Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Review of the Defence Annual Report 2007-2008. Any review of defence activities in the period 2007-08 or indeed to the present time would have to acknowledge at the outset the very heightened tempo of activity with which the Australian Defence Force is engaged at the moment. Deployments abroad and commitments at home are at a very high tempo, requiring the dedication of all the men and women of the defence forces.

In the brief time available, I want to refer to some of the recommendations and issues surrounding the report. The committee has made a recommendation about the importance of Defence looking to buy military off-the-shelf equipment wherever that is able to be done, in effect as a default position. Over the years, the defence committee has looked at a number of acquisitions that have been problematic for Australian defence forces. It does not reflect on who happens to be in government or indeed who happens to be running defence at the time, but there is a pattern which emerges, which is that those defence acquisitions which have been the most problematic, those that have had the greatest time delay and those that have been more prone to cost overruns have been those where Defence and the government of the day have determined to acquire what is, effectively, a one-off solution or to be first of type. It is not surprising that that should be the case. Common sense would tell us that that would be so. There will be a number of occasions when Australia’s unique geographical circumstances and our unique strategic environment will in fact require us to have a one-off type solution, and I can think of a number of examples where that is the case. One of the areas that has had difficulties over the years is the combat system on the submarines, yet in truth there is no submarine in the world that would have met Australia’s needs. The typical submarine is designed for operation in the North Atlantic, more in a European context than the circumstances confronting Australia. That is an example of where a military off-the-shelf solution is unlikely to meet our needs. That said, we need to mitigate the risk wherever we can.

There are other first-of-type acquisitions that come to mind which have also been problematic, such as the Airborne Warning and Control System. That has been a particularly plagued program. It is now some three years overdue, and a review of the circumstances surrounding it would raise a number of important questions about whether the best decisions were taken at the outset. There have also been acquisitions of military off-the-shelf equipment, the most recent best example of which is the heavy airlift capability that the Australian Defence Force has recently acquired. It has clearly been the correct decision to get a capable, proven platform off the shelf for what is effectively an air cargo freighter—a fancy air cargo freighter, but nonetheless an air cargo freighter. In making this recommendation, it is important to note that it is not intended to be a statement with respect to any particular acquisition that may currently be under consideration. I say that advisedly, given some of the debate surrounding one of the acquisitions that is presently being touted—or, at least, one of the bidders places great store on that as their selling point. That is fair enough, but, in making this recommendation, the committee is not engaging in any assessment of current acquisitions. Rather, it is making a broad point of policy.

There is one other recommendation that I want to turn to that has been a concern of mine, and that is the situation with the submarine escape training facility at HMAS Stirling. This has been a very sad and sorry episode in recent government management of naval assets. The escape training facility at HMAS Stirling is world-class, specifically designed as part of the HMAS Stirling submarine fleet base. The training for escape from submarines is an essential part of any Navy operating a submarine fleet. Originally, that training was done by naval and defence personnel. A decision was taken some years ago that that should be outsourced. I am yet to be persuaded or to see the evidence that that was the correct decision.

In any event, when it was time for that contract to be renegotiated, apparently nobody able to provide a contract was seen as satisfactory for the purposes. As a result, for some time now we have had a world-class facility for submariner escape training effectively sitting idle and we have needed to send Australian submariners overseas to be trained, in facilities in Canada, in survival and escape from submerged submarines. This is, in my view, completely and utterly absurd and unacceptable. We need to ensure that the facility at Stirling is brought back online as quickly as possible. I understand that the government has been actively engaged in recent times in bringing HMAS Stirling back online; I will be interested to see under what circumstances that occurs and indeed what assessment is done of the relative merits of those services being provided in-house rather than by contractors.

Related to that is the submarine rescue vehicle Remora, which has also been unavailable for some time. It and its delivery vehicle have to be operational as a matter of urgency. We cannot in all good conscience operate a submarine fleet without having an indigenous rescue capability on hand. There are other alternatives that may be available in case of emergency, but I think we owe it to the men and women in the Navy, particularly those who crew our submarines, to ensure that we have a domestic capability to do all within our power to rescue them should the need arise.

The final point I want to make is covered by recommendations 6 and 7. The committee, I think for the first time, engaged Defence on the question of oil supply and alternative fuel sources. Whether it is a short-term dislocation of oil supply or whether it is addressing the peak oil issue that we can argue about occurring 30, 50 or 60 years down the track, there is an important matter confronting the Australian Defence Force, which is the need to guarantee the supply of energy, whether it be oil or some alternative type of fuel, for the ADF’s purposes. The committee made two recommendations—one that deals with the short-term oil shock issue and another that deals with the long-term alternative fuels issue. The United States and other countries are engaged in research on alternative fuels for military application. Australia has had some limited engagement in that process. It is integral to the future security of this nation that we engage more fully in that research, and I would recommend to the government increased activity in that field.

In conclusion, I want to thank the members of the Defence Subcommittee for their work in the course of the last year and particularly over the months involved in the review of the Defence annual report 2007-08. I have made this observation in the past, but I think it is worth repeating: the Defence Subcommittee is fortunate to have among its members a number of senior members of parliament and members who have a genuine interest in national security matters. It is important that it operates on the bipartisan basis that it has throughout my experience in this place. I think we owe it to the men and women in the defence forces to ensure that that is the case.

I also want to place on the record my thanks to the committee secretary, Dr Margot Kerley, the secretariat, and especially Wing Commander Dave Ashworth. Dave has been the defence adviser throughout this year. His appointment will soon cease and he has got to go back to one of those real jobs, in a uniform, at Air Force. But, as I commented to the committee itself, the Defence Subcommittee could not operate nearly as well as it does without the support of the defence advisers. We have been very lucky to have as defence advisers—through all the years I have been engaged in this—people of a really high calibre. Their advice, their input and their suggestions are instrumental in allowing us to do our work. I do hope that in the course of their engagement with the parliament and the committee they manage to pick up a few ideas about this place that might help shape their thoughts into the future and perhaps change some of the preconceptions they had when they walked in on day 1. But on behalf of the committee I want to sincerely thank Dave again for his outstanding contribution.

I also want to place on record my thanks to the other support staff who have been engaged with the committee over this period of time, Muz Ali, Dr Brian Lloyd and Paul Zinkel. I also want to thank the other people who actually ensure that our committee can function and that the documents and everything are where they should be when they need to be. Mrs Donna Quintus-Bosz as office manager is, dare I say, someone I have known since childhood in Brisbane. Donna does a superb job, not just in this committee but in the intelligence and security committee, which I also chair. Her work in that area is greatly appreciated. To Sonya Gaspar and also to Gillian Drew, thanks for their support. None of the committees in the parliament would actually operate were it not for that administrative support, and I think it is appropriate that we should from time to time acknowledge it. I am happy to put that on the record and thank them for their service.

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