Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit that I was impressed when I read this motion on the Notice Paper, not because it's yet another example of the Morrison government using defence as a political tactic—I have come to expect that from this government—it's the sheer hubris of talking about a $270 billion defence capability investment in a self-congratulatory motion when they have delivered very little except for media stunts, like sitting in a fighter jet while Kenny Loggins blares Top Gun. They spent a lot of money it seems, or so they say, but what do we have to show for it? Well, we have a very big capability gap while new kit is delayed, delayed and delayed because of this government's incompetence.

Labor has been calling out this government's multibillion-dollar effective cuts to promised spending on new defence equipment. In Senate estimates this week, the defence department confirmed what Labor has been saying when the department produced figures showing $10.4 billion in cuts to defence's military equipment acquisition budget since the release of the 2016 white paper. That's not what you read in the newspapers or the media releases. There have been $2.1 billion in cuts just this year, according to the budget papers just released. That's what hubris looks like.

Let's look at what we actually got for the money that has been spent. We have a potential nine-year capability gap in our submarine program while we wait and wait and wait for the new ones to be delivered. We have the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, our newest aircraft, which the marketing-man Prime Minister was recently in the jump seat of, posing for photos, with Kenny Loggins blaring. But it is flying only 64 per cent of its planned hours during 2021—more 'goose' than 'top gun'. And the list goes on.

The Morrison government is there for the cringe photo ops with the big jets and the ships to make it look tough on national security in the pickies, but it's not delivering for our men and women in uniform. It's not on their side. The only side the Prime Minister is on is his own.

Mr Sharma interjecting—

I invite the member for Wentworth to come to my electorate to see where the Williamstown shipyard used to build ships under the Labor government. It's shuttered under the coalition government. This is a shipyard that had been building ships in Australia since Ned Kelly was in a prison hulk on the port. It closed under the Morrison government. There were 1,400 jobs in defence manufacturing lost because of the incompetence of this government on defence.

There's no national interest that the government won't subvert for they're own short-term domestic political interests. While the government are leaving our armed forces without the equipment that they need when they need it, they're out there beating the drums of war with China so that they'll have something to talk about at the next election. They can't talk about their record and they can't talk about their plans for the future, so they're confecting them. Our defence forces and our defence industry deserve better. The Australia people deserve better.

In my portfolio, in cybersecurity, the government's approach to capability is even worse. The domestic capability of Australia's cybersecurity industry is now a crucial part of Australia's ability to defend itself, and it could be a major source of jobs in Australia's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 Defence strategic update and the 2020 Force structure plan recognise the importance of cybercapabilities for Australia's defence forces. The defence mobilisation review found that, in the cyberfronts of modern unconventional warfare, many of the targets will be civilian businesses and individuals and that, similarly, the resources needed to respond will be mostly privately held. But whilst it's constantly talking about investment in sovereign defence capability, this government has no plans to develop sovereign capabilities in cybersecurity.

Indeed, industry development was a significant plank in the 2016 cybersecurity strategy, developed under the member for Wentworth's predecessor, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Unfortunately, industry development is utterly absent from the 2019 cybersecurity strategy. It doesn't appear at all. Apparently, there used to be no more exciting time to work in cybersecurity in Australia than under the former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. But today it is utterly forgotten about in this government.

Technology is moving fast and constantly changing. That's why, to be effective, our cybersecurity capabilities need to be embedded in a diverse, interconnected and rapidly evolving private sector. Cybersecurity is an ecosystem; you can't defend a nation from cyberthreats from within silos within the defence department and the intelligence community. But there is literally no plan for industry development in cybersecurity. The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, invested in AustCyber, an industry development firm, in the 2016 cybersecurity strategy. Now there are zero dollars from the Commonwealth going to AustCyber and it has been forced to merge with a private sector body in order to save it. No wonder, then, that the 2021-2022 budget had lots of money for our security agencies but little money for our cybersecurity industry.

If the Morrison government were serious on delivering on its national security photo ops, it would stop missing the opportunity and develop a strategic industry technology policy. (Time expired)

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