Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an intemperate pile of drivel. This debate is squarely aimed at trying to vilify a person who is scrambling to fill a void which you left. Senator Cameron comes in here and talks about the activities of this government when he, while sitting around on the fringes of the Labor reign of power, did nothing. Let us look at the record of those opposite. The then leader, Kevin Rudd said we will build these submarines at the ASC in about 2017. Now that is not far from here. So what did those opposite do? Did they sign a contract? Did they go out and look for procurement? No. In the 2010 campaign they told us, 'We promise to build the submarines at ASC in Adelaide.' What did they do? Did they go out and ask for contracts? No, they did nothing.

Do you know what those opposite did in the lead-up to the 2013 election? Mr Shorten, in the lead-up to the 2013 election, did not promise anything. Those opposite did not even have a defence policy. They got sick of promising it. They did not mention the 'submarine' word. They just ran out of puff. Actually, they ran out of money. Do you know what was going on? At the heart of the issue was the competence of that government.

Those opposite seem quite shrill over there. I see Senator Cameron has left the chamber. He needs to be reminded of why those opposite did not commit to submarine builds—they ran out of other people's money. They ran out of taxpayers' money. That is why they did not build them. There was $19.6 billion pulled out of that budget and those opposite sit there after 12 months of us being in power saying 'if you are going to build them, build them here'. How extraordinary. The people listening to this—