Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

LAMBIE () (): I move:

That there be laid on the table by no later than midday on 7 December 2023 the answers to questions on notice Nos 2333 and 2336.

You guys have had this since August, and this is getting ridiculous. I'll be honest with you. We have a royal commission going, and it is beyond a joke anymore. For the whole time you were in opposition, one of the loudest messages we got from the Labor Party was about the lack of transparency from this side—from the coalition government. As opposition leader, the now Prime Minister promised to fix this and provide greater transparency, but here they are, 18 months after they were elected, not practising what they preached. They are hiding behind legal privilege, hiding behind claims of national security, and hiding from scrutiny and accountability.

This government is showing contempt for transparency. It is absolutely unbelievable to me that they are doing this in a national security space full stop. This is what is happening while our own ADF struggles to recruit and train personnel, struggles to deliver on procurement, struggles to build a ship and struggles to buy a submarine. Time and time again, we are reminded that the current Chief of the Defence Force and the current Secretary to the Department of Defence are just plain bad at their jobs. They're absolutely incompetent. Every time there is a problem, they point the finger at someone else. They won't take responsibility for their lack of action. God forbid they should actually show some real leadership and take responsibility, which is what a real leader does.

In response to a question regarding the signing-off of the MRH-90s return to service after the tragic incident earlier this year, the current CDF, who has been there for too long, pointed the finger squarely at the Chief of Air Force. He palmed it off again: 'I am not the senior airworthiness authority in Defence. That is the Chief of Air Force.' Instead of taking ownership of the tragic MRH-90 accident this year, General Campbell, as usual, choked at it and ducked and weaved. This is about as good as it gets from Campbell. It's the same pattern of behaviour: 'Not my problem, mate. Not my problem.'

We saw it with Operation Sovereign Borders with 'on-water matters', and we are seeing the same practice today.

He walks out of press conferences when he deems them political. When the political heat gets turned up on General Campbell, he takes off the mask and shows himself for the political animal that he is. He is a man who seeks to protect his career before he protects his own people. You wonder why we have a retention problem in Defence. He is not a leader; he is just a career bureaucrat, and always has been. That is the exact opposite type of person who should be in charge of Australia's Defence Force.

As for the secretary of the department, he is absolutely no better. He is full of absolute incompetence. He has been the biggest failure in this. Since he started in this role we have had failed frigate procurements, failed submarine procurements, failed helicopters and much more.

And you still keep them employed. What a joke this is. You still keep them employed. Both the CDF and the secretary are working against national security. They are not for national security. They should be gone. They are not up to the job. When are you going to wake up to this? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for another tragic accident to happen and some more back covering? Seriously, this is beyond a joke. They can't recruit anyone, they can't build anything and they can't buy things.

What's more, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide can't even get information out of them. Defence has been accused of stonewalling. But what's new? That's what they do. Defence are still in their culture of cover-ups. You have been in government for 18 months and we still have the same cultural practice that is doing harm to those who are serving. It's doing harm to those who are serving and it's killing them. Delaying, which is what they do, and otherwise hindering the work of the royal commission is simply absolutely shameful. Worse even still is that Defence is doing this at a time when the suicide rate for current serving veterans is at its worst.

But we still leave those people in their jobs. When are we in here going to learn? It's like a business. If they can't get the job done then we should get rid of them, sack them. That's what we should do. That's commonsense.

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

Not in Defence!

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right, Senator Shoebridge, not in Defence. Apparently they walk free. There's nothing to see here. It doesn't want someone on its issues.

The minister—let's be honest here—is just following the CDF, the secretary and senior officers around like a lost puppy. It is absolutely sickening. All you hear is the little bell around his neck ringing. He is more clueless on defence than any minister before him—and I can tell you that there have been a lot of clueless ones since I have been here. This one takes the cake. He spends his days swallowing everything that they tell him—starry eyed and tipsy from being in the presence of medals that the senior officers didn't even earn. Deputy Prime Minister Marles is letting ADF senior command walk over the top of him. It is an absolute embarrassment. You probably need to sack him and start leading by example. Our national security is suffering for it. You talk about your concern for national security, but, if anything is suffering, it is that, and you will pay the price for that. There is no doubt about that.

The defence minister is not strong. He's not even close. He's not the type of person the Australian Defence Force needs. Australia needs a minister that will stand up to the CDF and the secretary and not just do what they say. As I've said, the Defence Force can't deliver anything right now, and I don't hold much hope for it delivering anything in the future. The senior officers are behaving like career bureaucrats and their focus is completely off target. If they spent as much time fixing broken things as they do avoiding hard questions, we'd surely be in a much better state than we are today. But they don't.

