Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to standing order 164 and, by coincidence, genuinely by coincidence, with the previous motion, I seek an explanation from the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, Senator Wong, regarding the failure to respond to order for production of documents No. 243, agreed on 22 June 2023, in relation to the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter incident at Jervis Bay.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to follow that up. We didn't have notice of the OPD that Senator Roberts was going to refer to, so the minister isn't here and able to provide a direct response. Normally, a heads-up is provided so that we can prepare an answer. I acknowledge you came over in question time and said that you would be doing this, but you didn't inform us of what minister or OPD you were after. So I would have to come back to the chamber at a later time with an explanation. Could Senator Roberts indicate the number of the OPD he referred to?

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Certainly; it's No. 200. I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

So much for the Albanese Labor government's promises to be transparent and accountable! Yet again, they've failed a transparency deadline, failing to produce the documents the Senate ordered them to produce six months ago. In March this year, a Taipan helicopter was forced to ditch into the sea in Jervis Bay. No people died. Two were injured. Thankfully, those injuries were minor due to the pilots' skills—skills they shouldn't have had to rely on yet had to, because Defence made them fly a dodgy helicopter. Separately, in July, a Taipan helicopter crashed in the Whitsundays, killing four Defence personnel. This order for the production of documents related to the non-fatal Jervis Bay incident in March. The government has failed to produce any details after the Defence brass promised they would produce such reports.

What you didn't hear in the minister's explanation is the true story of why these documents haven't been produced. The hierarchy in Defence are covering up their mistakes. The Taipan helicopters should have been pulled from service a decade ago. There were technical shortcomings in their capability that could not be defended. There were dangerous, catastrophic safety issues that Defence knew about. Instead of dealing with those issues or grounding the helicopter, as they should have, Defence and the politicians kept it in service and flying. Now four personnel who piloted and flew in that helicopter have died in a crash. We remember now Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Laycock—or, as he was known, Phil—troop commander Captain Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent and Corporal Alexander Naggs. We hope their families, despite their enormous loss, will find peace.

Next—and I do not say this lightly—the Defence hierarchy and politicians who allowed the Taipan helicopter to continue flying have blood on their hands. No-one in Defence can claim not to know about this helicopter's problems. The MRH-90 Taipan helicopter was identified on a list of 'projects of concern' in 2011, 12 years ago. The Taipan remained on that list until it was grounded for good after the Whitsundays crash, 13 years before its planned retirement. During its lifetime, the Taipan was grounded no fewer than nine times due to ongoing problems, yet Defence kept flying it—or, rather, Defence kept soldiers flying it. Australian taxpayers spent at least $3.7 billion on the project. The Taipan cost $50,000 an hour to fly. I can hear Senator Shoebridge laughing, and I understand why. Compare that to the Black Hawk, which costs an estimated $15,000 an hour, 30 per cent of the cost.

The Australian National Audit Office identified some of the MRH-90 Taipan's many serious problems. These included engine failure—without an engine, helicopters fly like a brick; transmission, oil cooler and fan failures; poor availability of spares; on the Navy aircraft, problems with the cargo hook; and, on the Army helicopters, problems with door gun mounts and the fast roping and rappelling device.

Those are some of the problems. Yet Defence kept flying the helicopter. The Navy couldn't hook cargo into its Taipans. The Army couldn't fire guns at the same time that soldiers were in the helicopter. Our Australian Army consider the cabin and row equipment are not fit for purpose, as the seat size and harness cannot accommodate personnel wearing combat gear. Yet Defence kept flying it. They knew the engine could fail and the helicopter could drop out of the sky, yet they kept on flying it.

Defence analyst Marcus Hellyer wrote in 2021:

Back when I worked in the Department of Defence, we used to occupy ourselves from time to time calculating how much money the taxpayer would save in the long run if we just walked away from the MRH-90 utility helicopter and bought Black Hawk helicopters instead. The answer was a lot. And the sooner you did it, the more you'd save, by avoiding sinking more acquisition dollars into the MRH-90 and realising the substantially lower operating costs of the Black Hawk. But even though those numbers were shared with Defence's senior decision-makers, the department couldn't bring itself to take that step.

