Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

While our air strike operations against Daesh have ended and our hornets, as I said, have returned home, the ADF Air Task Group remains on duty. The KC-30A air-to-air refuelling aircraft plays a vital role in keeping coalition strike aircraft airborne for long endurance missions, which in turn allows them to make immediate responses to Iraqi calls for air support against the last remaining pockets of Daesh resistance. In fact, our KC-30A has flown over 1,200 sorties and offloaded more than 43 million kilograms of fuel to coalition aircraft. Our E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft is conducting an operational pause for several weeks after a sustained period of operational activity and will return to air operations shortly.

I want to thank those men and women of the ADF who remain engaged in the Air Task Group. I also particularly want to bring to the attention of the Senate the work of Task Group Taji, which has now trained more than 30,000 members of the ISF including over 4,500 police. (Time expired)