Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think too many people would challenge the proposition that the first and most important priority of any government is the defence of its country and the people who are residents of that country. The Howard government’s performance in this regard has been somewhat wanting in recent years. I know that that concern would be shared by many Australians. That concern would be driven largely by our strategic direction in Iraq and the apparent lack of any exit strategy or even benchmarks on which to base that exit strategy. Around $2 billion has already been spent and, for the Prime Minister at least, it appears to be an open cheque book. Much has already been said about that today.

I want to zero in on a couple of other large and looming problems involving our ability to defend our country. I will give a few examples. The fast guided frigate upgrade is years behind schedule and the cost is over $1 billion. The Wedgetail airborne warning and control aircraft will now be at least two years late. The M113 armoured personnel carriers are at least four years late. We have seen the debacle with the Seasprite helicopters. Of course, it is very topical at the moment to talk about the government’s mishandling of the replacement upgrade for our fighter jets. I am pleased to see you in the chair, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, because I know you have a very deep interest in that matter.

It is those last two examples that I want to focus on for a few moments this evening. This should always be seen in the context of budget sustainability. You cannot defend the nation if you do not have the money to do so. While it is true that the Howard government has been offering real growth in our defence budget, it is also true that it is spending it more quickly than it is adding to it. Indeed, while capital costs are growing, so are operational costs, but operational costs are not being accounted for. It is like allowing your 18-year-old daughter to purchase a car when she has the $10,000 necessary to buy the car but not insisting that she take account of ongoing costs like fuel, registration and insurance.

This funding gap that is opening up in defence funding should be of real concern to all Australians, and it is a matter that the government should be paying urgent attention to. We are not going to sit back and allow the government to pretend it is not happening until they get the election out of the way and then worry about it after the election. We want the government to start telling the Australian people before the coming election how they intend to deal with this looming funding gap over the course of the next four forward estimate years.

I return to the issue of the Seasprite helicopters which will, if they ever come on board, be located at HMAS Albatross. The government’s mismanagement of this program leaves it with some fairly limited choices. There are rumours that the national security committee was to meet today—and I do not know whether that occurred; we will soon learn, no doubt—to determine whether the government should proceed with the Seasprite project.

These are its choices: spend up to another $50 million and take the primary contractor at its word that an extra $50 million maximum will deliver a fully operational helicopter within the next three years. When I say ‘fully operational’ I mean meeting all the airworthiness accreditation standards and all the technological capacity and capability of that aircraft. That is one option. The second option is to scrap the Seasprite—and rumour has it that is currently in the defence minister’s budget—flush the almost $1 billion already spent down the drain and find an additional $1.5 billion to fund a new fleet of helicopters that probably would not be delivered any quicker than the Seasprite would be delivered if the government took the first option.

This is a scandal. The government’s mismanagement of this project has left it, on behalf of the taxpayer, with only those two choices. Neither is very attractive at all. The opposition are in no real position to determine which is the best option for the government—given that we are not given access to the information that is required to make such a decision—but I think most people would say that spending an additional up to $50 million might be well spent, given the evidence that the primary contractor has given that it does still have the capacity to deliver on this project, rather than letting the total cost run up to $2.5 billion and getting a helicopter no sooner and that is not necessarily any better.

If the government decides to scrap the project, it will be devastating for Kaman, the primary contractor, and it will be devastating for those in the electorate of Gilmore who were relying on the ongoing nature of this project to add substantially to the local economy and to support many jobs. I wish the Minister for Defence and the National Security Committee of Cabinet the best in their deliberations, but I remind those listening that we only find ourselves making this difficult choice because of the government’s incompetent handling of the project.

The other project I mentioned was the Joint Strike Fighter. Put simply, this is about our next generation of fighters. The government made a decision to phase out the forever faithful F111s and replace them with a combination of the joint strike fighters and, for a time, our existing FA18s. The government planned to purchase 100 joint strike fighters at a significant cost of around $15 billion, but it is well known that that project now stands to be delivered very late. We have been for some time warning what that will mean for the defence of Australia. If the JSF arrives late—possibly as late as 2018—and the F111s are gone and the FA18s are ageing, Australia will be left with a significant air capability gap. The most important aspect of the defence of Australia is our air superiority in the air gap between our continent and the nation states in the north. Originally the government denied that there was a looming capability gap. Then it turned around very hastily—and without the money to fund it—and announced the decision to spend $A4 billion on the so-called Super Hornet to fill that capability gap. Most, if not all, experts on these matters in this country are questioning whether the Super Hornet is up to the task of maintaining our air superiority.

The amazing thing about all this is that the government seems to have entirely ruled out the prospect of putting into the policy options mix the US F22, which is commonly known as the Raptor. People who understand these things well and know that the F22 is without challenge the most effective fighter aircraft in the world cannot understand why this is the case. I issued a media release on this subject today, and it drew a response from Minister Nelson. I found his media release fairly fascinating. He began by claiming that Fitzgibbon—that is me, of course—failed to grasp the facts. He said:

There is no gap in Australia’s air combat capability ...

I did not say there was; I said one was looming. He went on to say:

... and no gap will be allowed to develop.

He has not told us how he is going to ensure that that gap does not develop. He said:

The Government is continuing to explore options to manage the transition to Australia’s planned acquisition of the Joint Strike Fighter.

Again, he did not say how. You cannot do it through management processes, other than through bringing the Joint Strike Fighter forward on the time line, but we know that that is simply not going to happen. He continued:

Contrary to Mr Fitzgibbon’s claim, the Government has not asked the United States for access to the F-22 Raptor.

