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

I thank the member for Brisbane for his question. Few people in this place could match his expertise or longstanding interest in defence matters. I was very pleased to learn that, I think, only today the member for Brisbane was elected Chair of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. There could be no better choice, and I know he will do fantastic work in that new role.

Last week the government made what might be one of the toughest decisions it will take over the course of this parliament. The National Security Committee of Cabinet had to decide whether to continue to throw money at a project not likely to ever succeed or to bite the bullet and scrap the former government’s infamous Seasprite helicopter project. Unfortunately and tragically, on this occasion biting the bullet means flushing $1.36 billion of taxpayers’ money down the drain. That is a lot of money in anybody’s language. But the decision was not just about money, as important as that is. It was also about the safety of those in uniform who fly our aircraft. The new government wants to make sure that future capability meets the highest possible standards in the 21st century.

The Seasprite helicopter project is already seven years late. Think about this: if the government wanted to do what the former government was doing—take another gamble, take another punt—the capability may be brought on-stream in the not-too-distant future. The reality is that it would have been another three years before that capability was delivered. That means that in total the project would have been 10 years late. I said during a press conference last week that that would be like taking a 2008 Commodore to the 2018 Bathurst 1000. Given that we do not know where vehicle technology is going or how fast it is moving, maybe the better analogy would have been taking a 1998 Commodore to the 2018 Bathurst race. The government is determined to bring sound economic management to defence procurement to ensure that the Australian Defence Force gets the capability it needs to do its job efficiently, effectively and in as safe a manner as is possible and that taxpayers get value for money. The Seasprite helicopter project is probably one of the worst projects that we inherited from the former Labor government.

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