David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

in terms of funding—not the slightest bit of interest. This is a very important and crucial question for the financial wellbeing of the Australian Defence Force. What I have been confronted with as the new minister has been an absolutely shambolic state of finances. It is almost a modern miracle that when Typhoon Haiyan went through the Philippines we were able to field two C17s, a C130 and turn HMAS Tobruk around and send them up there to deal with that. We predeployed to people in the face of that cyclone. These are the sorts of things we are finding almost impossible to do because the resourcing of this portfolio has been plundered by the Labor Party for the last six years: $16 billion in four years just ripped out of this portfolio—and the senator comes in here to say, 'What are you going to do about it?'

What we have said is that, first of all, there will be no further cuts—and may I say, in the face of what we have seen in the last four years, that is one hell of a turnaround, can I tell you. There will be no further cuts to the defence budget. We have then said that we will firstly thereafter steady the ship—that is, we will scope out what the damage has been to the capital account of the Defence portfolio into the next 10, 15 and 20 years, bearing in mind that senators on the other side would not understand that shipbuilding is a 20-year proposition from its inception.