Defence had all the information. They knew the Taipan was a waste of billions of dollars. They knew it could not do the job it was meant to do and supposed to do. They knew it had catastrophic safety risks. They knew all of this for more than a decade, yet Defence kept on flying it. That's why this government will not answer this order for the production of documents after almost six months. The cost and particularly the fatalities—avoidable fatalities—are huge.

I also want to talk about another huge impact: the impact on the Defence Force's morale. What happens when you ask someone to keep operating faulty, life-threatening equipment? What happens to trust? You know the answer. Look at the hypocrisy of the Chief of the Defence Force awarding himself a medal reserved for those in action, when he was sitting a thousand kilometres from the action. How does that build trust? It destroys trust.

Some years ago, when I was working in the mining industry, I met two people who had come from the defence forces, officers from the Army specifically. One was so highly skilled that he had been asked on occasion to take six of his mates and go into the jungles of Vietnam, well beyond enemy lines, take on a job and come back. He rose to be in charge of jungle warfare training. Barry—along with John, who had been a captain in the army—told me the key to Army culture and Defence Force culture. That key is mateship. Barry had to lecture other countries' defence forces and security forces on counterterrorism work. He said in most countries they did not understand what mateship was. It's intangible, yet the impacts are so tangible.

He also talked about standards. Everyone who joins the Army, for example, comes into the Army and is then made equal with everyone else so that they get the feeling of looking after their mates. Then they're trained to a very high standard, and they can rely on each other and those standards. I'll tell you a little story. Barry and John both said that when you're behind a log in incoming machine gun fire, the only thing worse than jumping over that log and going into that machine gun fire is running away and leaving your mate behind. That's how strong it is in the Army. There will be lots of people from the Army who will be watching this parliament and will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The third part of mateship is trust. How can we have trust when the defence forces are going woke? I hear from so many soldiers and airmen and sailors that they're sick and tired of the defence forces going woke and it will jeopardise their lives in battle.

That is not looking after our soldiers.

Then we talk about national security. All of that impacts on national security. I'll say it again: the key strategic weapon we have in this country in our armed forces is at the mateship, the training, the standards and what used to be trust. The warriors are fine. The problem is the Chief of the Defence Force, the top brass and, as we've heard recently, the minister who is supposed to hold them accountable.

We've had some preliminary briefings, and I want to commend a young public servant who said that the problems with the Taipans are not just in the military but also in the politics and the politicians. These politicians and the top brass are responsible for deaths. They have blood on their hands. Even the slightest amount of scrutiny on this project will reveal the pervasive corruption in the Defence hierarchy, reveal politicians' mistakes and show that these people in Defence and in politics have blood on their hands. One Nation will continue pushing to hold those in the Defence hierarchy to account and protect our warriors serving in the Defence Force.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to make a contribution to this debate. My understanding in regard to this order for production of documents is that the Senate was provided with advice on 12 May 2023 that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Richard Marles, had advised that Defence is conducting an internal investigation into this incident and intends to respond to the order once this investigation is complete.

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

I note the further contribution from the government there. This is an order that was first made in March of this year, requiring documents to be produced in April. The government then said, 'Oh, well, we're having an investigation into the Jervis Bay ditching,' and gave a private briefing to me and, I think, a private briefing to Senator Roberts as well. In fact, it may have been a very efficient joint briefing at the time. Part of what we were told—I'll keep the bulk of it private, but this is relevant for today's purposes—was that they expected the investigation to be concluded by October. As a result of that, Senator Roberts moved this motion to produce the documents by 1 November. And what have we heard since then? The usual Minister Marles response: crickets—nothing.

When we get told that the investigation will be finished by October and on that basis there's an agreement to push off production till 1 November—a very reasonable agreement—you would expect there to be some engagement with the minister when they just fail to produce documents. But there's such contempt amongst the Defence establishment for parliamentary scrutiny that they don't even bother to communicate with the senator who moved the motion to give some kind of explanation for why their previous commitment to get the report done by October no longer holds. There is just complete contempt from the Defence establishment.

