House debates

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

Motions

ANZUS Treaty: 70th Anniversary

9:32 am

Photo of Scott MorrisonScott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

In accordance with the resolution agreed to earlier, I move:

That the House:

(1) notes that today marks the 70th anniversary of the alliance between Australia and the United States of America under the ANZUS Treaty;

(2) reaffirms the commitment of Australia to that alliance, recognising its fundamental importance to our nation's security, sovereignty and prosperity, and to meeting the opportunities and challenges of our time;

(3) acknowledges that the alliance has underpinned peace, stability and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, and that American leadership remains indispensable to the global rules-based order;

(4) acknowledges that next week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, in response to which the ANZUS Treaty was invoked;

(5) places on record its profound gratitude to the servicemen and women of both our nations who have served together over more than a century; and

(6) acknowledges that the enduring friendship between our nations is underpinned by shared liberal democratic values and principles, and these have been embraced by our peoples across generations.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty, The ANZUS Treaty. ANZUS is the foundation stone of Australia's national security and a key pillar for peace and stability in our Indo-Pacific region and indeed across the world. For seven decades it has underpinned vital military, national security and intelligence cooperation between Australia and the United States, and much more besides. It has been, and I hope will always be, a shared national endeavour, one that has evolved to meet new challenges based on enduring values. The ANZUS Treaty was signed facing the ocean we share on 1 September 1951 in San Francisco. Among its architects, none stands taller than Australia's Minister for External Affairs in the years of the Menzies government, and later ambassador to the United States, Percy Spender. It was Percy Spender's unique foresight and hard-headed realism that helped secure the treaty—just 11 articles and little more than 800 words that have stood the test of time.

Sir Robert Menzies reflected on ANZUS, which I consider to be the greatest achievement of the Menzies government. Towards the end of his prime ministership, he said:

There is a contract between Australia and America. It is a contract based on the utmost goodwill, the utmost good faith and unqualified friendship. Each of us will stand by it.

And so we have—and for more than a century now, even preceding the treaty, from the cornfields of Le Hamel to the unforgiving steep terrain of Mount Tambu in Papua New Guinea, where stretcher-bearer Leslie 'Bull' Allen rescued 12 American soldiers from the battlefield and was recognised for his bravery with the award of the Silver Star. Mates helping mates. This continued in the snow of Korea, the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam and, most recently, in the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan and the evacuation of Kabul.

Our alliance is based on trust and mutual respect, trust and respect so often forged in adversity—as it was in the Second World War when Prime Minister Curtin, almost a decade before ANZUS, turned our focus to the United States in our most desperate hour. It is an alliance based on a positive vision for our region, for a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific. Our alliance is based on a friendship that has never demanded the silence or, indeed, the censure of its critics; rather, we tend the tree of liberty across the Pacific. Ours is a partnership based on hope and on aspiration. We believe in free nations charting their own destinies, free economies trading fairly and openly, and free peoples embracing the future optimistically.

The ANZUS Treaty breathes and adapts with each passing generation. It has been stewarded by 14 presidents, and 14 prime ministers since Sir Robert Menzies. Our relationship now spans security and defence, diplomacy, trade, intelligence, shared facilities, space and cyber, future defence capability, and the shared and deep ties of people, culture and outlook. It embraces collaboration on new technologies, critical minerals and rare earths, strengthening of our supply chains—trusted supply chains—providing vaccines throughout the Pacific, and meeting the challenges of climate change and the new energy economy. Our two peoples see the world through the same lens.

The treaty we celebrate today has leaned into the world, dealing with it honestly as it is but in the hope of it becoming more as we would like it to be. At the launch of the Defence strategic update last year, I said we live in a region where peace, stability and prosperity cannot be taken for granted. Australia is confronting the most challenging strategic environment we have known in many, many decades. This strategic environment will challenge us, as it will challenge our great friends and partners in the United States and across our region, but our alliance will stand resilient in the face of these challenges as we nurture and refresh our commitment to one another. The ANZUS Treaty states that no potential aggressor could be under the illusion that we as allies stand alone in the Pacific.

Our nation's desire to strengthen the fabric of peace and meet the strategic challenges we face continues to be served by our alliance with the United States and the treaty we entered into 70 years ago today. Together we share hope, we share burden and we share vision, a positive vision. We may not be equal in size, but there is no doubting on either side of this partnership the equality of our commitment, of our resolve and of our dedication to the values that underpin our great partnership. Together we have always supported a world that favours freedom.

