Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

As I was explaining, it's critical to build and retain a skilled defence industry workforce to repair projects and get them back on track, because of what occurred under the opposition leader. He had 28 projects running 97 years late and $6½ billion over budget. It's important to get skilled workers because we had the last government spend $114 million on a naval shipbuilding college that trained zero workers—not a single worker. It is important for these tax cuts to attract workers into the defence industry so that we do not repeat the opposition leader's mistakes of allowing supply vessels to not have safe drinking water for our brave sailors.

This is the truth. Now the opposition leader is saying that the 100,000 workers who depend upon the defence industry don't deserve these tax cuts. The truth is, the opposition leader can't be trusted on tax cuts and he cannot be trusted on national security. (Time expired)

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