Now the only explanation we're given is that seven months ago the minister said that there would be an investigation—there's an internal investigation. Well, we already knew there was an internal investigation. We were told it would be complete by the end of October, and the motion was adapted for that very purpose. So where is the investigation into the Jervis Bay ditching, which could very easily have seen lives lost? My understanding is that it was just a mixture of good luck and incredibly quick responses from the crew that prevented lives being lost.

Thank goodness it was in the protected waters of Jervis Bay, close to the shore, because if it had been anywhere out at sea or in rough water the results may well have been fatally different. Indeed, months later we had a tragic loss of life from another Taipan helicopter. I join with Senator Roberts in expressing my genuine and sincere condolences to the families of all the lost crew, who are still seeking answers.

To be clear, this order we are talking about now is only for the Jervis Bay incident. It does not in any relate to that second tragedy that happened with the Taipan helicopters. It's interesting that this motion about the noncompliance has come up today because this is also the day I got a response from Defence to a freedom-of-information request seeking the flight test reports that Defence had in relation to Taipan's forward-looking infrared, its airworthiness and related matters. I also saw Defence's reports and documents, including the CASR compliance, the HMSC, the CFIT and related matters. A lot of that relates to the equipment that is used in the Taipan, particularly the heads-up display, which was notoriously unreliable, giving false readings and potentially sending pilots into catastrophic error, all done through a highly credentialed airworthiness certification process inside Defence.

One of the golden rules of civil aviation in response to an accident or concerns about an accident is to have no secrecy at all, to have radical openness, to just share all the documentation and all the findings and to do it in the most transparent way possible. That's because other people operate these platforms and it's been found in civil aviation investigations that that commitment to radical transparency is actually the way we keep the travelling public safe. So why is it any different for service personnel? We know that radical transparency on airworthiness works for civil aviation. There are no credible national security reasons to not produce this material, the reports about critical instrumentation in the Taipan helicopter. It has been withdrawn from service. It will never come back into service in Australia. So, if our enemies find out that there were serious critical faults in how the Taipan helicopter operated, no national security harm can come from that because we thankfully will not be putting service personnel into them ever again. They've been withdrawn from service, so there's no credible national security reason not to produce this material. There are compelling transparency reasons to produce it. The reason I got from Defence to not produce these documents is that, if they produce the documents about the independent credible internal assessments that were done by credentialed airworthiness and air safety experts inside Defence, apparently that would have a negative effect on the 'proper and efficient operations of Defence'. Tell me how. Tell me how having transparency about identified deficiencies in a helicopter that has now been withdrawn from service would have any kind of negative impact on the proper and efficient operations of Defence?

We are also told by Defence that this confidential aspect of aviation safety is 'vital in order to quickly and accurately ascertain issues' and to 'delineate between human and mechanical error to ensure that an incident is not replicated'. It seems to me that that it's only in Defence that secrecy and hiding of documents provides any kind of safety response, because in all other aviation investigations radical transparency is what provides safety. What's special about Defence that the airworthiness assessments of critical parts of the Taipan helicopter system should be kept confidential and hidden from the public, the Defence Force and families of serving members in the Defence Force?

Why is it only in Defence that these things are hidden? What are they hiding? And who's hiding them? We're not going to let this FOI rest here. We're going seek a review. But, of course, the government has starved the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner of funds, so it could take five years for us to grind our way through the FOI review—

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you're lucky!

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

if we're lucky. I note the interjection from Senator Scarr. We'll begin that process and my children will inherit it. That will be nice. It can be part of their ongoing inheritance to the transparency in this nation. If you wanted to have a compelling reason why the order to produce documents should be complied with, it's because other avenues of transparency are being shut down by a self-interested culture of secrecy and defence.

I don't agree with everything Senator Roberts put in that contribution. I can't see the Australian Defence Force waking up and realising it's 2023 and we have a diverse multicultural and genuinely representative Defence Force of our society. Of course, it should be representative of modern Australia and it's not as representative as it should be. It's not a question of wokeness that's affecting the Defence Force; it's a question of serious culture problems from the top and that's what we need to address, and we need to address this cult of secrecy that is actually putting Defence Force personnel lives at risk.

Question agreed to.