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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement made by the Minister for Defence.

Senators, that was the Minister for Defence. This is the gentleman who is supposed to be in charge of our Defence personnel, who wants us and all workers in our shipbuilding industry to forgive him because it was a regrettable 'rhetorical flourish'. Let us understand this defence minister's behaviour. This is the man who has broken his election promise to build 12 submarines in Adelaide. This is a man who has trashed the reputation of a major defence industry firm. This is a man who has insulted thousands of hardworking Australians employed at the Australian Submarine Corporation. And this is the defence minister who is happy to come into question time in our Senate and undermine confidence in Australia's naval capability. He is a disgrace. He is an utter disgrace. This is a man who is in charge of a multibillion-dollar project, who has jeopardised the fair and equitable conduct of that procurement process.

Does anyone believe after his performance that this minister will make a fair and unbiased decision when it comes to the Future Submarine Project? No-one in Australia believes that. No-one in this Senate believes that. Not even your South Australian colleagues behind you, or in fact your cabinet colleagues, believe that.

I will flag this. I want to put this marker down very clearly in this chamber, Mr President. This bias that this minister has demonstrated is not just a demonstration of the fact that he wants to break another promise. It raises serious probity issues because Australians can have no confidence that this minister will treat an Australian bid for the submarine project fairly. We all heard him yesterday. All of us heard him. And we heard him today also on the radio in South Australia backing himself in again. No-one believes that this minister can conduct this procurement process fairly. No-one believes that.

I say this to the crossbench: regardless of your partisan position, the procurement of the Future Submarine Project is the largest procurement in Australian history. It is the largest government procurement in Australian history. It ought to be done properly. We have a government that is refusing the competitive tender process. It wants for a whole range of other reasons to do a deal with Japan and then has been prepared to trash the reputation of the Australian Submarine Corporation and its employees because it wants to soften people up for its broken promise. What a disgrace.

Yesterday was not a one-off incident. If you have followed this defence minister, both on the record and in what has been backgrounded to the media by his office, it has been this campaign of denigration of the Australian Submarine Corporation. Over and over again we see background to the media or his own statements where he calls into question the capacity and the professionalism of the workers at the corporation. I would say this: let us understand what we ask those men and women at the ASC to do. We ask them to make sure that our submariners, the people who operate our submarines, are safe. That is what we ask them to do.

It was actually very moving yesterday, at the press conference that Senator Conroy and I held, to have one of the ASC workers stand there and say: 'You know what? We give them the best because we would never send them out to sea with substandard work.' And what have we got the defence minister saying? He would not trust this worker to build a canoe! It is an extraordinary proposition, isn't it—the extent to which this government needs to go to justify its broken promises, the extent to which this government and these ministers are prepared to go to justify their broken promises. We have seen it time after time. We have seen them denying that cuts are cuts. The ABC was 'an efficiency dividend'. We have seen them saying that cuts to health and education that are in their own budget do not exist. They are treating the Australian people like mugs, lying about lying.

On this, how do they go about justifying a broken promise? They go about it, as I said, by denigrating and attacking the men and women who have built and maintained our submarines and who are building the air warfare destroyers. That is what he has done, all for his own political ends, because he wants to try and cover up the fact that he made a promise that was unequivocal before the election. Senator Johnston today, whether on the radio or in here, has really done what Mr Abbott does: 'I know I said that, but you have to look at the asterisk. You have to look at the footnote—what I really meant when I said that.'

I would like to read to the Senate what Senator Johnston said before the election. He said this:

… I want to confirm that the 12 submarines as set out in the 2009 Defence White Paper and then again in last Friday's Defence White Paper are what the Coalition accepts and will deliver.

We will deliver those submarines from right here at ASC in South Australia.

He goes on to say:

Now why ASC? Right across Australia there is only one place that has all of the expertise that's necessary to complete one of the most complex, difficult and costly capital works projects that Australian can undertake. It's ASC here in Adelaide. We believe that all of the expertise that is necessary for that project is here.

That is from his doorstop on 8 May 2013. That is what he said before the election.

What did he say after the election? I quote:

… I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe …

What has changed? All that has changed is that you want to break your promise. That is the only thing that has changed. You want to break your promise.

But let us go now to the confidence or the lack thereof in this minister, not that the Australian people have—the Senate might not—but that his own colleagues have. Yesterday, after the minister made his extraordinary statement, a statement was released by the Prime Minister. I am going to read that: 'The Australian Submarine Corporation plays a vital role supporting the Royal Australian Navy and our key naval capabilities. In the last year, ASC has transformed its submarine maintenance program and exceeded the Royal Australian Navy's target for submarine readiness.' It said:

This has improved the availability of our Collins Class fleet to defend our national interests …

… Whilst ASC has had challenges in meeting the Government's cost and schedule expectations of the Air Warfare Destroyer programme, we are working closely with the ASC on a reform strategy to improve shipyard performance and productivity.

… It is early days, but the Government is confident that ASC and its partners will successfully turn the corner on this important build.

The Prime Minister has confidence in the ASC, but what is important about that statement is that it is very clear that the Prime Minister does not have confidence in this minister. It is very clear. The only way one can read the statement by the Prime Minister is as a statement of no confidence in this minister. That is what the Prime Minister of the country put out last night. As Senator Conroy said, more pithily than I, 'He's cut him loose.'

And not only has the Prime Minister cut him loose but it is very clear that the Prime Minister's office has given Senator Johnston's colleagues a leave pass when it comes to having a go at him, when it comes to public criticism. When you have Mr Briggs criticising Senator Johnston on the record and Senator Birmingham criticising Senator Johnston on the record, these are two frontbench colleagues of this minister who are openly contradicting and correcting this minister. They are openly contradicting and correcting what he says. On top of that, we have a range of South Australia backbenchers and the leader of the Liberal party in South Australia, Mr Marshall, who has called on him to apologise. Let me say this: this minister's position is untenable.