Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

a lack of ticker and all those things. There's long laundry list of failures. They've had less than two years in office, and there are consequences to this. We're not able to recruit young people. We saw, at Duntroon only a week or so ago, the announcement about the shortening of officer training from 18 months to 12 months as a way of trying to get people in. People are still separating at much too high a rate from Defence. It should be at about seven or eight per cent. Under this government, it's been at 11 per cent. We are losing people at a rate of 11 per cent per year. We have to grow the Defence Force to 80,000 people by 2040 because we need to crew our nuclear submarines and have people who are specialists in cyberwarfare. We need more pilots, sailors and soldiers, and we can't even meet 75 per cent of the target we set for ourselves every year.

There's a lack of message. Defence should be about service, strength, opportunity and aspiration. I tell you: if you go across the road to ADFA or Duntroon and speak to the young Australians there who are serving their country, you will meet some of the finest young leaders in our country. They join because they want to serve, but they also see immense opportunity, and that should be at the heart of the message, and we're not seeing that. We're not seeing the defence minister stand up and sell a career in the Defence Force. So the question remains: how are we going to crew these vital capabilities?

Weakness is also manifesting in a lack of action around AUKUS. Canning is about 35 minutes south of HMAS Stirling. We have a huge infrastructure deficit in WA. We're yet to see any works commence on that base. And by 2027 we're meant to be having US and UK nuclear submarines alongside, with about 2,000 personnel from the US and the UK. There are no houses, and the base itself hasn't even started its conversion from a conventional base to a nuclear base. There's still no decision on the dry dock at Henderson, which the previous coalition government committed $4.3 billion towards. And we still don't know what's happening with the OPVs or the Future Frigate Program.

We are meant to be building confidence with our allies. The US and the UK are looking at us and thinking, 'We are handing the crown jewels of our nuclear program over to Australia.' It was a very important decision by the Morrison government that would set us up for success over generations going forward. It was handed on a platter to these people opposite. The lack of drive, the lack of initiative, the lack of leadership, the weakness of these people means that we are behind schedule. The Americans and the UK—but, more importantly, our strategic adversaries—are watching us. They're seeing that lack of commitment. They're seeing weakness.

I'll come back to where I started. If you are weak, people will push you around. They will eat your lunch. Under this government the only signal we've been receiving from the Prime Minister and the defence minister is weakness. The Prime Minister, at APEC, could not even raise the fact that our divers underwater, serving with HMAS Kanimbla, had a Chinese destroyer launch a sonar pulse attack, causing barotraumas in their ears. The Prime Minister was briefed, and do you know what he did? What did he do at APEC in San Francisco? He said nothing. He took a weak position. It's a disgrace. And I tell you what: future generations will look back on this government and ask why you failed. (Time expired)

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