Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (19:17): I rise to speak in support of the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025. I have long supported this bill. It is a moment of some joy for me to be able to stand up here and talk about this bill.
This has been a long time coming. I have been the chair and the deputy chair—depending on our political fortunes at the time—of the Defence Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for somewhere around five or six years, maybe even a bit longer. And it's been an incredible privilege to serve with the men and women who protect this country in uniform.
But one thing that I was able to identify quite quickly as the chair and deputy chair of that august subcommittee is its very strong deficiencies. Not the least of those deficiencies is that, for the entire time that I have been on that subcommittee, I have watched senior members of the Australian Defence Force and senior members of the defence department, when asked a curly question—the most common response I got was: 'I'm sorry, Mr Wallace.
We cannot answer that question here. You're not in the appropriate room. You don't have the appropriate clearances—yadda, yadda, yadda.' I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that response or something like it.
This is a budget that is around $59 billion a year, yet there is, currently, totally inadequate parliamentary scrutiny over our defence department and the ADF. It behoves me to say that this concept of a parliamentary joint committee on defence is not the first time it has come before the parliament. We were, in the last parliament, a pinch of my fingers close to having one, and unfortunately negotiations broke down between the now government and the opposition.
That was very unfortunate, but we're here now. It is so incredibly important to ensure for taxpayers that this parliament has proper oversight and scrutiny of our military and our defence department, because, when you spend $59 billion a year of taxpayers' money, taxpayers have a right to know that that money is being spent wisely. But, unfortunately, what I have seen over the last nine years in this place is that often that money is not being spent wisely, yet, time and time again the subcommittee on which I used to serve—no longer—was not in my view afforded the appropriate respect that it should have had.
This is a bill which has been a long time in the making. It's a bill that was supported by people who I respect immensely in this field. The government have their name on it right now, but this was a coalition invention.
It was dreamed up by Senator Jim Molan and the likes of Linda Reynolds, David Fawcett and Andrew Hastie—and me. The Labor Party were nowhere to be seen on this issue all those years ago, but I'm glad you've joined the party, because it's a good thing and I celebrate the bipartisanship. But I'm not going to miss the opportunity to have the odd crack here and there.
The late, great Jim Molan, former senator and former major general, fought for Australia, served in Iraq as a commander of US forces, no less, and was also the chair of this subcommittee. In fact, on the inside cover of my copy of the book that he wrote before his passing, he wrote, 'To the second-best chair of the defence committee, my good friend Andrew Wallace,' and it's a book that I treasure greatly.
The people who have led the charge on this—the likes of Jim and the former senators Linda Reynolds and David Fawcett—are giants in defence, and this parliament is the worse by virtue of them no longer being here. Defence itself and the ADF are worse off because those people are not in this place to hold them to account. So it's incumbent upon us who follow that this place develop a process, a forum, that can build expertise in defence, just as we have done in the intelligence and security world.
For the last 3½ years, I've had the privilege of being the deputy chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The legislation of the proposed PJCD, the parliamentary defence committee, effectively mirrors the PJCIS in composition and in many other ways. Without people like the late Jim Molan and Senator Fawcett—and I accept that there are still members in this place, like the member for Solomon, who have significant experience in the Army—we need to build up that knowledge in members in this place, because it's not something that comes overnight.
Having worked on this committee for years, I know that you still learn a lot as you go. This committee is incredibly important because, the reality is, we find ourselves in the most geostrategically challenged times since 1945. Once upon a time, the Labor Party couldn't bring themselves to say that, but they do now.
They do agree that the National Defence Strategy and the Defence Strategic Review all identify that what once we used to enjoy, this concept of a 10-year window of planning, is gone. The risk this country faces of being involved in conflict is as high today as it has been since 1945. Not one person in this place, I would suggest, would want to see this country in conflict.
No-one wins in conflict. But it's only through strength that we are able to deter our adversaries. Countries like Russia, and the Chinese Communist Party, do not respect anything other than strength.
If you do not have a strong defence force, countries will take advantage of that, as we have seen in places like Ukraine. It is incredibly important, and it is incumbent upon each and every single member in this place and in the other place, to ensure that we properly equip the Australian Defence Force to provide a strong deterrent force. We are nowhere near that today.
We are nowhere near being in a position where an adversary will look at the Australian Defence Force and say, 'Not today.' That is where we need to get our adversaries to—that point. We need to have them at a point where they say, 'Not today, not Australia, because we just can't gamble on the risk.' That's where the beauty of the AUKUS submarines come in. The AUKUS submarines were a project of former prime minister Scott Morrison and the coalition.
Former senator Linda Reynolds was instrumental in that, as was former defence minister and former leader of the opposition Peter Dutton. In order for us to be able to deter our adversaries, we have to be equipped with the most competent, capable equipment and personnel. The AUKUS submarines, under Pillar 1, are the apex predator of the seas.
If you want an example of where an adversary might think to themselves, 'Not today', then you should look at a nuclear-propelled submarine. A nuclear-propelled submarine—not just one—that will be delivered under the AUKUS program provides that pause for thought. It is far better than what we have with our diesel electric submarines.
There will be this exchange of top-secret information between Australia, the UK and the United States in the development of AUKUS Pillar I and, of course, in AUKUS Pillar II. With this exchange of top-secret information, it is incredibly important that our defence department and our ADF still have appropriate parliamentary oversight but be constrained by such matters as the PJCIS is, for example, in the Intelligence Services Act, which requires members of this place to hold secret the secrets that are revealed to them, under pain and penalty of imprisonment, which would mean that people could no longer serve in this House or the other.
Members need to know that, if they breach the confidentiality and the secrecy that is provided to them as a privilege of serving on this committee, they will no longer be members of this place, and that is incredibly important. The coalition is absolutely driven to ensure that this country equips our ADF and our personnel appropriately. We took to the last election a commitment to drive our defence budget to three per cent of GDP.
At the moment under this government it sits at around 2.02 per cent. The government talk the big talk about spending more money on defence, but the reality is they are only spending $700 million additional over the next four years. The reality is they are cannibalising, absolutely cannibalising, the budget from the Army, Air Force and Navy to pay for these submarines.
The submarines are incredibly important, and the coalition supports them, but we cannot be in a situation where all we have, as ASPI has indicated, is a paper defence force. I am sure the member for Solomon would agree with me that the Army needs to be properly equipped and properly funded, but that is not what is happening, nor is the funding being provided to our defence manufacturers here in Australia.
They are screaming. They are dying a death of a thousand cuts because this government is bleeding them dry as it puts all its money into the AUKUS submarines. We will not have a local defence industry manufacturing base here in Australia if this government keeps on its current trajectory.
I support the bill. We need to get behind our Defence Force, but we need to ensure they have the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. Debate adjourned.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:33