Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will withdraw 'lie' and replace it with 'mislead'. That is because before the election this member told South Australians that this government, were they to be elected, would build the submarines in Adelaide. Yet today and every day we see him confecting excuses to walk away from that promise. The important point for today is as this, as I said: they are not content with misleading South Australians before the election, because this government, this Prime Minister and this minister are intent upon confecting excuse after excuse to try to justify a broken promise.

Let us go through some of the excuses which this government has put forward for their broken promise. First, they said that an off-the-shelf submarine would be better and cheaper. The evidence to the Senate committee—which is not from Labor Party people and not from the South Australian government, but from experts in the field—has said very clearly that an off-the-shelf submarine does not have the capability, does not have the range and cannot do the job that the Australian Navy needs. One excuse hits the wall.

Second, the government says that we do not have the skills here in Australia to build the submarines. Again, there is evidence before the Senate committee. Also, we know that we have great shipbuilders here in Australia and a great and highly skilled workforce, who have been denigrated consistently by this government. But important evidence before the Senate committee said very clearly that we do have the skills to build the submarines here in Australia.

The third confected excuse to try to justify Prime Minister Tony Abbott walking away from the promise to South Australians is cost. What we have is the government softening people up by backgrounding the media with inflated costs for an onshore build. At the Senate inquiry I attended in Adelaide, Mr Hamilton-Smith got it right when he said that people were being softened up for a broken promise. We had figures such as $50 to $80 billion been quietly backgrounded to the media by the government in an attempt to suggest that an onshore build would be too expensive. That excuse has been demolished as well by public statements by shipbuilders, including the shipbuilder TKMSA in Australia, about whom Senator Conroy spoke in his question. They stated they could deliver 12 submarines that met Australian requirements for $20 billion with the price including all the programmatic aspects to deliver the submarines in Australia.

That the final excuse that they have returned to is in fact on a capability gap in terms of the timing of the delivery of submarines. The minister has been trying to suggest that is actually the reason. It is not a broken promise and it is not all the other reasons which have been demolished. Actually, it is the timing reason. Let us remember who has said that the minister is wrong: Dr John White, naval shipbuilding expert and co-author of the Winter review that the minister commissioned. He said:

There is still sufficient time available, with adequate contingency, for the competitive project design study to be carried out and to build the future submarines in Australia.

Commodore Paul Greenfield said:

… there does not have to be a capability gap if we get on with it now.

That evidence was given on 30 September.

Finally, Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, the former submarine commander and head of the new submarine capability team, said:

Our strong recommendation is that we get bids from all four potential contenders and make a sensible, informed choice at that point and that we get on with it …

In other words, we should go to an open tender process—a proper tender process.

Every excuse that this government has put up for breaking their promise has been demolished by the experts in the Senate committee. And the only thing that South Australians can conclude by observing this minister's answer today and every day is that this is a government confecting excuses—putting up excuses which are flimsy, misleading and untrue—in an attempt to avoid responsibility for yet another broken promise. (Time expired)