Our alliance and America's deep engagement in our region are essential as we look to rebuild from the pandemic and shape a free and open Indo-Pacific that is stable, secure and prosperous. In this mission, Australia and the United States work with friends old and new: our longstanding ASEAN partners, our Pacific family, our fellow travellers in the Quad, the Five Eyes and the g7+. We work together for an Indo-Pacific region where the sovereign rights of all nations are respected, that is free of coercion and where disputes are settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of international law. For, as President Eisenhower declared:

… one truth must rule all we think and all we do. … The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.

On this milestone, we recall another anniversary. Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Our then Prime Minister, John Howard, was in Washington DC—indeed, to acknowledge this very anniversary at 50 years. He saw the smoke plume in Washington as this tragedy struck that nation, but he also saw the great spirit and enduring faith of the American people, and their resilience and their determination. On returning home, John Howard addressed this very House as Prime Minister, saying:

… if our debt as a nation to the people of the United States in the darkest days of World War II means anything, if the comradeship, the friendship and the common bonds of democracy and a belief in liberty, fraternity and justice mean anything, it means that the ANZUS Treaty applies …

And indeed it did. It was the first and remains the only time the ANZUS Treaty has been formally invoked. While ANZUS has only been invoked that one time, the intent of that treaty and the values that that treaty represents have underpinned our deep and enduring relationship with the United States for the past 70 years and will for decades to come.

Last week we spoke in this House about our response to the 2001 terrorist attacks, attacks that shaped much of the following years. Last week the horrific events at Kabul airport's Abbey Gate reminded us again of the enormous price our ally has paid for its role in the world. The United States has so often established the very peace and safety that so many nations shelter under—the remarkable achievement of shaping a postwar world that resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the postwar rules based order, with the Marshall Plan, described by General Marshall himself as a policy 'directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty and desperation'; the rebuilding of Japan, our great friend; and the security umbrella for the development of Asia; the Berlin airlift, which defied Soviet coercion and kept the flame of liberty alive, which eventually saw the wall that would enclose them torn down by the hands of those it sought to separate forever; and the ongoing stand against radical Islamist extremism that blasphemes and perverts that religion and dishonours those who seek to live out their faith in peace.

We must recognise that the peace afforded to so many by the United States, including those who have been quick to criticise them, has so often come at such great cost to our great ally, our friend and our partner. This is something Australia will never take for granted or presume upon. As I have said many times, including on the White House lawn, Australia looks to the United States, but we will never leave it to the United States. We stand by each other together and for the truths we both hold dear. 'In sunshine and in sorrow', as President Johnson said, and, in the words of Sir Robert Menzies, 'warmed by the same inner fires'. May that always be true. Finally, as President Reagan reminded us, let us press on, knowing, as he said:

… liberty is not an inevitable state, and there is no law which guarantees that once achieved it will survive.

Let us pledge ourselves again here, on this 70th anniversary of our great alliance, to renew and modernise our alliance, to continue to be vigilant and strong, to build economic strength for the peace and prosperity for all and for a world order that favours freedom. Whatever challenges lie ahead, I know, and Australians know, that Australia and the United States will go on to meet them with the same courage, the same daring and the same unbreakable bond that has carried us to this day and will continue to do so into the future, a bond sealed by the sacrifices of all who served under our flags of Australia and the United States, whom we honour especially this day and in whose name we rededicate ourselves to the values and freedoms they fought to secure for us to uphold and pursue. May our prayer be as a nation that God continue to bless our great alliance, those United States of America and the Commonwealth of Australia.

9:45 am

Photo of Anthony AlbaneseAnthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | | Hansard source

The 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty is a significant opportunity to not just commemorate our shared history but look forward to how our relationship will impact our respective futures. It comes at a time when attention is focused on what conclusions are to be drawn from the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which came to an end this week. What is certain is we know the steadfastness of America's values as we know the steadfastness of our own. There can be no overstatement when it comes to the bond between the United States of America and Australia.

We joined the UN sanctioned mission that was largely led by the United States, and, through to the end, the Americans were our brothers and sisters in arms, unified in the purpose of preventing terrorism and improving the lives of burdened people, particularly the women and girls of Afghanistan. That was true through to the very end, in fact. If it weren't for our American allies, efforts to evacuate thousands of Australians and visa holders in these past weeks would have been no more than wishful thinking. The US presence made the crucial difference to ensuring we were able to take on this difficult task, and their presence came at a great cost, losing 13 of their own as they sought to help others. Their ultimate sacrifice reflects the heavy duty of leadership, and we honour them.

