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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is the response from the Auditor-General to the request from the Senate—I think it ended up in unanimous resolution of the Senate—to reinstate the Major projects report in Defence. What we saw earlier this year was really out of the blue for much of the public and for those who were observing this space. It was a decision that seemed to be supported by the Audit Office as well as by the joint standing committee that oversights the Audit Office. The decision made was to cancel the Major projects review. The Major projects review is one of the few moments in the annual calendar where you really get to hold Defence to account. You can see the slippage in the delivery of all of their major projects. You see the cost blowouts. The Major projects review compares Defence project costs not just to the most recent amended project cost—normally the 50th or 60th variation on that—but also to the cost of the second pass, when it has gone through the cabinet and been formally adopted as a capability. It compares the budget to that second-pass budget and also what the projected timeframe for delivery is at the second pass. What we saw, year after year, was that Defence wasn't a few years behind cumulatively; Defence is decades and decades behind with the production of major projects. We are only talking about 20 or so major projects, not all of them. What they also showed was massive cost blowouts and radical reductions often in the capability. Defence was failing on every count.

The second-pass approval said that for a certain price in a certain time a certain capability would be delivered, and what we found time after time in the Major Projects Report—and you can track it back over years—was that capabilities were being reduced, timeframes were being massively blown out and in budgets were being massively blown out. Defence, probably uniquely in the federal government, fails to meet or to even come close to meeting any of its key performance indicators. The Major Projects Report, year after year after year, would identify that.

What did Defence do? The Empire started fighting back. Defence hated the scrutiny that was happening in the major projects review. So they gathered together in their little Death Star, somewhere over there on the other side of the Parliamentary Triangle, and they worked out how they could undermine the major projects review. They decided they would start doing this 'not for publication'. They would give data to the Audit Office, but they would say to the Audit Office, 'You can't include this data in your final report to the parliament and the public because it would degrade Australia's national security.' If you pointed out the obscene delay in producing capability X or the budget blowout or the reduction in capabilities achieved, that would somehow erode the defence capacity of Australia and erode our national security. If we learned the truth about Defence's failures, that would somehow attack the national interest.

I have to tell you this. Not finding out the truth out about Defence's repeated institutional failures on procurement is a far bigger risk to national security. Handing over $50 billion, $60 billion, up to $70 billion a year to an organisation that has almost zero accountability and a track record of blowing that money is a major risk to national security. Rather than pushing back against this, we get meek little notes from the Audit Office year after year that say, 'I want to draw your attention to the fact that these numbers aren't being produced.' It got the point last year that so much data was withheld from Defence that the Audit Office thought the Major Projects Report wasn't worth the paper it was written on. We couldn't trust it to hold the government to account because a whole chunk of the key data wasn't there.

What has the Audit Office said now? The Audit Office, which is facing a major budget crunch from this government, has said that it can no longer afford to keep doing the Major Projects Report. Defence wins. Defence has won. By hiding information year after year, they've won the fight and killed off the Major Projects Report. That is an appalling outcome for the public, but no doubt cheered on— (Time expired)

Leave granted to continue remarks later; debate adjourned.