Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Defence Strategic Review goes to many of the capability challenges, which are long lived, that we are working on. The government is also developing the defence industry development strategy in line with the election commitment. Minister Conroy gave a speech today to the National Press Club in which he spoke at length obviously not only about AUKUS but also about the Australian build of the SNN-AUKUS and more broadly about the importance of Australia's sovereign capabilities. I understand, as someone from South Australia, there's been a lot of different decisions made by past governments. There was the Defence Strategic Review, and I appreciate parts of industry may not have liked some parts of that and might have welcomed other parts. I know first-hand about the effect on the Australian Submarine Corporation of the various decisions the previous government made and the comments made in this chamber by a coalition defence minister—that those men and women couldn't build a canoe. But we do have faith in Australia's industry capacity to contribute to our— (Time expired)