Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Mason is correct; that is before Hitler. A whopping 10½ per cent was cut from the defence budget in 2012-13 alone. Chair, it is little wonder that they could not make decisions on submarines if they were slashing the budget that deeply. It is astounding that they were slashing the defence budget—given that they were running record deficits, and given that they were so profligate in spending in every other possible way, and given that they were putting the country on a trajectory towards some $667 billion worth of debt. It is astounding that, amongst all of that spending and amongst all of that debt, they could not find the money to invest in defence; they could not find the money to ensure that we did not enter a scenario of a potential capability gap. It is completely remarkable.

Madam Chair, this government will not allow that capability gap to worsen. We will do our best to make sure there is no capability gap. We know that the procurement of submarines is essential to this nation's defence; it is essential to our naval capability requirements—

Senator s Cameron and Conroy interjecting—

I hear the hectoring from those opposite; from two people who sat there and did absolutely nothing for six years. If Senator Conroy was so sincere in this, could have gone into the cabinet in his days sitting there and said: 'Well, I realise things are tough, and things are tight around the budget;'—nobody, of course, said that under the previous Labor government, but he could have been the first—'how about I surrender some of my $40 billion for my National Broadband Network, so that we can do something about the submarines we have been promising since 2007? Let's trade some cable for some submarines!' He could have done that—but no, he did not do that. They did not budget for them. In fact, in their time in government, Labor stripped hundreds of millions of dollars out of the submarine budget and out of the future procurement arrangements.

We will budget. We will deliver. We will come up with an option that not only delivers the capability our naval personnel need in the future, but—