Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

If ever you needed to see writ large the incompetence of the Leader of the Opposition in this place, you just had it then from the point of order, because the quote that I was quoting was directly out of the minister's statement. How more relevant could I be than quoting out of the minister's own statement, of which she wanted us to take note? When I quote from the minister's statement, when it is hurting the Labor Party, she gets up on a point of order to say it is not being relevant. And I am actually quoting word for word from the statement! Oh, incompetence, I wonder what one's name is. I think it might start with W.

But back to this important quote which is found in the minister's statement. It is from one of his predecessors in this area, as Minister for Defence:

Without having confidence in our capacity to sustain our current fleet of submarines—

And it was when I had finished saying that part that Senator Wong jumped to her feet trying to stop the flow of the speech, trying to stop and interrupt that which is so damaging to the Australian Labor Party. They know their own defence minister Mr Smith had real issues about the submarine capacity within Australia. He went on to say:

… it is very difficult to fully commence, other than through initial planning, the acquisition program for our future submarine.

That was in 2011. Two years later, when Senator Johnston took over, do you know what he found as part of this initial planning? A blank piece of paper. Not a single scrap of work had been done. So is the minister right to be frustrated? Absolutely right.

Indeed, the Australian people have every right to be frustrated that, for six years of incompetent government, not only did the Labor Party run up the biggest deficits in our nation's history, not only did they leave us with the biggest debt in our nation's history, not only did they have the pink batts debacle, which saw four people lose their lives, not only did they have the Building the Education Revolution debacle, not only did they have the cash-splash debacle but also, in the most important part of any government's responsibility to a people, the defence of the people, the defence of the nation—that is the first priority of a government, and the submarine capacity is so vital in that area—what do we find? The Labor Party did nothing. Not only did they do nothing in the submarine space; they stripped $16 billion out of the defence budget. And here they are pretending in this place that they are somehow committed to the defence of our nation. Not only did they run up big deficits but they stripped billions of dollars, thousands of millions of dollars, year after year, out of the defence budget.

Can I simply say to colleagues and anybody that might be listening in to this debate: we are all human. We are all fraught. From time to time, we might overstate a case. The proper and decent thing to do is exactly what Senator Johnston did, and that is to come into this place and recognise that fact. But, in circumstances where you have had a Labor government that said, 'No carbon tax,' and then introduced one and never apologised for it, a government that stripped $16 billion out of defence and never apologised for it, a government that saw the deaths of four Australians in roof cavities because of the pink batts debacle and never apologised for it—and so the list goes on—they have the audacity to seek to move a motion that a man who has recognised and made a statement and is willing to acknowledge it is somehow to be condemned. That is in comparison to their list, to their legions, of deliberate errors, deliberate misleads of the Australian people. Then, when their noses are rubbed in it, they still refuse to acknowledge that which everybody knows.

We therefore had within this chamber—very conveniently, if I might say—Senator Johnston, who, in the heat of the moment, overstated a situation—

Opposition senators interjecting—