It is a weight that America has carried since World War II, where the origins of ANZUS are to be found in the war in the Pacific and Curtin's turn to America. ANZUS began as quite a specific response to the emergence of the Cold War. It began with a clear focus on the geopolitics of the time. The Korean War was raging. Of course, geopolitical imperatives have not gone away, but the forms of cooperation that underpin our response to them have clearly changed.

The previous Labor government, of which I was a member, undertook some of the most significant reforms to strengthen the Australia-US alliance in decades. We reaffirmed the full knowledge and concurrence principles for our partnership with the United States. This was first entrenched with Prime Minister Bob Hawke's statement to the Australian parliament in 1984, and it has been reaffirmed by successive governments of both political persuasions since. The principles set the foundation for a program of reform directly aimed at new and emerging 21st century security challenges, from space, satellite and defence communications infrastructure to cyber. This included joint statements on cyberspace and on space security and the establishment of space situational awareness, defence satellite communications and a combined communications gateway. We upgraded and modernised existing facilities, including the deployment of a new jointly operated US C-band radar at the Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Station and the relocation of an advanced US space surveillance telescope to Australia. The Obama administration's global force posture review was paralleled by the Labor government initiating its own force posture review, Australia's first since the 1980s Beazley-Dibb review. This led to President Obama's 2011 announcement of the rotation of US marines through Darwin, greater utilisation of Australian airfields in our north and west and the promise of increased US Navy use of Australia's Indian Ocean naval base at HMAS Stirling.

Looking forward, Australia's alliance with the United States sits at the centre of the 2020 Defence strategic update. The strategic update warned of the rapidly changing circumstances in our region and stressed that a 10-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia is no longer an appropriate basis for defence planning. Reduced warning times mean defence plans can no longer assume Australia will have time to gradually adjust military capability and preparedness in response to emerging challenges.

With the US again engaged in a global force posture review, it is time for Australia, too, to have a closer look at its own posture to ensure that it fully meets the times. I therefore announce today that a federal Labor government will initiate a new force posture review upon coming to office. The Indo-Pacific would remain a key focus, and the review would ensure the government is considering both long-term strategic posture and, given fast-moving events in the region, short-term needs. The review would also respond to the continued emergence of cybersecurity as a central challenge to Australia's strategic positioning in the coming decade.

The relationship with the United States is far deeper than a security alliance alone. The United States has been a core economic partner of Australia, and its importance only continues to grow. The US remains our key capital investor, underpinning Australian innovation and driving both our countries to take advantage of emerging technologies. At the foundation of our shared economic prosperity is the global rules based order, the systems, norms and institutions that guide the world's interactions and govern disputes—the rules of the road—which are being tested in ways that weren't conceivable at their postwar conception: a global pandemic that continues to wreak havoc; terrorism and extremism that continue to find safe haven; the return of great power competition; the undermining of rules based trade; and the use of economic coercion for strategic ends.

The US and Australia have been close allies in building and strengthening these rules of the road, including in our region. But we need to do more, and we can only do more with friends and with partners. We welcome the return of American leadership and the rules based order under President Biden, and his dedicated effort in repairing alliances. But even when the United States stepped back from its longstanding leadership on trade and other forms of multilateralism during the Trump administration, Australia held the line and, importantly, held the door open for our friends in the United States.

Nowhere has this been clearer than in Australia's efforts, together with Japan, to resurrect the TPP in the form of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Indeed, Australia's partnerships and leadership in the Indo-Pacific are our principal value-add to the alliance and we have an opportunity and responsibility to work closely with the administration as it develops its Indo-Pacific strategy, including building its economic footprint, particularly in South-East Asia. We must work with key partners, such as India, Japan, Indonesia, ASEAN, Korea, the EU and others both to strengthen economic engagement and to uphold the rules of the road.

Many of our neighbours want the balance that will come from greater US engagement and they are clear that there must be economic engagement as well as security partnerships. Australia should be doing all that it can to encourage the US to support Indo-Pacific regional pandemic recovery, reinforce ASEAN's centrality and strengthen regional architecture. As I've said previously, this includes rejuvenating the WTO and its appellate body. It includes boosting US economic integration in the region, strengthening regional architecture. We welcome the recent visits by Vice President Harris and defence secretary Austin to South-East Asia and see these as important first steps in a US step-up in the region. We hope to see this grow rapidly in recognition of the vital strategic importance of this region, and Australia must be prepared to step up its own engagement to support it.

