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

I respect the interjection from Senator Gallacher, because I know that if he could have gone to a further place— if he could have got to Norfolk Island that day for a hearing—he probably would have. I know him to be a fair and reasonable person. I have worked with Senator Gallacher, and there is not an island far enough away that he could have found himself on that day. There was not a place he would not hidden that day to get away from the rant of the Leader of the Opposition, who was spruiking the Labor lines down there to the handful of fluoro-vested union spruikers, working up fear and loathing about the government.

We are actually doing something. Senator Conroy, I hope you are listening because it was only a few Fridays ago that the Abbott government dealt Australian shipbuilders into the largest defence procurement project in the Commonwealth's history. What a day that was! Now we have some action. Do you know what we have going on in Adelaide over the next couple of days? We have a submarine convention going on. When did we have one of those in the glorious days of submarine building in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd reign that sucked the Defence budget dry? The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a freight train, as it was when the Labor party was in power, it is now is a build.