Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

My question is directed to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister representing the Minister for Defence. Senator Hogg has raised with me the fact that Senator Campbell, in answering Senator Hogg’s question regarding reports of the government’s cancelling of the FA18 Hornet’s electronic warfare protection project, in fact, read a brief relating to a quite different Defence project regarding the smart bomb. While I accept that Senator Campbell made an honest mistake in reading a document he did not understand, totally unrelated to the question asked of him, I invite him to have a second go, and respond to front-page newspaper reports that the $400 million project will be dumped as an expensive failure. Has the electronic warfare project, the one originally asked about, been abandoned? And, if so, at what cost to taxpayers? And what does that mean for the jobs of the people working on the project in Adelaide?