At a time when regional uncertainty is high, a deeper US commitment to ensuring all states have the capacity to protect their sovereignty is vitally important. President Biden's early embrace of the Quad was a welcome development, and there will be much opportunity for further US-Australia cooperation in that context as well. Labor remains strongly committed to this.

One final manifestation of how our alliance relationship needs to continue to evolve is climate change, one of the most significant security challenges of the 21st century. Climate change remains beyond this government's grasp. The 2020 Defence strategic update only manages to acknowledge climate change once, stating that it plays a part in 'greater political instability and friction' which will 'reshape our security environment'. Former Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Chris Barrie and other former senior Australian security and military leaders such as Air Vice-Marshal Blackburn have been calling for the government to fully assess the security risks from climate change. This must happen.

Indeed, it is our Pacific partners who face current and existential threats of rising sea levels and who are urging Australia to step up in word and in deed. We know the risk climate bears on our security, and we have already vividly seen some of the impact it has had on the operations of the Australian Defence Force. This has included responding to the bushfire crisis over the summer of 2019-20 and the rising demands on our nation for the ADF to assist in climate driven natural disasters and humanitarian assistance missions such as Operation Fiji Assist.

In the US, senior leaders have been talking for years about the security implications of climate change. We know it is having geostrategic and regional impacts as well as direct impacts on defence systems, infrastructure and operations. Despite this government's abstinence, the importance of climate change and the impact it will have on defence and security has been embraced by our alliance partner the United States.

Secretary of Defense Austin has already identified climate change as a top priority for the US military. At his Fullerton address in Singapore in July this year, he described climate change as an existential threat and a challenge that we must meet together. The US military has acknowledged that climate change is not a future defence problem but an immediate challenge. It is time the Australia-US alliance reflected this reality.

We should immediately deepen US-Australian cooperation on climate change security issues. We must develop operational plans to address the natural disasters and humanitarian outcomes. We must study and plan for how other states may seek to exploit its impacts on regional security. We must develop capabilities and shared responsibilities to mitigate its worst impacts. We should cooperate on technological development to take advantage of the economic opportunity that comes from the shift to clean energy to develop cheaper energy prices and facilitate an expansion of high-value manufacturing capacity. This will assist to build economic resilience in the event of future shocks from pandemics, cybersecurity or regional instability.

A cooperative approach on climate change would allow us to work together and to strengthen our engagement with all countries of the Indo-Pacific, who equally share this challenge. On coming to office, I will make comprehensive cooperation on climate change a hallmark of alliance cooperation. The alliance will continue to be one of the three central components of Labor foreign policy along with regional cooperation and multilateralism well into the future.

The Biden administration's strategic engagement in our neighbourhood and leadership on climate is critical to realising a region that is prosperous and peaceful and where sovereignty is respected. While so much of the region's immediate focus is the response to COVID, it's more profound concern is climate change. Australia's own action on climate change will therefore shape our capacity to live in a region where our interests prosper in partnership with our neighbours and our American allies. Our alliance with the United States has served us well for 70 years. I look forward to it developing with even greater dynamism for many more to come.

10:00 am

Photo of Barnaby JoyceBarnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to rise today and add to the comments of the Prime Minister of Australia and also the Leader of the Opposition and to commend those comments to the House.

My father best reflects what it is like to have the United States as an ally—he as a New Zealander and I as an Australian. He remembers, as a serving member, being in Wellington Harbour in New Zealand. They had little fuel, few boats and not much of an air force, and they were watching Japanese spotter planes while my grandfather fought in the Pacific islands up to Guadalcanal. Then one day he turned around, and there was the American Navy. He said to his other serving members: 'We've just won.' That is what is required. Never doubt the family, which is New Zealand. Never underestimate, as he always said to me, the inspired power of the American people when put to the flame. It's not just strength in military but strength based on shared values. Liberty of the individual, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, rights to private property, no discrimination against ethnicity—these are the cement that binds us together. These are the reason that we strive for what is right, what is just and what is good and that we have an obligation to be part of that process which is ANZUS. In a world moving step-by-step back to totalitarianism, where democracy slips to a form of quasi-democracy and quasi-democracy slips back to autocracy, where autocracy is not tempered by the collegiate aspects of cabinet forms of government or by referring to an executive but goes out and parrots the mouthpiece of the supreme leader.

