David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to oppose the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee—'secret boys club'—on Defence) Bill 2025. This is a bill that just goes to show how broken the war parties and the status quo parties are in this parliament. They're setting up yet another dark, smoke-filled cigar room where those who get the tick of approval, from Washington and from the likes of Richard Marles, maybe, or our security heads, can sit in their little private circle and furiously agree on how we should spend even more money buying US weapons to go to war with China on behalf of Donald Trump.

They're the same club of people who have got us into an impossible, embarrassing mess on pretty much everything they've touched in defence. This same club of war-hungry, war-mongering war parties, who call themselves parties of government, are the ones who have secret oversight of our security agencies. How's that going? That is now the subject of royal commission review and repeated criticism—the failure of ASIO to get out and communicate with the state police and the failure of state police to talk with the Federal Police. That's all oversighted by the private club that is the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. That's a disaster zone, a complete mess. Nobody thinks it works.

So what do the geniuses in parties of government decide to come up with? Let's take the secret, dysfunctional club for security oversight and let's make it part of a secret, dysfunctional parties-of-government oversight of defence. Then we get the representation from Labor: 'Do you know why this is great for democracy and why this is great for parliament? The real magic sauce in this thing is that it will all be in secret and nobody will see it happening.' That's the magic sauce in this oversight. It's a secret meeting of people who already agree, who want post-politics careers in the defence industry, who love Washington and who love Donald Trump. It will all happen in secret, and secrecy is the magic. In secret, in a room where everyone agrees, you can ask the hard questions. You can ask the hard questions and get the likes of Defence Secretary Moriarty to give you the hard answers, because that's going to work in secret. You couldn't make this stuff up, right? It's a joke.

The pretence that a secret club of people who agree, who are looking for their post-politics career in a Defence contractor is going to hold Defence to account is an embarrassing joke, and the country can see it. They can see that this shrinking part of the parliament, who wants to hold onto the status quo, who wants to keep shovelling endless billions of dollars into US defence contractors, nuclear submarines, the world's most expensive frigates on the planet, drones that can't defend themselves and US weapon systems that get sold by some tech bro in an afternoon spiel, doesn't work. They can see that Defence is a mess. They can see that the club is taking Australia in the wrong direction, and that's why more than a third of the country and a growing part of the country are voting for anybody but the war parties and the status quo parties. But I've got to tell you this. This is a bill that says: 'We're going to set up a new secret committee. It's going to be dominated by the government. We're going to let the opposition in, but only the opposition. It's going to operate in secret, and that's going to fix Defence.'

One of the questions I'm asking is: who are the parties of government now that are even going to sit on this? They used to occasionally invite a Nat in, but I suppose they're on the outer now too. So it's just going to be the Labor Party and the Liberal Party—just the Labor Party and the Liberal Party furiously agreeing on how to screw up our national budget on Defence, and then getting the patsies from Defence to come in and say: 'Yes, we need this new weapon system. We haven't tested it for value for money, but we think you should spend $8 billion acquiring this new weapon system, because we want to press a button and see it go whoosh, and our friends in Washington would like it because it makes us more interoperable with the US military, and we can be part of the next US war in Eurasia. So actually we should buy this for $8 billion. I don't think we need to tell the public anything about this. I don't think we need to trouble the great unwashed with the reasons why we're doing these dumb decisions. We'll just do It quietly amongst ourselves. We already agreed before we came into the room. We agree even more now. Let's just spend the money on this next US UK weapons system.'

It is such a gross misrepresentation to say that this is about oversight. It's just getting the club to give another big rubber stamp on their war plans and upon their complete and utter surrender to Washington. That's what it is. Why do we even pretend to have parliamentary oversight anyhow? Why don't we just set up a small approval process in the Washington embassy? We could just do that. You could just set up a small desk. You could have a proposal. It wouldn't have to originate in Canberra. It could easily originate in Washington. You could then send it over to the secretary of Defence. Minister Marles could add his usual value to it, with no doubt a very insightful analysis of whatever's come from Washington and the Defence secretary! Then you could send it to the desk in Washington, and they could invite whoever Vice-President Vance wants to send in, and they could just approve it. It would be much more efficient! You wouldn't have to go through the pretence of a sovereign process. Why don't you just do that? Or you could set up a secret committee amongst yourselves which you don't tell the public about, and you could just do it here anyway. You've chosen the secret committee path.

What have the war parties—sorry, the parties of government—delivered? What have the parties of government delivered so far for Defence? We're in the middle of spending $9 billion to build the United States a nuclear submarine attack base just off Perth to make Perth a nuclear target and to ensure that Australia will be involved in a US war with China. You've done that. I personally think that making Perth a nuclear target by spending $9 billion of Australian taxpayers' money to build the US a nuclear submarine attack base is probably a bad decision. I think that's a misspending of money, but you guys agree on it, and you can agree on it in secret now. Terrific!

You've decided to spend $375 billion on some speculative gamble to get nuclear submarines. Well, that's a disaster zone. The US has no spare submarines. We just heard today that the US will only supply submarines to Australia if we guarantee to use them in a US war on China. Otherwise, you know, we can go whistle!

