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

His worthy assistance—thank you, Senator Moore. We are seeking to suspend standing orders because, quite frankly, the Leader of the Government in the Senate did not have the courage to take the censure motion. That is what has happened. If anybody has a look at the way in which this matter has been debated and discussed in the last 24 hours in Australia, I think most reasonable observers would say this is a legitimate matter for debate here in this Senate.

We have a minister who has, first, insulted the men and women of the Australian Submarine Corporation by stating he would not trust them to build a canoe. We have a minister—a defence minister—who has gone out, via his comments, and undermined confidence in the nation's defence capability. What message does it send to the community and to the international community that the Minister for Defence says, about the people who maintain our submarines and who are building our air warfare destroyers, that he would not trust them to build a canoe? What does that say?

Another reason why we are seeking to censure is the demonstrable bias that this minister is bringing to this project. As I said earlier today, this is the largest procurement the Commonwealth will make, and it is important that it be above reproach. What we saw yesterday in question time—and really the minister has done little but compound it with his answers today—was a minister demonstrating clear bias against one of the potential bidders in that procurement. He is effectively knocking out, by his comments, one of the potential bidders. In the substantive debate, I think it is reasonable for us to ask why it is that the government is doing that.

Again today, the Minister for Defence was asked by me—and the opposition has asked this on a number of occasions—to do nothing other than to make clear that he will deliver on the promise he made to the people of South Australia, standing outside the ASC with Mr Marshall, where he made a clear and unequivocal commitment to build 12 submarines in Australia, at the ASC. Today we heard again the minister—and I ask him to consider whether he might have misled the Senate when he did this—keep asserting that he said something different. I read out today—and I will do it again if he requires it—the direct quote from his transcript on 8 May 2013, and all of the footnotes and all of the qualifications that he sought to add today in question time are not there, because what has occurred is that we have a minister who is going to break a promise. In fact, one wonders whether there is a promise that this government is not prepared to break.

The opposition would say this to the chamber: the minister's conduct in the last 24 hours, on top of his conduct in the months to date, is deserving of the debate of a censure motion. We are seeking to suspend standing orders to have that debate because we think this minister's performance yesterday, when he sought to traduce the workers whom we trust to keep our submariners safe, is deserving of a censure debate in this chamber. We say to the crossbenchers, 'We ask for your support for the suspension of standing orders for this debate.' (Time expired)