Australia deserves better than the CDF, the secretary and the minister, who avoid scrutiny and have absolutely no future plans except for a paper submarine. That's all we're looking at—a paper submarine. There are paper dreams for a submarine that doesn't exist. We have a land war in Europe, and the Middle East is heating up in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. Australia needs a government that is focused on the job of protecting Australians. We're not getting that. Instead, we're getting submarines that will never arrive. We're getting an army that is losing more people, and that's during their billion-dollar recruitment drive. They're spending millions and millions of dollars on a recruitment drive and still not recruiting anyone.

You have a problem here: it is called the top brass, and the first one is the CDF. Until you fix this, and until you get rid of these people, you will get no better results. I don't get why you don't understand this. We've got a CDF who blames everyone but himself for everything and anything. If he's wondering who is to blame, it's about time he really took a good hard look at himself in the mirror. We've got a secretary who is just a plain career public servant who has been in there for way too long—way too long. And, worse: we're paying them over a million bucks each—a million bucks each, to deliver absolutely nothing, let alone to put our national security first and foremost.

On top of that, their diggers are getting a real pay cut. This is when we talk about 'unique service'. Because they do not have a union, they are getting the same pay rise as the public servants! You want to stand there at a cenotaph and talk about thanking them for putting their lives on the line in their unique service, but you don't want to pay them any more than public servants. And you wonder why they're leaving in droves! How disrespectful is that. Australians deserve more. We deserve a lot more.

In a world of conflict and natural disasters, we have never ever needed our Australian Defence Force more. I'll bet you this summer you'll be calling them out. Yes, you'll be calling them out and expecting them to deliver. And, in the same breath, you'll want them to sit on a pay rise of 11.2 per cent over three years, as if they were in the Public Service. But you want them to feel special. You've got to be kidding me! Maybe they should have their own union. Would that help? Maybe then we could better deals with the Labor government than we can today. They need their own union. Would that help? Let me know. I'll get them one.

Australia's Defence Force leadership is more focused on protecting themselves than us. We must fix this, and the minister and the Prime Minister are the only ones who can get the job done. It's way past time they got on with it.

I can assure you, I'm sick of seeing this new defence minister running round like he's a groupie at a concert, in front of the brass. You will never ever be able to rein in senior command when you are doing that. He is completely out of his depth. He hasn't had control from the time he came in here and he hasn't got control now. You want to do a reshuffle next year? Try someone new. Quite frankly, if you want our Defence Force to be better, then they'll need to respect not only senior command but the minister, and he has none. You've lost the fight with that minister. He needs to go. If you do not get rid of the Chief of Defence Force, they will continue to leave in droves. Something has to give. Someone has to have the guts to say, 'Mate, it's time you left. Either you retire or we will remove you.' You have a secretary sitting there in the Department of Defence. My god! If he was any more stale, he would be mouldy, for god's sake! He's got to go! You need a whole new reshuffle in there. You need new people in there who can actually make decisions and are not scared of the brass standing in front of them. Until you do this, our national security will remain at risk. Once again, it can't get the job done. It can't deliver anything. You have a real problem here. But, once again, these two words are the most important thing: 'national security'.

And it's retention. You've got to retain these people. I mean, this is how stupid you are: you want to offer 50 grand to people to say, 'Hey, you've done four years; stay in.' But what did those diggers sitting there between the five-year mark and the 10-year mark get asked? What did you promise them if they stayed in? You promised them absolutely nothing. That's right—you promised them the same pay rise as the Public Service. And you wonder why they're leaving in droves. You can't be serious with me. It is so disrespectful for these senior diggers to not be offered a damn thing. And they're leaving in droves. Therefore, you leave a massive gap of expertise in our Defence Force. Do you understand that? It is expertise. They are leaving. It takes five or six years for a digger to find their feet. In the meantime, you're driving those ones of between five and 10 years out the door. Okay, there is your problem.

I have tried to speak to Minister Marles about this and I have told him how to fix this. He hasn't listened to a damn word I've said. That was six months ago. As a matter of fact, it's got to a point where I don't even bother going and seeing him, because he'll end up taking himself out; he doesn't need me, to be brutally honest with you.

But enough is enough. This is our national security. We need people joining. We need them to start joining today. And a billion bucks ain't getting them there.

Money from here is not buying them. It's not buying them, and you're offering nothing to keep the ones that we need—the ones with the most expertise, the ones who've actually had war experience. There's a massive gap there. They way you are doing it is very wrong. Start putting some commonsense into this, once and for all, for the sake of our national security.

