Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the decision by the government to purchase four C17 aircraft and the announcement that, following the complete delivery of the anticipated aircraft, they will be based at Amberley in the electorate of Blair. This is fantastic news for the community of Ipswich and for the defence forces in general. These are very advanced aircraft; they first flew in 1991. The decision to purchase them by Australia was announced by the Minister for Defence on 3 March.

As I understand it, a total of $2 billion is being invested in this purchase. But, in order to facilitate the basing of those aircraft at Amberley, a major upgrade of Amberley will be required, and something like $400 million in total could well find its way onto our local base as a result of this decision. There will be $200 million, basically, to provide hangers and simulators and those sorts of things, but I also understand that up to 10 per cent of the purchase price of the aircraft will be invested by Boeing in new facilities at Amberley Air Force Base. This means jobs, it means the future of the Ipswich region, it means the growth of our wonderful defence community and it means the realisation of the expectation that people in our local community have had for some time—that Amberley is to grow to become a super base, the backbone of the Defence Force in Australia, the transport hub. With the provision of C17 aircraft for the military based at Amberley, we will start to realise the potential of that as a hub for the military.

The C17 enables the ADF to rapidly deploy troops, combat vehicles, heavy equipment and helicopters. Even the M1A1 Abrams tank, which is being purchased by the Australian military, can also be deployed using this aircraft, something that cannot be done at present using the C130 aircraft, which are our greatest capacity aircraft at the present time.

The first aircraft, I understand, is to be delivered before Christmas, with another aircraft in July and the final two in 2008. That will mean that, in addition to the F111s currently based at Amberley, we will have the A330 refuelling aircraft based at Amberley and the C17s. We will have a sizeable contingent of people working directly on those planes, but obviously, as these aircraft are basically orientated towards logistics, it will mean that we will also need to have a huge contingent of people to load and unload, to tranship material and to realise the great potential that these aircraft now give the RAAF. (Time expired)