Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

To answer specifically the question from the member for Corio: I would have thought he was aware that there is a competitive evaluation process for the offshore patrol vessels designer and for the future frigates designer. That is in the midst of its operations right now—it is being done right now. There are three bidders for both the OPVs and the future frigates, which I think he would also know. The decision about that will be made at the appropriate time. One of the critical responsibilities that I have as Minister for Defence Industry is to keep the schedule on track. As a consequence, much of my effort on a daily basis goes into ensuring that the decisions are being made in a timely way by the Minister for Defence Industry—being me, obviously. It's not good to talk about oneself in the third person; it sounds slightly crazy!

But obviously the decisions that I need to make will ensure that Defence does not face any delays from this place and in fact can get on with the schedule, and that is exactly what is happening. Those decisions are being made, and I am surprised that the member for Corio would venture into this particular part of public policy. Marise Payne and I as the Minister for Defence and Minister for Defence Industry have made more decisions in 100 days than the Labor Party made in six years when they were in office. That was the Rip van Winkle period of defence policy in Australia's history, and the only saving grace for the member for Corio is that he was not given responsibility for that area of government policy when he was on the front bench in the Gillard government. It is one of the great failures of those six years. I am glad that the member for Menzies is here in the Federation Chamber—although he may not be—because, when he and I taking over in 2013 as part of a new government, he as the Minister for Defence had to try and get these decisions back on track after six years of absolute inertia in the period of the Gillard and Rudd governments.

You do not need to hear very much about how bad it was to be convinced. In the six years of the Rudd and Gillard governments they made not one decision to build a naval vessel here in Australia—zero in six years. In the three years that we have been in government we have decided to build 54 vessels over the coming decades: 12 submarines, nine future frigates 12 offshore patrol vessels and 21 Pacific patrol vessels—54 vessels. We are investing $195 billion over the next 10 years in building defence capability—not all, of course in naval shipbuilding. About $90 billion of it is in naval shipbuilding. This entirely transforms our defence capability, and it is a decision that this government has made. The previous government created the valley of death, which is leading to real people, not numbers on papers, losing their jobs at Osborne, at Williamstown, at Henderson and, for that matter, at Newcastle—across the naval shipbuilding industry—because the government that the member for Corio was a part of did not have the gumption, the capacity or the desire to make the decisions necessary in these projects, which are long-lead-time projects, to keep the workforce intact.

But we are not shirking this major task. This is a major challenge. The member at the table, the member for Menzies, initiated the Defence white paper process. That was handed down in February this year. With it was the integrated investment program and the defence industry policy statement. These three documents are the basis for the government's plans for building defence capability, the strategy behind it and the purpose of it over the next several decades. One day, potentially, the opposition may well be in government, and I hope that they will recognise that this foundation the current government has put in place is worthy of being supported into the future.

The record is not good. Each time the Labor Party gets into office, they cut defence spending. It is the first thing they do. The last government's record was to get it down to 1.38 per cent of GDP, the lowest level since the appeasement era in the 1930s. We are repairing that extraordinary damage that they did to the Defence portfolio, and I look forward to the member for Corio's next attempt to try and hide his shame.

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