Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must say that I was quite intrigued that the shadow minister for defence, Senator Johnston, spent four minutes and 27 seconds of his five minutes reading from a newspaper article. He left himself 33 seconds out of five minutes to think about it, to analyse it, to draw a conclusion and to offer a comment. It was so important to the shadow minister for defence that all he could do was refer to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and, for four minutes and 27 seconds, read out from it. I have never seen such a poor attack on a minister of the Crown in my entire life.

But, having said that, let us give some consideration to the article referred to by Senator Johnston. I was amazed when I read it over the weekend. Let me say here on the public record that the article and the report were vicious, they were contrived, they were equally vacuous and they had no point. In an attack on a minister of the Crown, making those sorts of remarks, the writer and the newspaper operators knew that no minister of the Crown would descend into the gutter and respond to that sort of commentary coming from a former two-star or three-star general—who, I might posit the proposition, never, ever thought to make a complaint to his line commanders when he was a serving officer and never thought to make a memo up the line to the Chief of Defence Force or the Chief of Army on what he thought he saw in Afghanistan and other places, but now, some two years after the event, is put up to make some sort of set of allegations against a minister of the Crown in a context where the minister cannot defend himself.

Let us now, having dismissed that nonsense article from a former officer in the Defence Force, turn to the incident at ADFA. No other person in this place has more familiarity with the arguments, debates and history of military justice than I. There is no other person. I have been intimately involved in the discussions, debates and reports for 10 years—firstly under Minister Hill for a good five years, and then subsequently under a set of Labor Party ministers. Each of those men put a lot of effort and a lot of heart into reforming what is generally recognised as a then poor culture in Defence which resulted in a large number of public and Senate inquiries into unnecessary deaths and a series of assaults, cases of sexual malfeasance against women and other high-level offences. Those matters were the subject of public inquiry. They have been the subject of public report. They have been the subject of efforts by successive governments, successive capability managers within the Defence Force and successive ministers of defence to remedy them.

Let me tell you something in the context of the ADFA report and the ADFA complaint: in the last four years—since this government came into power, but the trend line started in the last 12 months of the previous government—the incidence of reports of the nature I referred to a minute ago has gone right down. Once upon a time there were dozens and dozens of reports every year to the offices of members of parliament by writing, by email, by texts or by phone conversations. I lost count of the number of parents who came to see me in my office in Perth and here, crying over a range of incidents. It has stopped completely. It stopped completely under previous ministers of defence, starting with Senator Hill and then Mr Fitzgibbon, Senator Faulkner and Mr Smith. All of the issues that were the subject of serious address were reformed. The incident that occurred at ADFA at best can be described as now an aberration, which is a reflection of the good work that is being done.

So is there confidence in Mr Smith as Minister for Defence from this government and the wider defence community? Yes. I have not received one text, one email or one letter complaining about his behaviour from members of the Defence Force. (Time expired)