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

I move, as an amendment:

Omit paragraph (a)(iii), relating to the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2024.

This amendment would seek to pull out the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2024 from the guillotine. There are two reasons we say that this is essential. The first is that this is an important piece of legislation. I think all of us recognise that, if Defence is given a budget of three-quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade, there needs to be far greater oversight on that three-quarters of a trillion dollars worth of public money than there has been to date.

We've seen scandal after scandal after scandal in defence procurement: the disastrous Hunter frigates project; the $5 billion that Defence managed to spend on not getting French submarines; the $5 billion they're giving to the United States for US workers and dockyards; the $5 billion they're, potentially, giving to Rolls-Royce because those poor people at Rolls-Royce need Australian taxpayers' money to build nuclear submarine parts; and the $5 billion that Defence is gambling on the life of time extension project for the Collins class submarines, which a retired US deputy secretary of their naval department has said is speculative, is highly contingent and may well fail.

It's hard to know where you end the list of defence procurement disasters which have happened, because, whether it's Labor in government or the coalition in government, whether it's Labor in opposition or coalition in opposition, the usual practice is that the club doesn't hold Defence to account. The club just signs off on whatever new funding fantasy Defence comes up with and pretends that Defence can achieve it. We know that Defence is squandering billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of public money. I've just underestimated how many billions worth of public money Defence is squandering. And the reason they're able to get away with it is that the 'defence club of the war parties', Labor and the coalition, just sign off on whatever nonsense Defence puts in front of them. Whenever they see a bit of gold braid in front of them, they go to water. They pretend they're tough on Defence until somebody strides into the room with a little bit of gold braid on their shoulder and then there's this obscene subservience from both the Labor party and the coalition: 'Oh, Sir! Oh, Madam! How much money can we give you? Does it go "whoosh"? Will it go "bang" at some point? Oh, that's great! You can have the money.'

The idea that another secret committee populated just by Labor and the coalition will in any way hold Labor to account is just ridiculous. But there is a worse problem with this. There is a real chance that, with the creation of yet another secret committee—where Defence can have their secret chats and get their secret billions for their secret weapons that we all know secretly won't work or Defence won't be able to deliver or will arrive 10 years later and do half of what was promised—that secret committee will be used as a reason to squash even more any effort to hold Defence to account in any public forum. Defence will use that secret committee to refuse to answer even more questions in Defence estimates and to refuse to answer even more questions on notice. They'll say: 'Oh, no, no, no. We've already discussed this in a secret committee with the war party club, and they're fine with it.' That is a real danger, not just to taxpayers and expenditure but to national defence, because it turns out an incredibly secret club-based decision-making process has made us less safe.

Two decades of this nonsense on submarines has given us a $20 billion hole. I'm trying to think how many submarines we got in the last 20 years—oh, zero. We've given $5 billion to the French for no subs, $5 billion to the US for no subs, $5 billion to the UK for no subs and $5 billion trying to keep the Collins class going for another 10 years under an experimental project. How many new subs have we got? Zero. It's not only bad for scrutiny but bad for any sense of national security. This is the same bizarre club, the war party club, that signed off on a $45 billion Hunter frigate project even though a whole bunch of people in Defence said, 'This contractor can't deliver, we've never seen the ship, it might topple over in a heavy sea and it won't be delivered on time.' That's what some people in Defence said, but they were ignored by the war parties, they were ignored by the previous Defence secretary, Richardson, and they were ignored by the current Defence secretary, Moriarty, who, for some reason, wanted to deliver a $45 billion project to one British contractor called BAE.

Despite all the warnings, bang, the war parties signed off on it. The current secretary signed off on it. I think we were meant to get nine frigates for $45 billion. Now it looks like we're going to get six frigates, and guess what the price tag will be? It's $45 billion and counting. How do we know the price tag will be $45 billion? It's not what we've been told by Defence. Defence are desperately trying to hide that figure from Australian taxpayers. We know about it largely because the Audit Office has had to squeeze out little bits of information about it in the most scathing assessment you could ever see of a procurement project. Let's be clear: the $45 billion on the Hunter frigates is to date the single largest procurement contract ever signed by the Commonwealth, and it's a disaster zone. How many Hunter frigates do we have? You'll be pleased to know we have the same number of Hunter frigates in service as we have new submarines: zero. There's not one. This isn't just a procurement problem; this is a national security problem.

The same war party club have signed off on offshore patrol vessels. Offshore patrol vessels are meant to be the simplest possible ship you can make. They're a little bit bigger than a patrol boat and a hell of a lot smaller than a frigate. They signed a contract with two multinational arms dealers to make them. Those are meant to be pumped out first of all in Adelaide and then moved across to Perth. That contract was meant to be having offshore patrol vessels in the water and in commission years and years and years ago. Guess how many offshore patrol vessels are currently in commission after having spent more than $1 billion on the project? The exact same number of offshore patrol vessels are in commission as new subs and new Hunter frigates: zero. There's not one. Yet this $4½ billion mess continues.

I think Defence have spent the better part of $800 million trying to work out if they're going to put a gun on the ship. Initially there was going to be no gun. But some people in Defence said, 'You can't have a ship without a gun,' so they decided to put an old, renovated gun from a retired class of vessel on it. They spent a couple of hundred million dollars doing that and redesigning it. Then someone in Defence said: 'No, the old, renovated gun won't work. We need a new, shiny gun.' So they spent a couple of hundred million dollars more to put a new, shiny gun on it. Now it looks like that new, shiny gun is going to be too expensive and not much use on it, so they're going to take the new, shiny gun off it, and we're back to where we were three years ago, with no gun on a ship that the surface fleet review report says nobody knows what to do with. It turns out the offshore patrol vessel is too big to do patrol boat work and too small to put in any kind of conflict zone. They don't know what to do with it, but they're trying to come up with a plan for it. Defence have a plan to have a plan to maybe use this ship, maybe with a gun or maybe without a gun. They're not quite sure. Guess how much we're spending on that? The better part of $5 billion.

Do we think that a private club run by the war parties, who have created this disaster zone to date, is going to help to hold Defence to account? No, absolutely we don't. But the more fundamental thing is to create this private club, which most of the crossbench are excluded from. We've heard the coalition say they absolutely don't want questions like this from the committee and they absolutely don't want the Greens on it, because what a danger to national security it would be if questions like this were asked in the sub-committee!

The real danger is that Defence will use this to avoid answering any more questions in estimates, and we saw that already, in the last estimates round, from the Chief of Navy. When hard questions were being asked about the billions and billions and billions of dollars squandered on the AUKUS submarine project, the Chef of Navy said words to the effect: 'I feel awkward answering these questions about our disaster, in public. I'm hoping we get a new secret place where I can give those answers to avoid ever having to answer tough questions like this in public again.'