Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and acknowledge his service. Shortly the government will be releasing its response to the independent review of our surface fleet. This will be a blueprint for building the most capable Australian Navy in almost a century. But it's important to understand where we're starting from. We inherited from those opposite the oldest surface fleet since the end of the Second World War. We will fix that, but it will require money and resources.

We've heard a lot of noise from those opposite when it comes to defence spending. But they have a record which is plain to see. If we're to take them at face value, one point they're making is that where they left the defence spend was inadequate. In last year's budget—

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

we increased defence spending by $30 billion of real money over the course of the decade—

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

taking the projected defence spend from 2.1 per cent to 2.3 per cent of GDP. When the shadow minister for defence and the shadow Treasurer have been repeatedly asked whether they will match our increases, they have consistently said that they can't commit. The policy of those opposite is stuck in 2022. What's worse is that the Defence Strategic Review revealed that in the last five years of their government they effectively cut $20 billion from defence—

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

secretly stripping billions of dollars out of defence through a strategic reserve adjustment. When you take it all back, they cut defence spending; we're increasing it.

The empty hypocrisy of what they say has also been revealed with the Red Sea. For the past few months they have been saying that, if ever asked, they would send a ship to the Red Sea. But it turns out that when they were asked, when the Leader of the Opposition was in charge, they said no—and his excuse is that he didn't know a request had been made. He's asking the Australian people not to blame him; he was just asleep at the wheel.

Well, at least over the past two weeks on the ABC the shadow minister for defence has revealed himself as a man of the future. I mean, here we were thinking we needed to be investing in AI and quantum, and all the while the shadow minister for defence had been preparing to overwhelm our adversaries with overhead projectors and a slide! They were hands-down the worst defence government in our nation's history. The Albanese government is willing to stand up and lead and make difficult decisions to keep Australians safe.