I had made the point: why is it now belatedly asking for access to the Raptor—that is, an opportunity to purchase the Raptor from the US—if it believes the Super Hornet is up to the job? I refer the House to an article on the front page of today’s Australian which suggests that the US deputy defense secretary, Gordon England, had written to the defence minister, Brendan Nelson, saying the US would not export the world’s most deadly war plane, the F22, to Australia. Maybe the Australian got it wrong, but it is very specific about the author of the letter. Maybe Minister Nelson is being clever in saying he did not ask for the Raptor. Maybe the conversation took a different tone. But certainly the US deputy defense secretary interpreted the conversation as one in which a request was being made, otherwise he would not have written such a letter. So I suggest that that is a very clever play on words on the part of the minister. In his press release he then goes on to say:

The F-22 is not currently available for Foreign Military Sales to any country outside the United States.

I did not know there were countries inside the United States, by the way, but I will not dwell on that; he has made his point. I do not know how he knows it is not available if he has not asked. I know there is legislation in place and that the congress has control of these things, but if he does not ask he cannot be sure. So there seems to be a conflict in his statements there. He continued:

Mr Fitzgibbon fails to understand that the F-22 is not the most suitable aircraft for Australia’s needs.

There is no shortage of experts around this country who will challenge that, and challenge it quite strongly. I make the point that alone, of course, it is not. That is his implication throughout the media release. Alone, it is not, because it is limited in its capacity to carry payloads and maintain stealth. But it is part of the mix and it is what experts around the country expect to be part of the mix. He continued:

The F-22 is primarily a single role air-to-air combat aircraft.

Again, I did not say it was not. But why not consider it as part of the mix? He continued:

It has limited strike capability.

Yes, it does. If it wants to maintain stealth, it does have limited strike capability. No-one is saying that we should not have a Joint Strike Fighter. We are talking about a looming gap in our air capabilities. He said:

The budget would not acquire enough F-22s to sustain concurrent tasking.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute put out a paper only this week—yesterday, in fact—in which a comparative analysis of the cost has been made. We all know, thanks to the recently tabled US defense budget information, that the unit cost of the Joint Strike Fighter is rising, and we do not know with any certainty what the cost gap between the Joint Strike Fighter and the Raptor will be. ASPI certainly talks about that comparison becoming very competitive. The ASPI paper, talking about the two, says that ‘the F22 is starting to look competitive’ on a cost basis. So the minister is making statements that are not supported by the experts. He goes on to say:

It does not carry the variety of weapons we need for strike operations.

No-one said that it did, but we are talking about the best way to close the looming capability gap in taking us into the future. He continued:

It loses its stealth benefits when carrying external weapons.

That is true, but it is capable of carrying a payload internally and therefore maintaining stealth; not potentially as much as we would like it to carry, but that is a misleading statement on the minister’s part. He goes on to say:

It has no maritime strike capability at present.

Nor does the Joint Strike Fighter; the panacea for all our problems according to the minister. So I do not know what his point is there. He says:

The Government continues to work on options to ensure that Australia maintains regional air superiority throughout the air combat transition.

But again he does not spell out what the plan is to do so. Surely the Minister for Defence should be in a position to spell out exactly how he intends to do so. The Australian people who consider the defence of their country want much more than a bit of rhetoric and assurance from the minister that no gap will be allowed to develop. They want to hear from the minister how the minister intends to ensure that it does not develop, because all the facts are that there is a looming gap. All the experts say that the Super Hornets are not capable of closing that gap. If he has been to the US and asked for access to the Raptor, he has himself come to the conclusion that the Super Hornet is not capable of closing that gap. He needs to do much more than to give us his rhetorical assurance that there will be no gap, and if a gap emerges he will close it. He needs to give us the facts. He needs to spell out how he intends to do it. It is ridiculous for the government to rush in and spend $4 billion of taxpayers’ money on a Super Hornet that may not be up to the job without any real debate either in the broader community or in this parliament. ASPI at the end of this paper comes to the conclusion:

A deferral of the decision to purchase Super Hornets would seem sensible. This could be for 6-12 months, during which the government could:

Gather availability, cost and capability data for the F-22, so that we understand the affordability and feasibility of moving quickly to a high-end fifth generation solution. Only if that proves unfeasible should we move to a fourth generation fallback.

Evaluate the fourth generation options available in the world marketplace and choose the one most likely to provide us with high-end capability through the decade beginning 2020 should we need to go that way.

That is not the opposition speaking. That is a report from the most highly regarded think tank on strategic air defence issues in this country and yet all we get from minister Nelson is this diatribe in his media release that is clever in its wording but absolutely empty in its substance.

In the time remaining to me, can I quickly say something about drought funding in my electorate. We were very disappointed in the Hunter when in about early October last year the Prime Minister announced an enhanced drought assistance scheme. The problem was the scheme applied only to areas which had an existing exceptional circumstances declaration. That included no areas in the Hunter, so there was nothing in that scheme for struggling Hunter farming families. Then, later that month, he restored an exceptional circumstances declaration for part of Hunter but left the other part undeclared—again, helping some but not others based on arbitrary boundaries.

Finally, only a few weeks ago, exceptional circumstances were declared for all the Hunter region and we welcome that. That will be very helpful. There are very long waiting lists as people in the first tranche of declarations are still waiting for their applications to be assessed and processed. Today I appeal to the government in the context again of giving thanks for an albeit late declaration for those regions to add to the resources within Centrelink and other organisations, to lift those levels of resources to a point at which it will be possible to process and assess more quickly those applications for those desperate farming families. If you have not experienced what they are experiencing on the land, you could not possibly understand the challenges they are facing. I appeal to the government to give those extra resources. (Time expired)

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