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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Mr Deputy President, if you ever wanted an example of the chaos, dysfunction and dishonesty at the heart of the Abbott government, it would be the way in which the submarines promise and project has been handled. If you ever wanted an example of how this Prime Minister Abbott cannot be trusted by the Australian people or by his backbench, it would be in relation to the Future Submarine Project. Let us recall this sorry saga.

Before the election, the Abbott opposition, as the Abbott government were then, promised that 12 submarines would be built at the Australian Submarine Corporation in Adelaide. They promised that. It was a clear open and shut case that the submarines would be built in Adelaide. All of sudden, after the election, that undertaking was dumped and this Prime Minister decided that he would have the submarines built in Japan. He broke his promise. It was a decision that not only sold out South Australia but also went against Australia's economic and strategic interests.

We could not imagine that it could actually get any worse than the complete debacle, chaos, dysfunction and dishonesty that is the submarines project under this government—and that was, of course, we know, after Senator Johnston, as the former defence minister, talked about canoes. But even that appalling standard was breached again over the weekend. Things actually got worse. The jobs of South Australians and a multibillion dollar project became pawns in the leadership battle inside the Liberal Party, because the Prime Minister indicated to Senator Edwards that magically, instead of the deal with Japan, there would now be a competitive, open tender. Senator Edwards—who is not here, and I invite him to come in and clarify this, because it is quite clear that he has been sold a pup—got on Adelaide television, beat his chest and said to everyone: 'We've had a win. I've had a win.' He said that there would be an open, competitive tender. The only problem was that the Prime Minister did not say that when he was asked that in his interview with Chris Uhlmann. He did not say that he would have an open tender. We saw again today the finance minister running away from committing to an open tender—the open tender that Senator Edwards said was his big win. And then what did we have? We had Mr Briggs really putting the boot into Senator Edwards on 891 today, where he said

… the position today is the same as the position was last week, and I’m pleased that Sean’s happy about that.

As Matt Abraham, the ABC journo, tweeted—'Slam dunk', because Senator Edwards went out and told all the South Australians that he had got a deal with the PM to have a competitive, open tender. But the reality is: what we know about this is that there was a Prime Minister who was prepared to play politics with the largest procurement this country will ever see in order to get a vote in a leadership ballot. It is extraordinary—a multibillion dollar project is played to get a vote in a no-confidence motion, a spill motion, against a sitting Prime Minister.