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

I share the deep anxiety of Senator Lambie in relation to the government's underperformance in this space. The questions that Senator Lambie was asking are questions that many people are actually asking right now. Senator Lambie was asking for details for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years of each and every payment made to the US government in relation to AUKUS, indicating the date of the payment, the reason for the payment and the amount of the payment. She wants the same for payments made to the UK and then also asks for details of the total amount spent on AUKUS for each of those financial years and what, if any, monetary commitments or promises have been made to the US in relation to Australian investment in US shipyards. How is it that the minister can't answer that? How is it that you can't answer that almost instantly? I think the reason is because there is no actual dollar figure that Australia has committed to.

We keep getting told by the government that AUKUS is about jobs in Australia. I think there's some inflated figurer that between now and the end of the century there might be 20,000 jobs. If you look at an assessment given by PwC in a dark room lit only by a candle, you'll find 20,000 jobs in Australia. But what this government is actually going to invest in is not Australian jobs but US jobs and UK jobs. You don't have to take my word for it or Senator Lambie's word for it. Read the most recent Congressional Research Service report on the AUKUS submarine deal. They've done two. The most recent one was only about 10 days ago. That said there is no conceivable pathway at the moment for the United States shipbuilding industry to produce sufficient submarines for their own purposes and also to meet the additional submarines required for the AUKUS submarine project.

Currently, the US submarine industry is knocking out about 1.2 to 1.3 Virginia class submarines a year. To meet their own requirements just for Virginia class submarines they need to radically increase that to two Virginia class submarines a year. Then, on top of that, to meet the AUKUS commitments they need to increase that to 2.3 Virginia-class submarines a year. Then from 2030 they're also going to have to produce an entirely new class of larger nuclear submarine called the Columbia class. To meet that massive increase in nuclear submarine shipbuilding, the Congressional Research Service says that that's going to require a fivefold increase in the US workforce for building a nuclear submarine. That's not a doubling or a tripling or a quadrupling but a fivefold increase in the US workforce for their nuclear submarine shipbuilding.

Let me be clear, there is no current funding or plan from the Biden administration that goes anywhere near achieving that kind of increase in workforce—a fivefold increase in the workforce. And we know—if anyone's been watching the debate—the incredible capacity restraints that the US is facing in terms of their shipbuilding, particularly the highly skilled shipbuilding for nuclear submarines. What have we heard from the Albanese government about that? Nothing. What have we heard from the RAN about that? Absolutely nothing. It's as though they pretend this problem doesn't exist. That's the scale of the increase needed for US shipbuilding. A fivefold increase in the workforce is the scale needed.

What has Australia committed financially to that under the AUKUS agreement? There has been a lot of discussion about a US$3 billion commitment that Australia has allegedly made to the US industrial base. That commitment is A$4.7 billion. That number has been bandied around. It seems like an eye wateringly large amount of money, A$4.7 billion, and no doubt the Albanese government is quite happy for that figure to be bandied around, because that's an almost achievable amount. It's an incredible amount of money—A$4.7 billion of Australian taxpayers' money—to be spent entirely on US jobs. It's an almost achievable amount until you realise that the actual commitment made by AUKUS is not to a bounded figure like US$3 billion. That figure has been made up, no doubt for political convenience, by Albanese. That amount is not found in any agreement, in any exchange, with the United States. It's not found in the AUKUS agreements.

The agreement that Australia has actually made is for a proportionate contribution to the US shipbuilding industry. Did I mention that the US shipbuilding industry needs a fivefold increase in workforce? What's Australia's proportionate contribution to a fivefold increase in the US nuclear-ship building workforce and the infrastructure that underpins it and the shipyards that underpin it? It could well be a multiple of US$3 billion. That's probably why Minister Marles is refusing to answer Senator Lambie's questions, because actually answering the questions would bell the cat and explain just what an open ended financial commitment Australia has made not to Australian jobs but to US jobs under the AUKUS deal. It is literally a blank cheque of a proportionate contribution to the kind of investment that is going to see a fivefold increase in US jobs and the associated infrastructure and shipbuilding facilities underpinning that. And we get no answer from the defence minister—complete silence; crickets. Why? Because it is downright embarrassing.

Now, you would have thought that with all these questions going unanswered there would be an obvious response from Defence. A whole bunch of question from Senator Lambie, from Senator Roberts, from me and, no doubt, from members of the opposition haven't been answered. I would have expected that the obvious response from Minister Marles, the secretary of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force—that troika of underperformance—would be to appoint a general. We should get a fresh general, or an admiral or an air marshal, to answer questions that have been unanswered. Let's get some gold braid appointed to answer the questions. Why don't we add to the 219 star-ranked admirals, generals and air marshals to actually answer some questions. Get them to do something. They haven't got a plane, they haven't got a tank, they haven't got a ship, but there's 219 of them answering whatever thought bubble has got into Minister Marles. Why doesn't the troika of underperformance appoint a general to answer the questions? That would be consistent with the ADF: not a substantive response, not telling us how much money—just appoint another general. At least then we might get some answers.

Question agreed to.