for the Australian people that the effects we seek from our Defence Force can be achieved. If we consider what we ask of our Defence Force, that spectrum of tasking—everything from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief on one side of the spectrum through to high-intensity war fighting on the other—we have asked them to further the cause of good governance in the Solomon Islands, we have asked them to rush to the aid of the people of Timor at various stages of the development of that country, and our troops did that job very well. We ask a lot of our Defence Force. On that basis, a reliable funding base is essential to the delivery of the critical defence capabilities needed by our Defence Force to do those and other tasks.

There is an old adage: strategy without resources is illusion. So the funding basis of this white paper, which is fully costed with annual detail and external validation of costings, is very welcome indeed. It is $450 billion in expenditure over the next decade and $30 billion in new money, and we achieve our promise of two per cent of gross domestic product expenditure on defence by 2020-21—three years earlier than was first anticipated. Compare the situation that I have just described to the situation that existed at the time of the 2009 white paper. I just happened to be a member of the Defence Force when the 2009 white paper came out. It was intended to be a grand bargain between government and Defence. The problem is, that grand bargain did not survive first contact with Wayne Swan and Penny Wong, because whenever they said they needed more money the then Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith, would simply ring the till in Defence. He would go to the Defence ATM and pull billions of dollars out of the Defence organisation and give it into consolidated revenue to fix the ever-growing series of black holes that Labor had during that period from 2008 to 2013.

The grand bargain that was formed by Defence at that time was based on two things. Members opposite might scoff at this, but it went something like this: Defence was told by government, 'We will give you three per cent increases in your budget from 2009 to 2017-18. We will provide you with 2.2 per cent increases from 2017-18 to 2030. We will give you some certainty relating to indexation. That is what government will do for you, Defence, but you will have to come up with $20 billion of internal savings over a decade.' The combined effects of those savings in Defence and the certainty that government said they would provide with real increases to the Defence budget would deliver Force 2030that was the name of the 2009 white paper—to do all of those tasks I have described. Unfortunately, that aspiration, that promise, was never ever reflected in reality. Seventeen billion dollars was cut out of Defence after the 2009 white paper, and 1.56 per cent of GDP is what Defence expenditure fell to—the lowest level since 1938. One hundred and nineteen capability projects were delayed, eight projects were cancelled and others were deeply degraded.

That is why I am so pleased to say that this white paper—its focus on the maritime capabilities our country needs—is both necessary and welcome. Prosperity, after all, relies on stable and secure regions. In the Asian century, in the growth in the Indo-Pacific region, we need to make sure that we accentuate not only the economic and diplomatic dimensions of a national power but also the military dimension of our national power, and make sure that the grand bargain in this white paper is much stronger than the white paper delivered by the Labor Party in 2009. I congratulate the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence and everyone else involved in delivering this white paper.