Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the government response to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee report entitled Capability of Defence’s physical science and engineering workforce. I would like to highlight to the Senate that often Senate inquiries do not have the level of success that this inquiry appears to have had. I would commend the work of the secretariat, the quality of the witnesses and former Senator McEwen's keen interest and participation in this inquiry.

What we have here is some seven recommendations, of which four have agreement, one has in principle agreement, another has been noted and yet another has been disagreed with. Given the impending greatest procurement in Australia's defence history, I think this report is a really good forerunner, if you like, for defence capabilities that may well be required and built up in this country. A simple recommendation is recommendation 1, which states:

The committee recommends that the Department of Defence commit to maintaining its physical science and engineering workforce capabilities in key areas to allow it to be both a 'smart buyer' and a technically proficient owner of materiel.

These things are self-evident and it is good to see that the inquiry drew this to the government's attention, and clearly we are on the same track.

Recommendation 2 states:

The committee recommends that the Department of Defence create a role, with appropriate subject matter expertise, analogous to the Director General of Technical Airworthiness, as a regulator to assess the competencies required for specific procurement and sustainment positions and the suitability of candidates to meet those competencies.

Once again, this recommendation met with agreement.

Recommendation 3 states:

The committee recommends that the Department of Defence take a strategic approach to the professional development of its physical science and engineering workforce as part of the Defence Industry Capability Plan.

Once again, we struck an appropriate chord in the inquiry and the government has agreed.

Recommendation 4 states:

The committee recommends that the Department of Defence undertake an assessment of workforce models to encourage more flexible and attractive arrangements for its critical physical science and engineering workforce.

Once again an appropriate agreement was reached and was agreed to by the government.

Recommendation 5 was that:

… the Australian Government clarify that the Defence Science and Technology Group will not be integrated into the Capability, Sustainable and Acquisition Group.

As has been noted by the government, recommendation 2.17 of the 2015 first principles review recommended that the Defence Science and Technology Group become part of the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group. The government did not agree to this recommendation and directed that it be considered again and advice provided as part of the annual update to the government on the progress of the implementation of the first principles review. The first annual update is being prepared by Defence.

Item 6 was that:

… Defence ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the Defence Science and Technology Group are directed to its areas of competence, rather than to technical risk assessments.

The government disagreed, saying that technical risk assessments are an important component of capacity development and that the area of technical risk assessments is the identification of the risk that novel technologies which are acquired to realise the desired capability cannot be developed in the time available. I think a fair amount of consideration went into the sole item of disagreement with the committee. I think the committee, on balance, would probably accept the government's position.

The final recommendation was that:

… Defence, in establishing the Defence Innovation Hub and the Next Generation Technology Fund review the obstacles to public research agencies, academia and industry personnel participating in research and development initiatives.

That has been agreed to in principle. On the whole, it was a very short, sharp, cogent inquiry which has produced a report that has had some favour and is in accordance with government's policy and directions.

Debate adjourned.

I will not take an inordinate amount of time, but I just want to say that Senator Back and all members of the committee worked in a very collegiate way to examine the delivery and effectiveness of Australia's bilateral aid program in Papua New Guinea. To set the scene, over about 10 years we have spent nearly $5 billion in Papua New Guinea. During that time they have had an annual growth rate which is quite respectable. Their annual growth rate over about 15 years is just under four per cent. So they have a GDP which is growing, and there is a continual line of expenditure of Australian aid.

Unfortunately—and this is what the committee was most concerned about—there did not appear to be any measurable indicators of success. The World Health Organization indicators were not good. In a number of areas there was criticism of the effectiveness of our aid program. What we as a committee sought to do was try to find areas of excellence. There were a couple of areas of excellence. They are highlighted in the coalition report. I will not steal Senator Back's thunder on that, but they were not overly expensive or onerous amounts of money being spent in those areas of excellence.

We appear to be spending an inordinate amount of money in Papua New Guinea and the effectiveness of that is under question. I do not think that is because our department is not doing its best or that we have not got skilled people on the job. It may be that we really need to have a look at how we provide aid to New Guinea given, as I say, that it has a growth rate, which means it should be looking after its poorest people. There is no evidence of that. The poor are still very poor; the areas of need are getting more pertinent, and I struggle to assess this as being a good spend of public money.

