Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I support the comments of the member for Port Adelaide on the Omnibus Repeal Day (Spring 2014) Bill 2014, and I support them most strongly. What has become absolutely clear is that the Prime Minister was prepared to do a deal with Japan for the purchase of the submarines without any due process, without any competitive tender process, with no transparency and with no national interest test having ever been applied. You would think that for a purchase of this type—the largest procurement of our time—that would have been a fundamental requirement of any government and that indeed it would be a requirement in the purchase of any other product. But here we are about to go into a commitment of this type and none of that has been done. This is a commitment that not only runs into tens of billions of dollars but spans decades to come, has national security consequences and has defence capability consequences for our nation. And I would have thought that any responsible government would have done the right thing and gone through the due process, but not in this case.

To try to justify the decision the Prime Minister was about to enter into, the government firstly went about—as the member for Port Adelaide quite rightly pointed out—trashing the reputation of the Australian Submarine Corporation and, just as bad, trashing the reputation of Sweden and, by extension, one of the companies that is based in Australia and has been supporting our defence industries for years and years—and I refer to Saab Systems, which has an interest in this project. And then we see that, in desperation to save his job, the Prime Minister starts twisting and weaving in respect of his commitment. He did not care about the jobs of the people in Australia—the 3,000 people who work in Adelaide and the hundreds more who work in the other yards around Australia. But when it came to saving his job, he was prepared to twist and weave and comes back with the competitive evaluation process, which, again, as the member for Port Adelaide has quite rightly pointed out, no-one had ever heard of.

This is a commitment that, to my knowledge, no defence expert, no sector expert, no industry expert in this country, including industry broadly, has come out in support of. It has been made purely on the whim of a Prime Minister for his personal reasons. And I do not know what they are, but there has been no justification whatsoever for them. What has been even more interesting is that it seems that, even within his own party, people do not know what is going on. Only weeks ago the member for Boothby issued a newsletter to his constituents in which he said, 'whether the submarines are designed in partnership with Germany, France, Sweden or Japan'. Sweden was ruled out by his very Prime Minister in this chamber only weeks ago. Yet the member for Boothby does not seem to understand that. And, in fairness, I do not blame him, because I do not think anybody understands what is going on.

Then we come to the opposition leader in state parliament in South Australia. It has taken him a year and a half to work out that he needs to stand up for South Australia and stand up for the building of the submarines in South Australia. He finally did that yesterday, when the Advertiser put together a screed and a whole series of articles in respect of the submarines. I applaud him for doing so, but I ask the question, where have you been, Mr Marshall, for the last 18 months or so?

Today the Leader of the Opposition, speaking in Adelaide, has put on the table a bipartisanship proposal, which the member for Port Adelaide, again, has referred to. It is a two-stage proposal whereby we go into a competitive tender process and a funded definition study. All of those four countries that we know have an interest in building the submarines will be allowed to put in their submissions and be part of the proposal. But the bottom line to it all is this: the submarines have to be built in Australia and maintained in Australia. Yes, we were prepared to go into a partnership with other countries and other industries from overseas, but the work has to be done here in Australia, because ultimately it is in our nation's interest to not only keep the jobs here but, just as importantly, have the capability here and ensure that in the future we have the ability to defend ourselves and have the capability that our defence department requires if and when the time comes.

See this speech in context