Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence, Senator Payne. In the defence white paper today, you outlined a massive increase in expenditure: an extra $30 billion on Defence over the next 10 years. However, nowhere in the defence white paper does it detail any formal increase in the overall threat level to Australia. Can you confirm there has been no change in the threat level and, if so, how does this justify the massive increase in Defence spending?

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

I thank Senator Whish-Wilson for the question. I think that if one casts an eye across the white paper itself—particularly in relation to the strategic outlook, Australia security environment and the issues that that canvasses in the white paper, Australia's defence strategy, the future Australian Defence Force and a number of other aspects of it, including the chapter called 'positioning Defence for tomorrow's challenges'—what the reader and those interested would see is that we have very carefully and very methodically assessed the circumstances in which we find ourselves now in the early years of the 21st century but also most importantly across the decade hence and the one beyond that.

We recognise that the security environment is, to say the very least, dynamic. It is changing all the time. There is the threats of non-state actors, with which we have men and women of the ADF dealing with every single day in Iraq and Syria—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, on a point of order: we have always had a security environment like that. I am I asking whether we have an official increase in the security threat level in the white paper to justify the expenditure.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. The minister was answering your question directly. In particular, she was just referring—as you rose to your feet—about the constant changes in threat levels.

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

As I was saying, we do have men and women of the ADF currently deployed in Iraq and Syria, dealing with some of those very, very dynamic changes in Australia's security environment—or security threats, to use Senator Whish-Wilson's words. That is but one example of where we are dealing with a very challenging world environment.

Domestically and within our region, Defence is most definitely involved in and has a focus on this sort of activity internationally because of the sorts of issues that Senator Whish-Wilson has raised. Domestically and then within our region, we also have returned foreign fighters and nearby state fragility. Those sorts of issues are very dynamic ones. The white paper addresses it very directly. I fail to see what Senator Whish-Wilson is referring to. (Time expired)

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. In recent years, and this is the way this has been reported, the government seems to have gone from a budget emergency to a South China Sea emergency. Isn't the massive increase in expenditure announced today simply contributing to a regional arms race that is likely to make us less safe in the future?

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

I think that is a very inaccurate characterisation by Senator Whish-Wilson of the issues with which we are dealing. Perhaps that is the preferred approach of the Greens, I do not know. I found Senator Whish-Wilson to previously have taken a rather more sensible approach, it is fair to say. The turn of words that Senator Whish-Wilson used does not really merit a sensible response, or a response, because it is so since simplistic and it is so founded in inaccuracies.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. I would have thought that $30 billion would justify a better explanation than that. Australia has gone through another summer of bushfires and drought that scientists have linked to climate change, including in my home state of Tasmania. We know that these disasters are only going to get worse in the future. Isn't climate change are greater existential threat to Australia's security and wellbeing than tensions in the South China Sea? Why isn't the government spending $30 billion on doing something about climate change?

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will invite the minister to answer the question, Senator Whish-Wilson, but you did deviate a fair bit from the primary question. There is a tenuous link.

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

I fail to see how that is supplementary to either the previous answer or the initial question. What the government has done is to very carefully set out a process across our strategic defence objectives and our strategic defence interests, which I outlined to Senator Back in some detail. They should provide the assurance for Senator Whish-Wilson and the Greens of the very strong basis for the decisions made in this white paper.