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

The shadow minister for defence has said he wants to see a dramatic increase in defence capability by 2026, but he cannot even secure agreement within his own ranks to support Labor's increase in defence spending. What makes it worse is that those opposite, when they were in government, chronically underfunded defence, an underfunding of defence which, under them, would not have seen new amphibious craft for our army until the 2030s, a new surface combatant for our navy until 2034 or the manufacture of guided weapons until 2035. What made it even worse was that they were completely incapable of making a difficult decision. They were elected in 2013. Having changed their minds twice, it was not until 2021 that they settled on the successor submarine to the Collins class. Even then, they were saved by the fact that they were thrown out of government seven months later, before they could change their minds again.

Underwriting it all was a complete incompetence, incompetence that was led by their last defence minister, the Leader of the Opposition, incompetence which saw seven different defence ministers during the course of nine years, incompetence which saw 28 different defence projects running a combined 97 years over time. That has all changed because, in the last two years, the Albanese government has been making the decisions to do what it takes to rebuild our Defence Force and to keep Australians safe.

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