Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

It's colourful language, but, nonetheless, I think Kim Beazley is absolutely on the money in what he says there.

But it's not just about funding for the submarines or for the technology; it's also about all the complementary investments we have to make to make AUKUS work. We need to have submarine bases that can support submarines. We have to have those at Stirling in Western Australia, for instance, but also on the east coast. We've seen those opposite say they're going to have an east coast base. But we wait, month by month—where's it going to be? There's no answer on that. We've got to have places to build and sustain these submarines. I was over at Henderson in Western Australia just last week, and what we have seen committed from this government so far is $127 million to building the facility at Henderson that's going to build and sustain the submarines. And yet we know from Bechtel that the actual cost of what's required here is 100 times that. None of that funding is there. So it's no wonder the Americans are worried. They should be worried, because we are not serious about defending our great nation—well, we are, on this side of the House, sorry. The government are not serious about defending this great nation, they are not serious about AUKUS and they are not serious about the importance of the US alliance. That puts the prosperity and security of our great country at risk.

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