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

So what did we see? We saw an empty promise; we saw no delivery. We saw a Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government cut $20,000 million, $20 billion, not out of defence in general—I will get to that. This was just the submarine program. This was after the promises of October 2007—only a couple of weeks before the election, as I remember. It cut out $20 billion, and you would not believe it, with the compliance of the then state Labor government. Where were they all at that time? Where were the fine words? I accept Senator Gallagher's concerns, because I agree with them.

This was the Labor government who appointed then Minister Stephen Smith who made it very plain to everyone, particularly to the defence community, that he did not want to be the defence minister; he wanted to be the Foreign Affairs minister but then Prime Minister Gillard, by her own statement, actually had an even worse person than him—and that was Mr Carr—to come in and do that job.

So what did then defence Minister Smith allow? He allowed defence spending—this is the great state of South Australia supported by Labor governments—to get down to 1.56 per cent of GDP. Do you know you have to go back to between the two world wars to find the previous time that defence spending got down to that low level? As if that wasn't good enough: under the great leadership of Stephen Smith, they cut yet another $16 billion out of the defence budget leading up to 2016-17.

I have not got the time to devote to the excellence of the now defence Minister Johnston but, as he said, the day he took over as minister, he opened up the box to see where all the forward plans were, to see where the vision was left to him. Do you know what was in the box? It was empty. They did not have one. They were bereft.

We are fortunate in this debate because, of the three colleagues to follow me, Senator Reynolds, has had a distinguished career in defence; Senator Fawcett himself has had a distinguished career in defence; and Senator Birmingham's knowledge of the economy of South Australia is very, very solid. I am delighted to hand over to my colleagues to conclude the discussion. My only regret is that I do not have several hours to devote to this topic. I thank Senator Moore for the opportunity.