Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to indicate my support for the Defence Legislation Amendment (First Principles) Bill, but I want to put this bill in context. It implements just one small part of the First Principles Review into Defence. That review was instigated by the current government, by former minister Senator Johnston, in August 2014. I commend Senator Johnston for his leadership on this issue. This was a very good thing to do, and it is great to see that the current defence minister is following this through, which I think is very important.

In a nutshell, the review is about making our defence forces and the resources provided to them to be more effective in terms of both defending our nation and delivering better value for money for taxpayers. What I have learnt, though, in Senate estimates, over a number of torturous occasions, is that there is much more work to be done to ensure that Defence procurement decisions and the processes for those decisions must be improved. I do not think there should be too much dispute about that.

For instance, the questions I have asked about submarine combat systems indicate that potentially hundreds of millions of dollars have not been spent wisely; we could have had a better outcome had all options been explored. A locally built combat system, I believe, would have been a much better option. That option would have meant a much greater degree of Australian industry involvement with Australian control of that combat system.

Just last week, I was in Singapore visiting the Defence Science and Technology Agency and met with its CEO, Mr Tan Peng Yam, and senior executives of the DSTA. I talked to them about how they went about procuring their defence capabilities and also about the fact that, for their submarines, there is a local capability in respect of their combat systems.

I note that the whole basis of the First Principles Review, or one of the key underpinnings of it, is to have true contestability in Defence. What this means is that Defence should encourage scrutiny from both within Defence and externally to ensure the best outcomes for our nation's defence and the most cost-effective way of achieving that. That may involve challenging conventional orthodoxies in the way that Defence goes about its business, particularly procurement.

So I welcome this bill in that it implements one of the many recommendations of the First Principles Review. But in relation to this particular bill, I do have some minor concerns that I would like to explore with the Minister for Defence briefly in the context of the committee stage. They relate to how command may override some elements of contestability. I would also like some clarification in relation to the minister's ability to independently seek advice as to the single service perspectives of the Chief of Army, the Chief of Navy and the Chief of Air Force, which may differ from the single perspective presented to the minister through the CDF as part of One Defence. That is, I think, a genuine question in the context of what that means where there is a One Defence approach but there may be nuanced differences between Army, Navy and the Air Force. I would like that to be clarified during the committee stages of this debate.

I would also like an update from the minister, in the course of the committee or at some other time, as to the other aspects of the First Principles Review, which I believe have a lot of merit in improving our Defence forces, having that genuine contestability within Defence and having Defence subject to that scrutiny to best deliver outcomes for our nation's defence in a way that is most efficient for our taxpayers but, above all, to make sure that the security of our nation is most robustly looked after. The First Principles Review, I believe, goes some way in enhancing the defence of our nation.