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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I take note of the Australian government's response to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry into the Department of Defence annual report, just tabled by Minister Farrell. I particularly want to address recommendation 1, which is in relation to recruitment, and the government's response to that, as well as recommendations 4 and 6, but particularly recommendation 4 as it relates to AUKUS.

In the government's response to recommendation 1 of this report, the government stated that its response to recruitment is part of the Defence strategic review. One of the priorities for immediate action included in the Defence strategic review was initiatives to improve the growth and retention of a highly skilled Defence workforce. Recommendation 1 was:

The Committee recommends that the Government reviews the size of the ADF in order to ensure a more sustainable and credible conventional force is available for future military operations, particularly sustained operations.

It was essentially about trying to meet, at some point, even one of the ADF's recruitment targets.

The person primarily tasked with this is the current Defence secretary, Mr Moriarty. Mr Moriarty began his role as secretary in September 2017. The question the committee failed to address, the question which the government neatly avoided in its response, is whether or not Mr Moriarty is up to the task. I would suggest history comprehensively proves he's not.

The best numbers we can get for Mr Moriarty's performance as secretary start with the numbers when he commenced. He commenced in September 2017, and the only publicly transparent numbers that correlate with that are the numbers in the ADF at the end of financial year 2016-17. At the end of June, a few months before Mr Moriarty started, there were 58,680 ADF personnel. Since then, there has been six years of recruitment targets—each of them of between 1,000 and 2,000 additional ADF personnel a year which were meant to be recruited under Mr Moriarty's watch. Each year the 2030 target remains, but the gap between ADF recruitment and the 2030 target just grows and grows. If you look at the last publicly available numbers, at the end of last financial year, according to the budget there are 200 fewer service personnel in the ADF at the end of the 2022-23 financial year than when Mr Moriarty started. Every year he's had recruitment targets of increasing the ADF by 1,000 or more. He's failed every single one of them. After six years under his stewardship, there are 200 fewer people in the ADF than when he started. This government has decided to give Mr Moriarty a five-year contract extension because he's apparently the man to get it done. Does no-one in the government learn the lessons of history? Has nobody looked at the numbers? Has the defence minister, who signed the extension of the contract, just ignored six years of failure when it comes to recruitment? And what has that produced when you look at the forward projections? It's produced this massive jump that's required.

Having failed for six years, having 200 fewer people in the ADF than when Mr Moriarty started, the budget papers say there will be a modest increase this year of hundreds—which would be a change at least for Mr Moriarty; he might actually add some people! But then—get this—the budget papers say that in 2024-25 the ADF is going to recruit 4,000 additional personnel, in just that one financial year. And what's its plan to do that? Some kind of vague response we get that it's going to be picked up in the Defence strategic review. They're apparently going to make it slightly easier to do your online application, and they're going to slightly change the time frames in which recruitment happens. They're not going to address the culture issues in the ADF. They're not going to address the obvious recruitment issues which are happening, which are quite significant and structural in the ADF. They're going to make it slightly quicker to get your online application form in. Somehow or other, Mr Moriarty has persuaded Defence Minister Marles that that's going to get 4,000 additional recruits in 2024-25.

It is actually laughable but it is like so much in the Defence portfolio—they just make up numbers. They just put anything down in writing and then it's never questioned. It wasn't questioned by the 'joint spooks and war committee' in its review. They didn't even look at the future recruitment numbers. It wasn't questioned by the government in its response.

There's no credible plan in place. Why is that important? Well, it's important if you believe the rhetoric from the government about some urgent security risk that's going to become apparent in the next five years. I personally don't sign on to that. But if you do sign on to that—because apparently the club in this place, Labor and the coalition, sign on to that—how do you marry the rhetoric about the urgent issue with the comprehensive six-year failure under Mr Moriarty? This genius unstated unicorn plan to get 4,000 additional personnel in 2024-25, how do you marry the risk of rhetoric and fear with the reality of failure of this farcical plan to get 4,000 additional staff in 2024-25? You can't marry it up.

Thankfully, no-one is even looking at it. The joint committee didn't look at it. The government response hasn't looked at it. The coalition haven't looked at it. It's no wonder that the coalition haven't looked at it; the failure happened in the last six years under their watch. They don't even test this government on it, as part of this joint collusive plan to just not ask any questions. It won't work. What does that mean? It means that, despite the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on new hardware, whether it is nuclear submarines or artillery, new aircraft or a bunch of new armoured personnel carriers—all of which come with price tags of tens of billions of dollars—or the Hunter class frigates, there will be nobody to put in them. Have you ever thought about marrying these things up—the rhetoric, the fear, the expenditure on hardware and the comprehensive failure to even have the most basic credible plan for recruitment? Of course you haven't, because it's inconvenient, because it's embarrassing, because it points out that the emperor has absolutely no bloody clothes on—let alone any attendants.

The next issue, of course, is the recommendation of AUKUS to embed the Australian military and the Australian military establishment within the United States military. This embedding of US defence personnel and US defence bases within Australia is totally uncritical and never questions the loss of sovereignty that comes with it. Every time we come closer and closer to a self-funded US military base instead of an independent sovereign country. That's where we're heading under the Albanese government.

Just last weekend we saw yet another announcement about a surrender of sovereignty—this plan from the Albanese government to literally embed US spies into our defence intelligence organisation. And it's not in order for us to have any influence on US military; it's in order for the US military to tell us what to do. At best, the biggest impact we would have on the US is what Minister Marles says is, 'You'll get an American perspective into the American system seen from Australia,' and that's not insignificant. The government don't even pretend there will be an Australian perspective in this. We are becoming an absolute patsy to the United States in this complete surrender of sovereignty by embedding US spies in the defence intelligence organisation. Where will it end?