Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hughes for his question. He is a member who has argued strongly for the servicemen and women in his electorate. Let me thank you for standing side-by-side with some of your units during some very difficult times during the year.

It is right, Member for Hughes, that you should ask about future plans to address the mess that Labor has left within the Defence budget. Be under no doubt this is an unmitigated mess that we have inherited.

Last week we had the somewhat unedifying spectacle of the departmental secretary coming out to confirm what we have known for five years and what Labor has been in denial about—that they have taken a hatchet to the Defence budget over the last half decade. But not to be outdone, this week alone that great fiscal luminary, the former Labor Defence Minister Stephen Smith is reported as saying that Defence reforms could not be fulfilled because of the over $21 billion that the former Labor government ripped out of the Defence budget. 'Labor lag shoots defence in the foot' is a piece in the Australian that I table. That is an absolute admission of the failures and the mess that that former Labor government left behind.

When you have senior Defence personnel joking that Labor 'simply used the Defence budget is an ATM'—bill after bill after bill pulled out of the ATM—you realise that that is Labor's way. It was always about bill, wasn't it? The lowest level of Defence expenditure since 1938 as a proportion of GDP. That is your bill legacy; or is it simply the legacy of Bill? I am not really sure. But when you pull means of exchange—

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