David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a contribution of no more than five minutes on this matter.

Leave granted.

I rise to indicate that, as the Greens' defence spokesperson, I did not support, on behalf of my party, the majority report into the Defence Capability Assurance and Oversight Bill. I did that in circumstances where the evidence that was presented to the committee clearly established the need for far greater independent and transparent scrutiny of defence procurement. You could not sit through the evidence that we had the benefit of hearing, both in camera and in public, and you couldn't read the submissions that we had received in that inquiry, and not be deeply, deeply concerned about the lack of independence, the lack of rigour and, ultimately, the lack of value for money in the defence procurement system in this country.

If you think, 'Well, that might be a marginal issue for federal politics,' then take the data that we had, for example, as of March 2021, where Defence reported that it had 16,000 active contracts, with a total value of over $200 billion. Just one Defence contract, for the Hunter frigates project, is valued with a lifetime contract in the order of some $45 billion. That project alone is, far and away, the largest single Commonwealth procurement project on the books. The only thing that may come to trouble it at some point, if it ever comes to pass, is the AUKUS submarine contract, which has not been entered into and which obviously would be greater than that.

Imagine having $200 billion or more of procurement contracts on the go and not having rigorous, early, independent testing. Imagine that. Surely that couldn't happen. Yet that's exactly what we have in defence. Rather remarkably, that's been permitted to just roll on, year after year after year.

If you wanted a clear case study in what can go wrong when you don't have an independent, rigorous test of the procurement process, look no further than the recent six-page mea culpa from Defence secretary Greg Moriarty in relation to the Hunter class procurement project. It is an extraordinary read. But perhaps one of the most extraordinary parts of that advice from the Defence secretary Moriarty, who has been the secretary since 2016 and was intimately involved in the second half of the Hunter procurement process, is a remarkable passage in that document in relation to the advice given to government on the procurement of the Hunter frigate project. Did I mention it was a $45 billion procurement, the single-largest Commonwealth procurement project? Mr Moriarty said, 'The process was appropriately planned and conducted but for completing a comparative evaluation and ranking of the tenders in a manner consistent with Defence procurement policy.' So it was appropriately planned and conducted except for the procurement assessment itself, except for the comparative evaluation and the ranking of the tenders in a manner consistent with the Defence procurement policy. What else is there in a Defence procurement policy apart from the comparative evaluation of the tenderers in accordance with policy? What else is there in a procurement process? You couldn't make this up.

Worse still, when we tested what actually happens, time after time it appears that one element in Defence seeks to have a particular outcome and then when it gets independently evaluated by the incredibly competent people inside Defence whose job it is to independently evaluate the different platforms for safety and performance and defence doesn't like the independent assessment given by those incredibly capable structures inside Defence whose job it is, Defence just goes and seeks a different opinion but without any credible policy basis for it. They keep farming out for second opinions until they finally get someone who says, 'Yes, your original plan to acquire weapon A, B or C is fine. Go ahead and procure.'

This bill may not be the perfect solution, but we believe it requires a serious scrutiny because business as usual is dangerous to taxpayers, dangerous to the public and dangerous to defence personnel.

Question agreed to.