Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

secretly stripping billions of dollars out of defence through a strategic reserve adjustment. When you take it all back, they cut defence spending; we're increasing it.

The empty hypocrisy of what they say has also been revealed with the Red Sea. For the past few months they have been saying that, if ever asked, they would send a ship to the Red Sea. But it turns out that when they were asked, when the Leader of the Opposition was in charge, they said no—and his excuse is that he didn't know a request had been made. He's asking the Australian people not to blame him; he was just asleep at the wheel.

Well, at least over the past two weeks on the ABC the shadow minister for defence has revealed himself as a man of the future. I mean, here we were thinking we needed to be investing in AI and quantum, and all the while the shadow minister for defence had been preparing to overwhelm our adversaries with overhead projectors and a slide! They were hands-down the worst defence government in our nation's history. The Albanese government is willing to stand up and lead and make difficult decisions to keep Australians safe.

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