Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow my colleagues Senators Edwards, Back, Reynolds and Fawcett in their contributions to this debate. Each has added a very clear framework as to why the motion put forward by the Labor Party is politically opportunistic, overly simplistic and indeed is foolish when it comes to the approach that we need to be taking on what is a very complex issue. Senator Fawcett's contribution just then is a demonstration of how complex a defence procurement decision of this scale and magnitude it is and how careful we need to be about ensuring that we get it right.

Let me congratulate the Labor Party to the extent that they have managed to some degree to turn this complex debate into one far too simplistic and far too politicised and one that seems to ignore the fact that, in making this decision—a decision involving tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds and a decision involving one of the most important capabilities for our defence forces—we must seek to get the best outcomes for defence capability, for the Australian taxpayer and for Australian business and workers. The Labor Party seem hell-bent on turning this discussion and debate into one that is simply about industry or jobs policy and ignoring the fact that it must also be about defence policy and responsible budget management.

The truth is that we must get all three of those components right in the decision we make, and that is absolutely what our government will do. We will work through the proper processes, as we are doing in the development of the defence white paper, to get all three of those components right—to get the right result for the defence industry, to get the right result for our defence forces, to get the right result for taxpayers, to get the right result for Australian workers. The assurance I give the Senate is that we will not take as long as the Labor Party did to make those decisions.

As people have heard in this debate, in 2007 the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd promised that he would kick-start the building of new submarines in Adelaide. He said:

Starting the process this year will guarantee continuity of work for South Australia's defence industry and those employed in the sector ...

He did not start the work in 2007 or 2008 or 2009, and nor did Ms Gillard in 2010 or 2011 or 2012, and nor did either of them in 2013. The entirety of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments failed to do anything of substance during that time. No contracts were entered into and no meaningful work was done to settle on the type of design that would be applied. Instead, unbelievably, the Labor Party removed $20 billion from the forward budgeting for the submarine program, and yet they have the hypocrisy to come in here today and lecture us in the way they have been.

Theirs was the most disastrous management of defence in the nation's history. Despite running record budget deficits and spending at levels never seen before in the country, the share of GDP spent on defence under Labor plummeted to the lowest level since 1938. A whopping 10.5 per cent was cut from the defence budget in 2012-13 alone. So I will not take the lectures that we have had in here and I will not take the hypocrisy from those opposite.

What I want to assure Australians, and particularly South Australians, is that we will make the right decisions for our defence capability, for our budget and for jobs in industry. I want to assure them that, as a South Australian Liberal, I will do all that I can to ensure that as much of the future shipbuilding, submarine building and maintenance work as possible, and as responsibly possible, comes to South Australia, and all of my South Australian Liberal colleagues are working to that outcome. We welcome the fact that the Prime Minister, only within recent weeks, has committed to the fact that there will be more jobs for South Australia as a result of the submarine contracts to be let in future. That is an important commitment. It is a commitment that will reassure, I hope, many South Australians that the future of Osborne, the future of our shipyards and the future of jobs will be secure. But we have to take the right and careful decisions.

As people know, we have had a fraught history with shipbuilding in this country. We have a history of challenges. The Collins class submarines had many challenges. Recently, the Auditor-General had something to say about the work on the air warfare destroyer—cost overruns in excess of $360 million, delays of two years and labour productivity less than half the international benchmark. We will work to fix those problems and we are working to fix those problems, because we want to make sure that the workforce and the businesses there are competitive in future and that they can compete for work like this. We want that work to go in those directions, but we must make sure that it is going to deliver ships and submarines that meet our defence requirements and the costs that taxpayers can reasonably at responsibly bear.

We will not engage in the shrill politics and hysteria of those opposite. We will not engage in the type of xenophobic actions of Mr Shorten, when he goes down there and deeply offends potentially our Japanese friends by trying to create some type of wedge in this type of debate. We will work to make sure we get the right outcomes for our industry; we will work to make sure we get the right outcomes for our defence forces; and, yes, we will work to make sure that we do have an ongoing industry in South Australia that employs South Australians and creates more jobs in the future. That is our commitment.