Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry representing the Minister for Employment. Will the minister update the House on the government's national defence industry project that guarantees the future security of the nation and supports our economic prosperity? How does this compare with other approaches?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. The record that this government inherited from Labor in defence industry was one of delays, cancellations and downgrades of projects that had been put in place by the previous government. The arrival of this government in defence and defence industry was akin to the raising of the siege of a city because, under Labor, it was a cash cow for cuts to fund more spending for their friends. That is what they used defence for.

The spending on defence fell to 1.56 per cent of GDP under Labor, which was the lowest since 1938—since the years of appeasement. It was 1.56 per cent! One hundred and nineteen projects were delayed, 43 were downgraded and eight were cancelled. Even worse than that—knowing that a valley of death would result by not making any decisions to commission a ship—they failed to commission any vessels at all to be built in Australia in the six years, throwing those workers at the ASC to the wolves.

They were completely happy to do absolutely nothing to commission one naval vessel and let our naval shipbuilding industry wither on the vine in those six years, which we are left to fix. But we are fixing it, and the story of the defence industry under this government is a polar opposite. We commissioned 54 vessels to be built for the Navy over the next several decades. We are doing the sustainment and maintenance here. We have opened the Centre for Defence Industry Capability and we have launched the Defence Innovation Hub. Last week we launched the Next Generation Technologies Fund. Last Friday we launched the naval shipbuilding college because we actually have to provide 5,000 workers by the mid-2020s in naval shipbuilding because we need to fill all the work that will be created in naval shipbuilding in South Australia and around Australia. We need to find those skilled people apprenticeships in welding and fitting and turning because we are building the defence industry in this country like it has never been built before.

Rather than being worried about industries closing down, we are reopening them. In the last month, Defence repurposed a mining factory at Henderson in Perth as a factory that will produce the Pacific patrol vessels. That is a classic example of what we are doing. A former mining factory will be reopened as a defence industry factory, and there will be more and more of that good news in the months and years ahead under this government.