I rise to support the Defence Legislation Amendment (Accelerating Capability and Protecting Bases) Bill 2026. The bill should be understood as part of something much larger. It is yet another positive step in the transformation of Australia's defence posture that has been underway since the Albanese Labor government took office.

We are spending more on defence, but the challenge before Australia is not simply to spend more on defence. It is to identify the capabilities our nation needs, acquire them faster, build and sustain more of them here at home, reduce sovereign risk, firm up supply chains, work effectively with our allies and trusted partners, and protect those capabilities, the people behind them and, importantly, the places from which they operate. That takes investment, and this government is providing it at a level unprecedented in living memory. But it also takes strategy, industry, skills, partnerships, accountability and, saliently, laws that are fit for the strategic environment in which the Australian Defence Force now operates.

The bill establishes a new defence capability framework to support capability development, testing, evaluation and preparedness, alongside a defence security zone framework to better protect defence personnel, the facilities, the information, the activities and the capabilities. Importantly, the bill also provides for independent oversight by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force.

I've spoken in this House before about Australia facing the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War. In fact, there are more conflicts right now than there ever have been since the Second World War. This is not a slogan. It is the starting point for serious defence policy—policy based on our own needs and interests and the development of a sovereign capability.

Since 2022, the Albanese government has been systematically answering some fundamental questions: What kind of Defence Force does Australia need? What capabilities must it possess? How rapidly must we acquire them? What must Australia do to build and sustain ourselves? And how do we make our Defence Force, our economy, our infrastructure and our communities more resilient? There is a clear chronology to what then followed.

In 2022, one of the first actions of the Albanese Labor government was to commission the Defence Strategic Review, led independently by former defence minister and former foreign minister Professor Stephen Smith and former Chief of the Defence Force, Sir Angus Houston. I know both of these men, and I know the seriousness and the expertise they bring to their work. That review was commissioned within the government's first 100 days. We did not begin with an arbitrary spending figure. We began by examining Australia's strategic circumstances, determining the force structure needed to respond to them, and then identifying the capabilities required to make that force credible.

The Defence Strategic Review was released in April 2023. It identified six priorities for immediate action: nuclear powered submarines, through AUKUS; longer range strike and Australian munitions manufacturing; strengthening our northern bases; growing and retaining the defence workforce; translating disruptive technologies into military capability more rapidly; and deepening Australia's diplomatic and defence relationships across the Indo-Pacific. As I've said previously in this House, thanks indeed to the extraordinary leadership of ministers Marles, Conroy, Keogh, Kahlil and Thistlethwaite, a great deal has followed on from that strategic review process.

In March 2023, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom announced the AUKUS optimal pathway. That pathway provides for increasing submarine visits; the Submarine Rotational Force-West, from as early as next year; Australia's acquisition of Virginia class submarines, from the early 2030s; and, ultimately, the construction of SSN-AUKUS. For Western Australia, this is very real. HMAS Stirling will sit at the centre of the Submarine Rotational Force-West, with a planned rotational presence from as early as next year of one UK and up to four US conventionally armed and nuclear powered submarines. That means infrastructure, engineers, apprentices, nuclear stewardship, security, maintenance, sustainment and Australian supply chains. It means the development of sovereign Australian capability.

In April 2024, the government delivered Australia's first national defence strategy, establishing a strategy of denial as the cornerstone of defence planning and directing the ADF towards becoming an integrated, focused force. Modern deterrence requires integration across maritime, land, air space and cyber domains. It requires intelligence, resilient infrastructure and supply chains, advanced technology and a strong Australian industrial base, and that requires investment. The 2024 National Defence Strategy provided an additional $5.7 billion over four years and $50.3 billion over the decade above the previous Defence funding trajectory. The Australian Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Plan committed $16 billion to $21 billion across the decade, including Australian manufacture of the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles and maintenance of the Naval Strike and Joint Strike missiles. Buying capability is one thing; being able to replenish it, repair it, modify it and sustain it in a crisis is another.

That same year, Labor also introduced legislation for a dedicated Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence modelled in significant respects to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, on which I serve, and able to deal with the classified information. A statutory Defence committee had been a bipartisan recommendation actually over several parliamentary reports. When we build capability, we also have to build proper parliamentary oversight. The coalition, unfortunately though, played politics and failed to support the bill at that time and delayed the establishment of the committee.

In 2025, much of this planning became increasingly tangible. In January, the government committed another $262 million to develop Australia's AUKUS submarine supply chain, supporting around 125 Australian businesses with the skills, security, accreditation, manufacturing, equipment and qualifications for international submarine supply chains. Then, in September, the Prime Minister announced $12 billion in new funding for the Henderson defence precinct in Western Australia. By then the additional Defence investment over the decade had reached $70 billion.

