Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, they ignored the advice from the Department of Defence that they needed to make a decision by 2011 to buy future ships for Australia, leaving a potential capacity gap in the future. Indeed, the member for Lilley used Defence's budget as the government's ATM, ripping some $16 billion from the Defence budget in Australia. That is the record of the Labor Party. So what are we doing? We have brought forward the offshore patrol vessels to 2018. We are bringing forward the construction of future frigates to 2020. We are going to continually build ships in Australia, which is good for our defence, good for our industry and good for the workers of Australia.

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