Without being smart, because I'm not, there is a Latin phrase, 'si vis pacem para bellum', which means 'if you want peace, prepare for war'. We want peace. No-one, ever, encourages war. We want peace, but this is an essential component of what must happen if you want peace. It comes from Epitoma rei militaris, by a guy called Vegetius. It's Latin because it's been the same through history. There is nothing new about this. Preparation needs mass, and mass needs allies. Looking forward requires a learnt experience, a learnt experience over the long term, a learnt experience over a hundred years, of which 70 years is part of ANZUS, but it is a learnt experience over a hundred years, not a memory of the 1990s. The world has changed. Now the geopolitical circumstances show an uncomfortable resemblance to the power jousting in Europe in a previous century.

ANZUS comes with a cost, and it must have the capacity for a bipartisan understanding—and I see that today—of exactly what we need that contract for and exactly how we tie it to that contract. It comes with the requirement for this parliament to show to the Australian people continually why we were involved in Korea, why we were involved in Vietnam, why we were involved in Iraq and why we were involved for 20 years in Afghanistan. Friends have to understand that your heart is where your legs are as well, that you honestly believe in those shared values, that you are willing to say to your people from a parliament: 'This is essential. This is essential, as the contract that is essential for us.'

ANZUS is an insurance policy for the freedoms of our nation. ANZUS is the insurance policy that lets us sit in this chamber. ANZUS is the insurance policy that keeps us from being, if not defeated, a supplicant. ANZUS is the insurance policy that is essential for us in a new geopolitical world where the fuels of the bushfire are so apparent. I commend the motion to the House and thank the opposition, the Prime Minister and this government for their recommitment to this great and noble cause.

Photo of Tony SmithTony Smith (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

I call the honourable the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. We have no audio. I say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, if he can hear, that we can see him but not hear him. What I'll do is call the Minister for Defence, and then we can come back.

10:06 am

Photo of Peter DuttonPeter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | | Hansard source

I follow the fine words of the Prime Minister, the opposition leader and the Deputy Prime Minister, and join with all of them and people in both the United States and Australia today who recognise the giants that stand behind the success, the creation, the formation of the ANZUS alliance.

The Prime Minister spoke of Percy Spender and many other leaders on both sides—Democrat and Republican, Labor and Liberal. We have over the course of the last 70 years been incredibly well served as a nation because of their efforts—the efforts of Menzies and Curtin, of Holt and Johnson, of Hawke and Reagan, of Bush 41 and Bush 43, of Howard and of prime ministers since that period. We have each seen the importance and the necessity of the alliance to the mutual benefit of our two countries. We've done that because we share values, we share history and, most importantly, we share a future. We recognise those efforts, but we would do them a disservice if we didn't recommit to this alliance in a way that made a rallying call for people in our own region in the years and decades ahead.

Spender had incredible foresight, as did others over different periods of this 70 years, in recognising that there would be a future of uncertainty. We know now in the Indo-Pacific that we live in a more uncertain time, more so than any period since the Second World War. We can highlight the Battle of the Coral Sea and the efforts in PNG and elsewhere in the region that provided security to our nation over the course of the Second World War. There are countries in our region now that look to Australia, the United States and New Zealand because of the values we bring to the table. It is more important than ever in a time when the Chinese Communist Party are increasing their military assets at an unprecedented rate, when their acquisition of nuclear weapons and their deployment of their grey zone powers in our region are without precedent.

If we mean anything in our region, we represent it most ably through this alliance. The values we bring to the table for countries in our region mean they have the ability to trust in us. Millions of people across our region have been lifted from poverty or live a better life today because of peace in our region, and it must be maintained. The ANZUS alliance has been forged in war and in peacetime, and it now serves us in a particular way because there are countries who need our support now more than ever in the Indo-Pacific. Those countries will continue to look to the United States in the good times and bad. We need to make sure that, through our commitments—in a military sense, in a trade sense, in other ways that reflect our values—we speak very loudly about that commitment.

