Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026

Mr KHALIL (Wills—Assistant Minister for Defence) (18:21): It never ceases to amaze me and it's quite remarkable that those opposite, the coalition, will stand across from us today criticising the government's defence policy when they could barely scrape together their own defence policy during the recent election campaign. They love to talk a big game when it comes to defence, but, when it came down to it, they were all announcement and no delivery.

Their record of delivery—if I can even call it that—while they were in government was absolutely woeful. When we came to government, those opposite had 28 different projects running a combined 97 years behind schedule. They had $42 billion in defence commitments with zero dollars behind them.

They announced and reannounced capability without adequate funding. They ripped up contracts for submarines with both Japan and France. They made up cost and delivery timeframes for our future frigates, and they left the nation with a growing risk of capability gaps from guided missiles to future frigates and submarines.

Nearly $20 billion had been cut from defence, by stealth, by those opposite. What we saw from the former government, when they were in government, was kind of like Top Gun. It was all the hoopla and pageantry but none of the substance.

This government, the Albanese Labor government, is all about actually delivering. We have actually added $70 billion in additional spending over the next decade and an additional $10 billion to defence spending over the forward estimates. We have spent more on defence procurement in the last two financial years than ever before.

We are committed to ensuring that, in this complex strategic environment that we face, the ADF, the men and women in uniform, have the equipment, the capability and the infrastructure backing them up—ensuring that the people who are doing that job for us on the frontline, to keep us safe, have everything they need. I can go on about what they have failed to do, but the facts are the facts.

We just announced $12 billion for Henderson to deliver continuous naval shipbuilding in Western Australia and make AUKUS a reality. We've announced $3.8 billion for key defence upgrades across Australia—$2 billion for the upgrade of northern airbases in the Territory, in Queensland and in the Cocos Islands; $1 billion to upgrade land and joint-estate capabilities; $600 million for maritime bases, including HMAS Coonawarra and HMAS Cairns; and $200 million to fast-track existing programs.

We've announced that we have the Apache helicopters arriving at RAAF Base Townsville. I was up there recently, a couple of weeks ago, and, again, we committed $750 million in upgrades for RAAF Base Townsville to help set up all the infrastructure necessary for the Apaches and their arrival, including a simulation facility and new headquarters for the Army aviation units.

We've delivered Ghost Shark—$1.7 billion for that autonomous undersea capability—and we've done this in the last couple of years, where they did nothing over a period of nine years. The fact is that this government—despite the protestations by the opposition—is getting defence back on track, with the stability and continuity that it needs. The Albanese government is committed to ensuring that, in this strategic moment—in this very important moment that we face in the Indo-Pacific and globally—our ADF has all of the equipment and the capability it needs to do the job that it's doing for us in keeping Australians safe.

It's about enhancing deterrence and our ability to actually contribute to collective deterrence. That much we can agree upon. The more we strengthen and enhance our defence capability, the more we can build that global collective deterrence.

We want, in investing in defence, to invest in peace. It deters others from going down the path of using force as a means to reach their strategic objectives. That is the kind of counterintuitive part of defence spending that it's important for us, as a parliament, to articulate to the public: the more we're investing in defence, the more we're investing in deterring conflict and going towards peace.

That's a really important point, and I hope that the opposition, despite their need to do political pointscoring, can bring themselves to make those very important points to the public. That deterrence lessens the factors that would lead to conflict. It is also important in safeguarding the liberal, rules based order that we all prosper by.

So the security and the stability in the Indo-Pacific, which we contribute to through our defence forces, and through our diplomatic and defence efforts, is of critical importance, and that is something that we in the government are committed to and delivering on.