David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Bob Carr) to a question without notice asked by Senator Macdonald today relating to Australian Defence Force funding.

In so doing I want to say that the parliament should be very concerned. We have had reports of cuts in Defence, but a new low has been reached in the last 24 hours with respect to the support and supply of ammunition to Reserve soldiers, and I am told it is in North Queensland. A common metric for the measure of how well things are going in Defence over many years has been the supply of ammunition. Apparently it is one of the first things that begins to show up as being depleted in supply when funds are tight.

We heard yesterday and again today of men running around in training, being without blank ammunition in exercises and being asked to shout out the words, 'Bang! Bang!' Can I say that the first time I ever saw this was on Dad's Army. Captain Mainwaring and all of those guys on Dad's Army as I was growing up, with their picket rifles that were made out of wood, were told to shout, 'Bang! Bang!' It is embarrassing. It is morale sapping that highly trained people who are prepared to commit their lives to this country are asked to do that in training. That is the low ebb that this level of government incompetence has taken us to.

It is things like the rising sun badge on the Australian uniform being apparently under threat and no longer supplied and 51 FNQR, a unit with 33 per cent Indigenous Australian soldiers, having their operations substantially reduced because of cuts. I actually heard that one of our submarines is sitting on the hard at ASC in Adelaide and a committee was informed by people at ASC that the Defence department had said, 'Don't start doing the maintenance for at least six months because we haven't got the money.' We have not got the money and we are one month into the new financial year. How can you not have the money in August? In two words, Defence is an 'unsustainable mess'.

Dr Mark Thomson, one of the lead analysts in the government's own Australian Strategic Policy Institute has categorised defence finance as an unsustainable mess delivered to us by this minister and his representative minister here, who is probably the most cavalier, disrespectful minister in the government. He just waves away these allegations that people do not have money. He is not even concerned that people are training by saying, 'Bang! Bang!' He just says, 'No, not true'. He does not say, 'I am concerned about that; I did go and ask about that. I had a report on my desk first thing this morning when I heard about it because it is very serious allegation.' No, there is none of that. This unsustainable mess is met with cavalier disregard. Army training reserve days—usually 100 days per year for people who are committed to train to protect us—have been reduced from the 100 I mentioned down to 20 to 21. Most of them will not even turn up. It is not even worth putting on the uniform for that.

Richard Armitage is a very, very respected United States strategic adviser and public official. For him to chat us about the level of spending on defence is one of the lowest ebbs I have ever seen. It is a disgrace and this minister should be ashamed that someone of his standing has had to chat us. He should be more ashamed, because he is no orphan. There are Peter Leahy, former Chief of Army; Major General Jim Molan, who was in charge in Iraq; and John Cantwell, a very decorated, brave soldier who led us in Afghanistan. He says that this budget is a shocker. Also, of course, there is the well-renowned and respected Peter Cosgrove. He says that this government has lost the plot on defence.

No other portfolio had to stump up for this crazy budget surplus. Why was it only Defence that had to find the $5.5 billion? This is a complex, expensive and difficult portfolio, way beyond the expertise of these incompetent ministers. Why did they only go to Defence and treat it like an ATM? It is because they hate Defence. They hate Defence and they hate what Defence stands for—the strength to oppose aggression of our country. (Time expired)