Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That's the point! It was a mix. That's like saying that I don't need to go and see Gordon Ramsay to learn how to cook because I'm using the same ingredients as him so I'm going to come up with the same cake, going to come up with the same meal. That is completely what we're talking about. When Defence argues, 'It's existing technology; we don't need to do it,' it's farcical to think that a different process creating those things together—we may as well say: 'We don't ever have to test anything, because everything comes from a tree or a mine or a factory. They're all raw materials, so why do we need to test anything?' What we saw was a massive blowout in time and money and a project that I think is still not out there having a crack and doing what it's meant to be doing.

So why not put in place an independent body? Let's talk about why it needs to be an independent body. When we talk about why we maintain a military, it's to protect Australia's sovereignty. A definition I've heard that really struck me is, 'Sovereignty for a nation is being able to make decisions without undue influence.' Let's talk about that in the defence sense. If the people who are helping to provide our sovereignty are also subject to that undue influence, if the people in testing and evaluation are subject to that undue influence—from within the military, from project managers, from industry—that is what we're getting to here: this group of dedicated, clever people who want to do the best thing by our war fighters, by our troops, by the taxpayer are getting worked around, with patches, as we heard before. Risks exist everywhere, and we don't get better by ignoring them or papering over them. We get better by acknowledging them and working out plans.

Coming back to another analogy, I was working on a maritime festival in Newcastle. We had Formula 1 boats going at 150 kays on the harbour, and the risk assessment was: 'Oh, what happens if there's a boat crash? Don't do a risk assessment there, because we probably haven't got the effective things in place. If you don't do the risk assessment, you won't have to come up with a plan.' We're doing the same thing here: if we don't do risk assessments, if we don't do this the right way, we can pretend there's not a problem. We're seeing what the consequences are: billions and billions of dollars, years spent on projects, and capabilities that aren't as advertised.

Senator Fawcett and I were having a chat the other day, and he was saying that Defence says, 'Trust us; we know what we're doing; it's like cooking a barbecue.' But Defence know nothing about the gas regulators. They know nothing about connecting the barbecue, forging the plate, connecting the valve—all these things. The war fighters say they know, but they don't know the detail of how this happens.

This is why it needs to be independent—so people can have a career doing their job properly without fear of lack of promotion, without being pressured into these things, and still keeping their standard of training. One of the things I read about in the dissenting report is the lack of ongoing training that's available for some of our people compared with the United States and compared with the United Kingdom. This would allow people to have a profession doing something they do well. It would make Defence actually address the risks, not ignore them. That doesn't mean you shouldn't buy the system, but you should go in with our eyes open; have contingencies in place, have coping mechanisms in place. If the risk analysis is going to affect the budget, allocate more budget, instead of blowing out. If it's going to affect capability, work out whether it is still the system for you. And if it's going to affect time, work out whether it's going to be needed and whether it's in fact going to be valid by the time it comes through.

That offset, the ability for people to just do that without pressure from the industry—let's get a project manager. Show them a project manager in Defence—once you get to a certain rank it's up or out; either you get promoted or you're out. That's what it gets to. If I'm running a project I'm not going to sit there and wait for a project of mine to go out the back door. I'm going to push for it. I'm going to run for it, because I want my career to progress. That's the pressure we all have.

And it's not just in the Australian military but in all militaries. I was reading in an article that around the world in defence procurement it's become acceptable for no projects to be done on time, under budget and with capability. Almost none of them are being done, but a way to improve it is what Senator Fawcett has come up with. And he's walked the walk on this. He's worked in the military. He's seen this firsthand. He's used, flown, operated these devices that are purchased. And back in my cadet reserve days we always joked that your equipment was built by the lowest bidder, and you had to operate it.

This legislation will mean the equipment will always work. It will always have a process where they have addressed the risks, where they've looked at the risks. When we talk about the Hunter frigates—again, colloquially, coming through—do they want to float or do they want to fight? At the moment it looks like they can do one or the other, and it's a real concern, for such a big project. They say that a big chunk of the blame lies with the coalition government, and that big chunk lies over there with the previous government. But all the chunks lie in Defence and their way of doing business as usual. This bill seeks to change that.

And from a management perspective, away from Defence, this is just corporate good governance. You can't mark your own homework and say you're doing well when the results are bad. Having an independent body with professionals looking at contracts, making it public or popularising it around the industry so you know what's going on, leads to better outcomes. It means you've got to potentially say, 'You're no Gordon Ramsay; your cake's going to be average.' Then you've got to ask: 'Do I go to cooking school? Do I buy better ingredients? Do I hire a chef to get the outcome we want?' So, when we go through these four core principles, independence is very key: do not be able to be pressured by the defence industry, do not be able to be pressured by the defence department to tick boxes that shouldn't be ticked. Competency, increased training, a career in doing what you want—meeting the benchmark for the international testing and evaluation process, I thought, was a big thing there that we don't do currently, because, if this is a profession that is recognised worldwide to train worldwide, we can learn competencies get better and they can be rewarded across that.

Transparency—what I went back to—the clear knowledge of what this project is, what it can do and what it can't do. It won't be perfect. We won't avoid other mistakes. There won't be other unforeseen devices, but we will know there's a risk. We'll know there's a chance, and it's about minimising that.

The two outcomes of all of this are one of two things. We save money in defence—we get things done on budget, we get things done quicker and we buy less things that don't work, so the taxpayers of Australia actually have more money, so that, dare I say, Senator Shoebridge, gets his wish of less money going into Defence and there's more money for other things—or Defence gets to get more things because they're more efficient. Both of which are very, very good outcomes.

I started by saying this is why I come to parliament. This is a bill that has no downsides—not one. Every outcome from this is good for Australia, Australia's defence, the Australian budget and the Australian war fighters. It balances a big bureaucracy in uniform against those interests because getting it wrong has unfortunately become business as usual in so many big contracts. To say we can redefine it and—what was Labor's claim? We can diminish its capability? Is something wrong? Yes, it's wrong. Senator Fawcett has had the guts not to sit back and try to defend what's happened, in the past when we were in government or they were in government before, but to say, 'This is the way forward. Let's make things better.' That's why we're here.

There is a quote from Senator Brown, where she's saying: 'The principles were not applied properly, and Defence was left to do it to themselves.' Yes, that's because they could. This means they can't. We aren't putting in rules that they can avoid. We aren't doing anything like this; we're actually talking about a way forward where there is accountability for these things—where we stop the BAU, where we stop the mates' rates and the conditions and the groups of people that get together and say this project has to go through. So I can't wait to vote for this. There is only upside if this is supported. The only reasons this wouldn't be supported are vested interests and pressure from the same groups that pressure the people who are doing testing and evaluation at the moment. That is, defence industry and defence headquarters.

Thank you for bringing this to the chamber. I think that Australia needs to have this happen. I think Australia's defence forces will be better for it, and we should all be looking for things like this we can do to make Australia's spending more efficient.