I am not saying that we should reduce our aid; I am saying that we should really shake it up. We should examine every area of competency, every area of due diligence, every area of governance and find things that are proven to be working and invest more heavily in those areas. There is not a lot of evidence at the moment that our $490 million or $500 million is being well spent. That is not a criticism particularly of the department—they try to do the right thing—it is more an indication of the difficulty in New Guinea of actually getting an effective aid dollar to where it needs to go.

I do not want to be too critical of New Guinea. They have inordinate challenges in respect of their population, their diversity, their transport challenges, their weather challenges and their language challenges. Suffice to say, we looked at it to see if we could find a way of improving effectiveness. We did not get a great deal of agreement with the government responses. Most of our positions are noted, with a few exceptions where we are in agreement. I would say that it is really a work in progress, and leave it at that.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I endorse the comments of the chair, Senator Gallacher. While the government did not agree with all of the recommendations—there were 18 in the main report; they were noted or agreed to—there was not one recommendation that the government rejected. But, as Senator Gallacher said, if you look at the criteria, such as maternal health, there has been no improvement since independence. If you look at childhood mortality, if you look at the growth rate of children, if you look at early education there really is a long, long way to go—especially with domestic violence, particularly in the highlands.

One of the areas of real concern to the committee—and I applaud the secretariat as well as those who made submissions and appeared before the committee—is that issues relating to multidrug-resistant TB are increasing dramatically; they are not stable. Some of the recommendations talked about some of the funding, which we know is going into that space. It is important to Australia, of course, because the distance between Papua New Guinea and the northern reaches of Australia is such that an aluminium dinghy carrying someone with multidrug-resistant TB is a possibility of coming here, into our population of people. It is a high risk.

As Senator Gallacher said, in addition to the main report the coalition senators made three further recommendations, all of which were agreed to by the government, including: (1) a continuation to recognise and support the important role played by churches, NGOs and other civil society organisations, because they certainly do seem to be the ones that are largely kicking goals; and (2) the government continues to encourage the building of new partnership between these organisations and the PNG government by way of building local capacity to tackle development challenges, and that seems to be a spot where that work needs to be undertaken.

But in the few minutes available to me, I do want to place on record the work of YWAM—Youth With A Mission. They have two medical ships that they operate. Their home base is in Townsville, where we visited them. An earlier vessel, which they still have in use, was a Japanese longline fishing boat. It is largely now being supported by a vessel built by Austal shipping in Fremantle—a fact that Senators Cash and Smith will be interested in and pleased to learn. It had been a cruise vessel. The interesting thing is it spends about 10 months of the year in the waters around the coastline and up the rivers of Papua New Guinea. It is funded partially by the Australian government through DFAT, by the Papua New Guinea government and by some regional governments. Either the vessel itself or a fleet of rigid inflatables go up the river systems and bring people down onto those vessels, particularly the big catamaran. The catamaran houses about 60 personnel, the vast majority of whom are actually volunteers: doctors, specialists, dentists, nurses, those with expertise in gynaecology and in obstetrics.

Many of these people come from remote villages and remote areas. Often they will come three or four days in canoes before they are put onto rigid inflatable vessels and they can be treated on one of these medical ships by YWAM It is one of the most successful and innovative programs, and of course the volunteers pay their own way to Townsville, to Moresby or to Lae, where they board the vessel. The vessel also has on board senior medical students from either Australian or, I think, one Papua New Guinea university.

I will leave you with one story. A 17-year-old boy with bilateral cataracts was facing blindness at 17 for the rest of whatever length of life that young fellow was to have. He was brought down by canoe onto one of the rigid inflatables and onto the medical vessel. There are tremendous surgical facilities. Both cataracts were replaced. He will now have a fully sighted, fully useful life, hopefully well into his sixties or seventies. It is a very practical process, obviously supported by Australians, supported by philanthropists—in fact, I am proud to say another Western Australian based fuel company, Puma, is providing much of the fuel—and they are even looking forward to the prospect of having a helicopter on board that vessel so they can go even further.

So I support the comments of Senator Gallagher, who chaired this committee. There is a long way to go. In my view, we are not achieving what we need to be. There needs to be greater engagement by government officials from Australia working with government officials in Papua New Guinea—although I know it is happening now in police and in other areas like customs, immigration and health. But there is a long way to go, and I think we are going to be supporting Papua New Guinea for a long time into the future.

I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.