Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2024, which, put simply, is creating a new committee to have parliamentary oversight of defence matters in this building that would be able to deal with classified material—top secret material.

This morning, we saw something that I don't think I've ever seen in my 16 to 17 years in parliament when we have welcomed a Governor-General, commencing their term on 1 January. We saw something that we don't see very often, which was the Great Hall open and all the doors open so that, if you stood under the flagpole, you could look north all the way through the building out to the front, under the Great Verandah, past the First Nations area and all the way up to the War Memorial. One of the design features of this building is that north-south line, where the public can theoretically go straight through the building all the way to the Prime Minister sitting at her or his desk. The other line of power is obviously, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou, through your chair—the Speaker's chair—through the building, through the chamber, under the flagpole and then out to the Senate on the other side.

We don't see the building open like that very often. But, as the Prime Minister mentioned in question time today, it reminds us of the things that must be on the minds of the parliament, the executive and the Prime Minister in making a decision to send people into harm's way in the service of our nation. Obviously, that other line of power is because the Governor-General is actually the Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force. I'll just touch on some of those duties. The Governor-General's duties as commander-in-chief are, through the Federal Executive Council, to appoint the Chief of the Defence Force and the service chiefs; to commission officers in the Navy, Army and Air Force; to present colours, banners and other honours to military units and personnel; to visit military units to acknowledge the service of service personnel; and to lead Australia's response, celebration and acknowledgement at commemorative events. So the Governor-General does have that significant role in terms of engaging with Defence, and it was great today to hear the Governor-General, Her Excellency Sam Mostyn, acknowledge her 90-year-old father, who was there, who's also been a member of the Defence Force. It was quite a symmetry.

Whilst the Governor-General is the commander-in-chief, Australia has that strange tradition where it's not the Governor-General who declares we are going off to war or into a conflict. That would be the executive. It has changed over time, obviously, from when the colonies combined to form that country called Australia on 1 January 1901. There has been a gradual change from World War I, where, basically, because the United Kingdom declared they were at war, Billy Hughes said, 'We are at war.' He said that because the British parliament declared they were at war. Prime Minister Menzies, at the start of World War II, took the same approach. But things have changed, obviously. It's important that we look at that relationship between the ability to go to war and what the defence committee will do.

I see the deputy chair from the public works committee sitting opposite, and recently we had the chance to visit one of our great Defence facilities down in southern New South Wales, where we make some of our explosives—

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