Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak about something that is very critical and important not only in my electorate but also for national security. I speak about Minister Combet’s backflip on the government allowing a company to source defence fabric from China. We had the Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science only today indicate that he has overturned a decision regarding a contract to allow an Australian company that sews the defence uniforms to source this fabric from China. This directly contradicted, of course, a Defence statement of yesterday that there existed a contract to source fabric from China. It also contradicted the Labor candidate in Indi, who said this morning that only some fabric would be sourced from China.

We know what the truth is. The truth is that seven months ago there was a tender granted allowing the sourcing of camouflage fabric for Australian Defence personnel uniforms to be bought from China, and we know that seven months later, only with extraordinary publicity in the media when this was made public and there was outrage, the government spin machine moved in to try to stifle the truth of the matter.

This secret decision was taken last year around the same time as the minister adopted a very important policy regarding priority industry capabilities. An official document tells us that these priority industry capabilities:

… are defined as those capabilities that confer an essential strategic advantage by being available from within Australia and which, if not available, would significantly undermine defence self reliance and Australian Defence Force (ADF) operational capability.

The document goes on to list these priority industry capabilities, and under the heading ‘What are the PICs?’ the very last dot point is, lo and behold, ‘Combat Clothing and Personal Equipment’. So the minister himself, in allowing the department to authorise the sourcing of camouflage fabric from overseas, is actually defying his own policy guidelines. You have to wonder if this is sheer incompetence or whether it is the result of a government that has driven this nation into record debt and deficit and is now penny-pinching and scrimping to try and save a few dollars here and there.

How much are we going to save? It was revealed in Senate estimates today that the Chinese tender was only 10 per cent cheaper than the Australian tender and that was only going to save Defence $1.5 million. Think of all the money that has been wasted with the home insulation program and all the rorting that has occurred there. Think of all those school halls that schools never wanted and had been tendered at very high prices. Think of all the waste of money going overseas that was supposed to stimulate the Australian economy. And yet this government was going to jeopardise the security of Australian servicemen and women by having this highly developed fabric produced by an overseas power. It just goes to show their priorities and their desperation in trying to retrieve some economic credibility.

It is not just this pointless exercise in penny-pinching. This fabric, developed by Bruck Textiles in my electorate, in conjunction with Defence, does have very special spectral qualities. Australian taxpayers’ dollars have been invested in the development of this wonderful innovation, and this money was going to effectively be exported overseas. The government needs to stand accountable. The Minister for Defence needs to answer the questions: why did he allow this to happen in the first place and what other Defence contracts does the minister know about in his department that jeopardise Australian jobs and Australian industries? I will be pursuing the answers to these questions. These issues are of concern not only to people in my electorate but to people right around Australia. Minister, you will not be able to escape answering these questions indefinitely.