Currently, we're shovelling billions of dollars to the United States to increase their industrial capacity to make more nuclear submarines so they have some spare for us. That has not worked. It has not shifted the dial. The United States is still producing about 1.2—in a good year—nuclear submarines a year out of their industrial capacity. Unless they produce about 2½ a year for the next decade, going forward there will be no spare submarines for Australia. We won't get any submarines. That money is lost. Well, it's lost to us—again, by the United States.

That first part of AUKUS, about getting some spare second-hand US nuclear subs, is a disaster going badly—billions being wasted, a big black hole—but you could meet in secret and agree on how good it is. That might be nice. You won't have to persuade the public—you can just persuade each other—about what a great deal that is, in secret. That might be nice for you. It's bad for taxpayers. It's bad for Australia. But it might be nice for you.

You've already handed countless billions of dollars off to the UK for their nuclear submarine industry. Most of it's gone to Rolls-Royce because, you know, Rolls-Royce obviously deserves it. Those poor people in Rolls-Royce suffer a lot. Defence Minister Marles and Prime Minister Albanese, with the support of the Liberal Party, have found a way that Australian taxpayers can give billions and billions of dollars to Rolls-Royce. That money is rolling out now, to Rolls-Royce, to produce nuclear reactors for the AUKUS submarine project. Meanwhile, the UK's own audit office says that that program, which we're putting billions of dollars into, is in a terminal spiral of failure and will not produce nuclear reactors. It's been red, red, red, red, red for the last five years. We're pumping billions of dollars into the UK for nuclear reactors and an AUKUS nuclear submarine project that will not happen.

Then we have the Barrow-in-Furness project in the UK, which is where they're going to be—allegedly—producing the reactors and the next class of AUKUS submarines. When the head of the delivery agency for the Barrow-in-Furness project, Lord whatever-his-name-is, says, 'Actually, it's not working. We haven't got the infrastructure. We're not going to be able to build this stuff here. We don't have a solution to the multiple infrastructure bottlenecks. We're not going to have the workforce ready to produce the nuclear submarines,' what does Australia say? Australia says, 'You can ignore all that!'

Ignore the fact that the audit office has said the reactors won't work. Ignore the fact that the head of the delivery agency in Barrow-in-Furness says it won't work. Ignore the fact that the entire UK budget is in a meltdown and they don't have the money to build submarines. Ignore the fact that they can only put one of their current nuclear submarines in the water because they can't afford to maintain—and don't know how to maintain—the rest of them. You can ignore all that, because it's all on track. It's all on track! And we can keep shovelling them billions of dollars.

The good news about your secret committee is that you can agree on that in private now. You can meet together in private, slap each other on the back and say, 'It's all on track!' You can ignore reality. That's the great thing about a secret committee. Why don't you go and meet about the Hunter frigates and agree on what a great job you guys are doing on the Hunter frigates! There's a lot of talk at the moment about 67 Defence sites, which are prized and cared for by the community, which have beautiful green open spaces and heritage sites, which are great spots for public housing. But no—Defence Minister Marles and the supporting cheer squad in Defence have decided to flog them all off, to sell them all off, for property development. They think that, over the next five to 10 years, they could net $1.8 billion from selling all of this prized public land all across the country. The good news about that is, for $1.8 billion, you could almost build one fifth of one Hunter frigate in Adelaide. You could probably get the bit that has the helicopter landing pad on it. You could almost get one-fifth of one of those for selling off 67 prize sites.

The same club that wants to meet in private and agree in this committee has signed off on the $45 billion Hunter frigate deal, which is before the NACC on a corruption inquiry and is producing the most expensive warships, pound for pound, on the entire planet. When we asked the defence department, 'Is there any more expensive warship on the planet than these Hunter frigates that we're making in Adelaide?' they hemmed and hawed and then they said, 'Maybe a US nuclear powered submarine is more expensive.' They found one—a US nuclear submarine. India produces entire aircraft carriers and fits them out for less than what we're paying for a single Hunter frigate. The same bozos who are in charge of that and have sent us down that corrupted, hopeless process for Hunter frigates can now meet in private and secretly agree on what a great idea it would be to do that again. Maybe we could have the same people who met in secret and agreed to produce another class of boats, which of course Defence cannot find a purpose for—maybe they could agree to put billions more into that project as well.

Right now we have a defence department that is hollowing itself out to pay for nuclear submarines we'll never get, that is shelling out billions of dollars overseas for projects that won't produce reactors or nuclear submarines, and that means that there's no money left to buy things for the rest of defence. We have a defence department that's building a handful of the most expensive warships on the planet in Adelaide, and they want to do more of that. We have a defence department that's had a recruitment crisis forever—it turns out people don't much like joining a defence force which is led by such a bunch of bozos and directed by a bunch of noddies in the parties of government. We have a defence force that is designed not to defend Australia but to be part of US deployments around the world and not have an independent sovereign capacity. We have a defence force that is probably a global leader in the failure of procurement and the failure of strategic thinking. You want the same bunch of people that have got us into this mess to now oversight it in secret while they agree with each other in a quiet, smoke-filled, private cigar room. This will surprise you: the Greens say no.