We have seen the United States at its best when it is in an alliance—in an alliance and a coalition with others who share her values. And Australia ticks each of those boxes, and our friends in New Zealand tick each of those boxes. The work of New Zealand in the Indo-Pacific will be more important in the coming years and decades than ever before, and it will give even greater meaning to this ANZUS agreement. Our commitment to provide support to troops from the United States across the north of our country, in particular, is more important than ever and is only possible because of this alliance. The intelligence that we shared in Kabul in recent days, which ultimately saved the lives of Australian citizens, our troops, and those visa holders, was only possible because of this alliance. It is only the most recent manifestation of the significance of this collaboration, of this partnership.

I want to commend the Prime Minister for his work in the Quad and in other multilateral fora, but this is the pre-eminent body for us. The work between the Biden administration and the Morrison administration now, as I think people over the coming months will come to realise, will reinforce the value of this relationship. The ANZUS alliance under this government has never been stronger. I can say that with absolute commitment and dedication to the ANZUS alliance. I want to recognise all of those whom we deal with regularly, in particular the Secretary of Defense in the United States and our other counterparts. This alliance means more to Australia and the United States and to the Indo-Pacific than even Percy Spender could have imagined. As I said in my opening remarks, to do them justice we must give this commitment in a substantive way, because it represents the values of each of us; and together as an alliance, as a coalition, as a family, we are at our strongest.

Photo of Tony SmithTony Smith (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

I will just try again calling the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. No, I'm sorry, it's still not working. I think Broadcasting are going to try one more thing. I will call the member for Gorton.

10:12 am

Photo of Brendan O'ConnorBrendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs (House)) Share this | | Hansard source

[by video link] The 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty is a significant occasion to celebrate and gives us cause to emphasise the strong and enduring Australia-US alliance. The bond between the United States and Australia cannot be overstated. It is a bond that goes back to before World War II. It was in 1941 when the wartime Prime Minister John Curtin's relationship with the US reflected the genuine Australian desire to establish a close strategic partnership under which, formally under the Menzies government, the ANZUS treaty was founded.

Today in this place we affirm the commitment of Australia to that alliance and recognise its fundamental important to our nation's security, sovereignty and prosperity. It is an alliance that has underpinned peace, stability and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Our nations have served together over more than a century, and we extend our gratitude to the service men and women of both nations who work to uphold this peace and stability. The alliance between our two nations is one that is underpinned by shared democratic values and principles embraced across nations.

Today is also marked with a significance by Labor's announcement that we will commit to a Defence Force posture review if elected in the next term. In February this year US President Biden tasked Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, to conduct a global posture review to ensure the footprint of American service members worldwide is correctly sized and supports strategy, with a strong focus on the Indo-Pacific. Australia has only conducted two fully-fledged Defence posture reviews in recent times—former defence minister Kim Beazley's mid-1980s review and former defence minister Stephen Smith's review in 2012. As a minister in the previous Labor government I did witness the significant reforms undertaken to strengthen the Australia-US alliance. The United States force posture initiative in our north was a program that began under Prime Minister Gillard and President Obama in 2011 amid the Defence Force posture review that Labor commissioned. This led to our current Marine Rotational Force in Darwin.

An Albanese Labor government will conduct the first Defence Force posture review since 2012. With six defence ministers in eight long years, the government has been neglecting planning on posture despite deteriorating strategic circumstances. A Labor Defence Force posture review would ensure the Australian government is considering both long-term strategic posture and whether the Australian defence units, assets and facilities are prepared for the military to take action in a timely way. This independent review will investigate the future security and strategic environment, the importance of domestic and demographic issues and their impact on defence facilities, as well as the strategic location of ADF bases and assets. This will also assist us in preparing for humanitarian and disaster responses, including those related to climate change.

The 2020 strategic update warned of the rapidly changing circumstances in our region and stressed that a 10-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia is no longer an appropriate basis for defence planning. Reduced warning times means defence plans can no longer assume Australia will have time to gradually adjust military capability and preparedness in response to emerging challenges. This is particularly concerning when we know our major defence asset contracts are over budget and face years of delay and do not always represent value for money. We need to do better to deliver what our ADF and our country needs. We need to ensure our negotiations deliver assets on time, on budget and with appropriate local industry content. Labor's plan is to build on the foreign policy and defence traditions that have underpinned Australia's relations with our alliances, our region and the world to foster democracy and to maintain peace.

10:16 am

Photo of Mr Tony BurkeMr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | | Hansard source

Before the debate is adjourned, I'd simply seek leave on the understanding that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition would make his remarks at a later hour this day.

Photo of Tony SmithTony Smith (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

Yes, with the agreement of the House we can do that between items of business and between the introductions.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.

Debate adjourned.