Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This MPI is just another example of the shadow opposition we have over there. The shadow minister for defence wants to talk about this but not to refer to anything that has happened in the last decade. We've just heard every single speech. They didn't refer to anything that they actually achieved in defence, because they didn't. In fact, we do know that the pressure that they put on our relationship with one of our great allies, France, and the billions of dollars that were wasted on submarines that were never delivered—they were things that we had to get into government and fix straightaway. The fact is that none of them could talk about it. I think I counted 132 times that the member for Riverina said 'Labor', but he never once said anything about what they did. Ten years, seven ministers and God knows how many press releases—I mean, they think that you could defend this country on a pile of press releases, because that's all they did. They talked about, 'Oh, we're going to spend'—'We're gunna, gunna, gunna'—but they never did. They never actually delivered anything.

And when you're relying on the member for Petrie as one of your intellects, you know you're in trouble. This guy couldn't deliver a pizza, let alone a submarine, let alone for the defence of our nation. But the consistent thing that we have seen is that, under the chaotic mess we had for nine years, defence was treated poorly.

They like to wrap themselves in flags and say, 'Ra-ra-ra,' but what did they do? Remember: it was a Liberal minister who said that he wouldn't trust Australian workers to deliver a canoe. What a disgraceful thing to say! But that's what we got under this lot. Ninety-seven years we were going to have to wait for them to get to everything that they promised to do and never ever did. It's no wonder that they want to go back and focus on things that happened 15 or 16 years ago, because they know, in their own hearts, that they failed in defence for nine years in government. All we saw was announcement after announcement after announcement after announcement, but never a delivery.

Defence is important. I think it was the member for Bruce who said that it's probably the most important thing we need to do. But what you don't hear from those opposite is how they want to actually build, how they want to go forward, how they want to increase things and how they can actually work together.

Australians made it very clear at the last election that they want a government focused on the future. We're at a time in history that is challenging, to say the least. What we found when we came to govern was that we have holes in our capability that we've never had before—issues we face, travelling forward, in the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Talking about nuclear subs—for them, we made a deal with everyone on the planet. But never once did you actually invest in the workforce. In the rant by the member of New England, he talked about nuclear. Let's talk about nuclear. We have a shortfall of engineers. We have a shortfall of people for these subs coming forward, because, under the plan that you had in your government, for 40 years we're going to have a hole in submarines—because all you did when you, the LNP, were in government was create press releases and deliver nothing.

We've got issues with things you have been involved in. We've seen 28 projects running late—28. Under the last Labor government, in six years we listed 21 projects of concern. What did you do? Four—four projects. Part of the problem was MRA—

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