James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I absolutely re-endorse what the previous speakers have said about encouraging any of our colleagues who haven't had the opportunity to participate in this program to absolutely do so. I was, of course, newly elected to this parliament in May. A lot of the things about becoming a member of parliament you can anticipate, but I had had no idea about this program before being elected to the parliament—which is not a surprise—but it was quite fascinating when it was outlined to us all, as part of the induction program, that we had this opportunity. I can say that it lived up to all the expectations that I had had for it.

I was thrilled to participate by spending a week on the HMAS Stuart, which is an Anzac class frigate based out of Garden Island in Sydney. As a South Australian, I was pretty keen to get experience on either a frigate or a submarine, given the heritage and the future that we've got in South Australia in naval shipbuilding. We are the home of naval shipbuilding for this country and for our Navy, and we will be building the Attack class submarines, and the Hunter class frigates to replace, ironically enough, the frigates, including the one that I was on, the HMAS Stuart.

We had a week at sea, and, as has been indicated, there are some things you are not allowed to speak about, which of course we respect. We were not so much not allowed to talk about it but not allowed to talk about it for a period of time, because they were actually running drills to be certified for their deployment to East Asia, which is now on the public record but of course was not until they embarked on that, and they will be returning this week or next week, from memory—quite a long deployment of three months. This was in the first week of September. It makes sense, after you've experienced it. It's not until you experience it that you realise that sending a vessel like that away for three months requires such an enormous amount of preparation and training. In the week that I was deployed with them—with the member for Petrie; it was the two of us together—we were running drills off Jervis Bay to make sure that all the different components of the vessel were fully tested and ready for whatever might befall them on the exercise and mission that they were to undertake through East Asia from which they'll return soon.

I was lucky enough to go with another member of parliament, and some people have talked about going with more colleagues than one. It was an excellent opportunity also to talk to them, with my colleague, about not just what they do on that vessel and what their role is within the Navy and within the Defence Force, but obviously also getting the perspective of the entirety of the ADF on what it is that they do, what the rationale is behind elements of the force structure that we've got and the decisions we'll be making into the future, which are so very important for us in this chamber and this House to understand.

We have a pretty healthy bipartisanship around defence in this country. There are always going to be specific, individual types of things that we might have mild disagreements on, but I don't think there's any debate about the importance of a strong ADF that's not supported very, very thoroughly by our government. But that might not always be the case into the future, and there may well be times when we do, as representatives, need to make the public argument for our Defence Force and its structure, and for the enormous investment, I would describe it as, that we make to defence each year to defend our country and our interests. This program gave me a fantastic understanding of that. I am a new member of parliament—I don't know how long my career will be in this place—but, for as long as I'm here, I hope every year to continue participating in the program and to continue to deepen my understanding of the ADF and what they do.

It was also my pleasure to reciprocate by hosting a member of the Australian Army, who was here in parliament for the week as part of the reciprocated program where they spend a week with a member of parliament. I thought that was extremely valuable as well. I think it's very important for members of the armed forces to have the access to and deepen their understanding of the processes that we have here in this parliament across a variety of the things that we do—not just in the chamber but also in committees et cetera—so that we've got that very deep symbiotic relationship between our defence forces and the leadership of our country.

See this speech in context