Henderson will support continuous naval ship building, AUKUS, surface-vessel sustainment and future submarine support, with the government projecting more than 10,000 local jobs. On any visit there, you will see the place and how it's transforming. The energy, the absolute dedication and focus across all tiers of government—local, state and federal—is actually an extraordinary example of how we can work fast and collaboratively where it's needed on such a priority project.

The Prime Minister spoke of investment in both our capability and our relationships. That is an important distinction. Sovereign capability does not mean strategic isolation. Australian capability becomes stronger when Australian industry and workers are connected to the technology, the expertise and the scale of trusted partners. We are also seeing emerging technology move from theory to practice. During Exercise Talisman Sabre in July 2025, AUKUS partners deployed autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles and advanced algorithms aboard an Australian P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. Later that year, more than 200 defence personnel, scientists and industry participants tested around 30 next-generation capabilities through Maritime Big Play.

In December, the government announced major reform of capability acquisition and sustainment, including the creation of a dedicated Defence Delivery Agency and Australia's first National Armaments Director. Labor also reinforced the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence legislation in October 2025, and it finally passed both houses on 4 March this year. So today Australia has a statutory Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence with legislative scrutiny and parliamentary oversight, and that matters. The larger Defence becomes, the more sophisticated its capabilities become and the more tax money we obviously invest, so a stronger case is made for rigorous parliamentary oversight. Supporting Defence and scrutinising Defence are not competing objectives. Strong accountability makes Defence stronger.

Then we come to this year. The government has again increased the scale and pace of reform. The 2026 National defence strategy and Integrated Investment Program bring the combined additional investment to $117 billion over the decade to 2035-36. The 2026 strategy places greater emphasis on self-reliance, sovereign industrial resilience, international industrial partnerships, national civil preparedness and resilience. Under the NATO methodology, Defence spending is projected to reach three per cent of GDP by 2033. That is why the acquisition reforms matter.

The Defence Delivery Group commenced on 1 July 2026, with reforms intended to provide clearer accountability, stronger contestability and better cost estimation and assurance as Defence transitions towards the Defence Delivery Agency. The government's Rebuilding defence capability report says that with increased investment comes a clear responsibility to ensure Defence has the structures, the skills and the systems necessary to turn that strategy into real capability for the ADF. That task, of course, is made more urgent by the speed of technological change. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, quantum technology, hypersonics, long-range strike, undersea warfare and directed energy systems are developing extraordinarily quickly.

That brings us directly back to the bill. Modern military capability is increasingly developed with Australian companies, scientists, universities, researchers, engineers, startups, major primes and international partners. The new Defence Capability Framework provides a statutory foundation for developing, testing, evaluating and sustaining that capability. But speed must not come at the expense of safeguards, so the framework does not authorise military operations, intelligence collection or law enforcement activity, nor does it create a general exemption from Australian law or remove environmental heritage or native title protections.

The Defence Security Zone Framework addresses the other half of the equation: protecting what we build. Existing Defence security laws were written in years past, and Defence has identified gaps and inconsistencies, including in responding to contemporary threats such as drone incursions. It makes little sense to spend billions developing sophisticated military capabilities while leaving the people, the places and the technology supporting them vulnerable because our laws have not kept pace. The bill addresses that gap.

I just want to return to WA, because for Western Australia sovereign capability is already becoming real. Henderson and HMAS Stirling, as I said, are central to the story, but so are Western Australian businesses. I've spoken previously in this House about Hofmann Engineering in Ashfield and Bayswater, in my electorate of Hasluck, becoming the first qualified Australian company to receive a request for a quote to supply parts into the United States submarine supply chain. The Hofmann story demonstrates what sovereign capability can mean. A business that began as a backyard operation developed into an internationally connected Australian engineering company—Australian engineering, Australian workers and Australian skills connected into one of the most sophisticated defence industrial networks in the world. That is what AUKUS can look like in an Australian suburb, and that is why defence industry policy is a national security policy. Our security depends not just on what Australia can buy but on what we can build, what we can repair and what we can sustain and replenish.

Amid all of these strategies, investment programs, submarines, missiles and technologies, we should never lose sight of one thing: Defence is ultimately about people. Before coming to this place, I served in the signals reserves, and that experience gave me an enduring appreciation of the responsibilities that come with service and of the people who put on our nation's uniform. Since coming to parliament, I have continued to maintain that connection, including through Exercise Pitch Black, the ADF exchange programs and hosting officers from the ADF through the ADF parliamentary internship program. I'm also engaged through the ANU national security program, and I encourage every MP and senator in this place to participate in the same.

So this bill matters. Capability matters because we may ask our Australian service men and women to use it. I will conclude by saying that we are working now to develop that capability faster and to protect the capability better. I commend the bill to the House.