Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We do. There you go—he has already made his mind. They will cost $80 billion. Do we really need 12? We have already had criticism from Andrew Nikolic MP, who is now in charge of the national security committee. He was happy to stand up and have a go at your decision to make 12 submarines as being some kind of Kevin Rudd madness. Do we really need 12? I have not seen any debate on that. I have not seen any active debate from anyone on why we need 12 submarines. I have seen a lot of debate on where we are going to build them, and we have not built them yet and they had better be built in South Australia, but I have not seen any questioning of the strategic need for 12 submarines.

The numbers that have been labelled in the defence white paper are very rubbery. There is up to 50 per cent variance on individual projects. Defence can spend between $3 billion and $5 billion on this and between $2 billion and $3 billion on that. These very rubbery figures could potentially lead to a lot of wasteful spending and a lot of too-big-to-fail projects if we are not careful. We have to ask the hard questions. They have not been asked on this defence white paper. (Time Expired.)