Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

All I can reflect is, 'Thank God the Labor Party didn't put a team into the World Cup soccer.' With three leaders like Senators Wong, Conroy and Carr, they just would have had three home goals. Imagine trying to take on Senator David Johnston when it comes to matters related to Defence, given his obvious answering of and knowledge of the questions. It is a shame that some of you in the gallery did not hear the pathetic questions and Senator Johnston kicking them away as expertly as he did. He was armed with the fact that the recent Minister for Defence under the Labor government—a Western Australian, now Mr Stephen Smith—allowed some $23 billion of money to be lost out of the Defence budget under the last Labor government.

It might interest some people listening to this to know that in fact, as a proportion of GDP under Labor, Defence spending got down to figures equivalent to in 1938, which was before the Second World War. And here is Senator Wong, who once was the Minister for Finance of this country, who was the South Australian minister at the time and who had the opportunity to actually set the South Australian shipbuilding industry up for the future. But what did Senator Johnston say about that? In 2008, the opportunity was there to secure this for the future and the then Labor government—led by its Minister for Finance, who was based in South Australia, Senator Wong, who did nothing. They lost the opportunity, they did not take it up and here they are whingeing.

We then come to the questions of Senator Conroy, the minister for the no bloody network—the NBN! I remember in my first weeks in this place asking Senator Conroy where the business case was for the NBN. Of course, there was your usual cynicism and your usual derision, Senator Conroy, saying, 'We do not need a business case for a multi-billion dollar project.' There was no cost-benefit analysis and no risk analysis, because it was all done on the back of a napkin on a VIP flight from Adelaide up to Canberra. What a shame the flight was not from Perth to Canberra, because it is a longer flight, so they might have actually got a few things right!

What Senator Johnston said in answer to Senator Conroy was: 'When they opened the bickie barrel, as a result of winning government from Labor, how much money was there?' What was in the bickie barrel? There was absolutely nothing. Should we be surprised at that from a minister who supposedly ran NBN Co and a minister who proudly came into this place and was able to tell us that he could do so without a business plan, without a cost-benefit analysis and without a risk analysis, when indeed the greatest risk to the NBN is sitting opposite me here: Senator Conroy.

We now come to Senator Kim Carr. I think it was Senator Fierravanti-Wells, in the last few minutes, who said that under his stewardship 140,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in this country as a result. That was under the stewardship of Senator Kim Carr. We had bleating going on about the car industry. Indeed, if I am correct, Mitsubishi left South Australia as a manufacturer under the then federal and, indeed, state Labor governments. Senator Johnston, the minister, was able to give us those such telling figures when it came to the criteria for actual assessment of shipbuilding capacity with the fact that internationally the yardstick is some 60 man-hours per tonne of construction. The Australian government lifted that 60 to 80 as our standard, but what was achieved was a figure of 150.

In the few minutes available to me, I will just quote from Senator Johnston's comments to the Australian Business Defence Industry group only in the last week. This is what he said:

Our local defence industry contributes significantly … for industry to be sustainable there needs to be significant and smart investment from both Government and industry… Under-investment in Defence by the previous Labor Government resulted in a breakdown in Australia’s long term defence planning.

There are the answers for the failures of the then Labor government. (Time expired)