Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

I do not care who it was about, and I actually agreed with you when you stood up for Bernie Banton. It is just a pity you have not stood up for the sailors of this nation on our submarines.

In conclusion, I want to say this. Our Defence Force, as I said right at the very beginning, punch well above their weight on an international scale, as is recognised by our allies across the world. But that ability to punch well above their weight comes not just from their own training standards and, in particular, their discipline; it comes from the technologies and the platforms that we provide to our people. A lot of that development and technology is Australian home grown. Minister, take this message on board: your cutbacks of $20 billion over 10 years—$2 billion per annum—will have dire effects on our Defence Force. They are already having effects on the morale of our Defence Force. I urge you, even if do not you have the capacity to lobby your own government to restore all of that funding, to make sure the funding for DSTO is restored and that it is actually increased. You have come into the House today and enunciated all of the great work that they have done but you have failed to back that up with dollars. Make sure they have the funding to continue to provide the new and emerging technologies that are needed, in the face of the emerging threats and technologies that our enemies are developing, so that our Defence Force can be protected and the lives of the people they go out to protect are also protected. Minister, if you do not do that, you have failed our nation.

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