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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is a remarkable report card from the Audit Office on the Department of Defence. Every time I think Defence has reached its ultimate disappointment, it is able to do it again, with Secretary Moriarty asleep at the wheel, Minister Marles asleep on the tiller, and the whole thing going in the wrong direction. And when the Audit Office has a look at it, get this: the 21 major projects at the Audit Office looked at are collectively 37 years behind schedule. Like, people die waiting for these things to happen. Entire careers begin, blossom, fade and end in the Department of Defence before any of these projects ever actually come to fruition. Not only are they taking forever, with 442 months of delays for these projects; because of the delays and because of the utter incompetence in Defence procurement, these projects have ballooned by $81.4 billion. And $40 billion of that is just pure cost blowout—$40 billion!

What other part of government can piss $40 billion up against the wall and have both Labor and the coalition come together and give them a big bear hug and say how amazing they are? They love all their gold glint, so can we give you another medal? It is only in Defence, because the oversight of Defence by the war parties in this place is pathetic. It's like having a poodle in charge of its owner. It is utterly pathetic.

Let's just look at one of the projects—the Hunter Class Frigate Program. That was meant to be a $25 billion project; it's now blowing out. We don't know the exact figure, but I think, to get 2½ of them—maybe it's 2½; maybe it's three—it's like $25.9 billion. It's $25.9 billion, and you get like 2½ boats! In any other navy, spending $25.9 billion on 2½ boats would lead to court martials. It would lead to national investigations. The US is outraged that their frigates, which are the equivalent of Australia's Hunter class frigates, are going to cost about A$2.5 billion a pop, and we're spending more than $10 billion or so on each of them. Pound for pound, these will be the most expensive machines on the planet. And what does Labor do? They give everyone a promotion. What does the coalition do? They say they want more of it.

If you want to destroy Australia's capacity to defend itself, build more Hunter frigates. You're just washing the Defence budget down a never-ending drain to produce a handful of boats that, actually, most defence experts say are woefully undergunned at the end of the day. As they keep tacking new things onto it—at one point, they were going to capsize in a high sea. Ten billion bucks for a boat that's years behind schedule, might capsize in a high sea and is undergunned at the end of the day—who does this? I know! It's Minister Marles and Secretary Moriarty and the same bunch.

I have been waiting for a response from the NACC about a referral that I sent in about the utterly corrupted process that actually gave us the Hunter frigates project in the first place. I think it has been more than a year that we've been waiting for a response from NACC, because they're grinding their way through the endless documents, and we're still wondering where the secret documents are that were shredded and that failed to record who made the key decisions on the Hunter frigate projects. We're still waiting for an outcome from the NACC on our corruption referral, and, of course, it should be subject of a referral.

They have other projects—things that don't even rate a mention normally in a defence budget, like the Growler, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Triton drones, which all had budget blowouts between $1 billion and $10 billion. This government is spending more than $1 billion buying three or four drones. They're being chewed up in the Ukrainian conflict. It's like a thousand a week, and we're buying four for over $1 billion? What is wrong with the defence department? What is wrong with Labor and the coalition that they just give Defence this sea of money? It's utterly wasted. It doesn't make us any safer. It creates a dangerous culture of non-accountability in Defence, and that's even before you suck another $368 billion out of the Defence budget. What a disaster, what a scandal, what a disgrace and what a disgrace Labor and the coalition are. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.