Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed it is; Senator Fawcett is quite right. On Friday, I was again in South Australia at RAAF Base Edinburgh, where the Royal Australian Air Force has recently established its new P-8A training facility. It's a $470 million investment by the coalition government, which is a step change in the way the Royal Australian Air Force trains its personnel. It's home to a series of advanced simulators that enable both our aircrews and our maintenance teams to conduct more of their training there and therefore leave the aircraft available for operations, for exercises, for activities, reducing fatigue on the aircraft and freeing them up, as I said, with more time to be deployed.

The facility is the beginning of a broader investment at RAAF Base Edinburgh which will see it form part of a larger intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance precinct. That precinct is going to support a number of our new ISR platforms and ensure that the personnel have access to the modern training facilities they need so they're able to do the tasks that government seeks of them.