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

What a great motion before us this is, because, of course, it's about sovereignty—sovereignty over Australia and its defence industry. Sovereignty, when you get down to it, is the ability to make decisions without pressure from others. That's what this country needs to be able to do strongly and definitively. When we talk about the defence industry, we talk about the very basics of that—being able to protect your own country from the threat of force from others. Having a homegrown ability to do that is essential. That's what this talk's about: spending some real money doing that. There will always be systems that Australia can't build—top-end and complicated systems where we need our partners. I get that; I accept that.

When we hear a press release that comes out and says 'a groundbreaking deal' for what Senator Van pointed out—the Switchblade 300 that you mentioned in your speech—is essentially a long-distance hand grenade and nothing more than that. It's $90,000 apiece from the United States, when we have a number of Australian businesses that not only do the same but are able to do better. That is something that should have been bought here. It is not a game-changing technology that we couldn't take a risk on. That is something we should have done here. This is what we see more and more—things painted as they aren't. Opportunities are going begging. We talk about all of the things that we import. There's not enough money in things Australia can export.

I recently went to Lithgow and went through the Thales factory there, one of the few significant barrel manufacturers there are around. We looked at their EF88, which has been the standard infantry weapon in Australia since 2016. They pointed out that the British individual weapon, the bullpup, design is going—they're looking at an M4 copy. It's up soon, and Britain does not have a barrel manufacturer capable of replacing that. Investment and contracts in Australian defence capability—keeping these guys going, giving them a baseline and giving them the confidence to go out there—would actually give Australia and Lithgow, the great economy out there, a chance to go out and take on the world, do stuff and provide things to our allies. That is what investment does.

We hear about all the things that are being spent. We hear about all the steps being taken. But what about the people that are in the industry? What are they saying the state of the Australian defence industry is? A recent survey was commissioned by Defence Connect, and these are the stats. Forty-seven per cent of defence businesses believe it is difficult or extremely difficult to operate in the Australian defence sector. That's a percentage of people who are in it, not the people who looked at it and said: 'No; it's too hard. I won't even bother.' This is a percentage of the people who actually took the step to get involved. Forty-nine per cent of defence businesses believe it is difficult or extremely difficult to attract and retain staff in the current environment because of that lack of certainty. This is all painting a picture not of what the previous government said or what this government says it is doing but how the industry really finds it—no rubbish. It goes to the things that Senator Lambie was talking about—the reality on the ground and the chip shop and the corner shop mentality. One in four defence businesses are extremely or very confident that their existing or upcoming contracts will continue as planned over the next 12 months—not 12 years, not 10 years, not five years. Twenty-five per cent think they will go there. It is a disgrace.

We need an integrated plan that enables Australians to build reasonable technology and good technology, when it can. For example, with things like Ghost Bat, don't take the weapons off it. What we are seeing in Ukraine is you need a capability immediately to stop the initial threat. But it is no longer the doctrine that you finish a war with what you started with; you have the opportunity to build and you see innovations. They are not using the Switchblade 300 greatly over there anymore. The Russian Lancet comes in at about $20,000—about a third of the cost over there. They are using homemade drones with improvised explosive devices. They are finding a way, because of the necessity to build a homegrown defence industry. Why aren't we learning those lessons? Maybe our industry is, but our defence department is not taking the chance to put that money out there. The defence industry is not being rewarded for having a crack.

That is why Senator Van's motion is so important. For Australia to have sovereignty, to be able to make its own decisions about being under pressure from others, we have to have the ability to defend ourselves in a very capable way. There are little things that we could be doing now. There is a worldwide demand for 155 military shells. We hear about Ukraine having a two-to-one or three to one artillery deficiency. We can put contracts in place to help the world, build our industry and make Australia safe all in one if we take this seriously.