Federation Chamber Date: 29 October 2025
Speaker:
I call the Member for Fisher.
Andrew Wallace MP:
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I rise to speak in support of the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025. I have long supported this bill, and it is a moment of some joy for me to be able to stand here and talk about it. This has been a long time coming.
I have been the Chair or 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. It has been an incredible privilege to serve with the men and women who protect this country in uniform.
But one thing I quickly identified as Chair and Deputy Chair of that committee were its strong deficiencies. Not the least of those deficiencies was that, for the entire time I have been on that committee, I have watched senior members of the Australian Defence Force and senior members of the Defence Department, when asked a difficult question, respond with: “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.”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that response or something like it.
This is a budget of around $59 billion a year, yet there is 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 new. We were, in the last parliament, a pinch of my fingers away from having one. Unfortunately, negotiations broke down between the now Government and the Opposition. That was very unfortunate, but we are here now.
It is incredibly important to ensure that this Parliament has proper oversight and scrutiny of our military and our Defence Department. When you spend $59 billion a year of taxpayers’ money, taxpayers have a right to know that that money is being spent wisely. Unfortunately, what I have seen over the last nine years in this place is that often it is not. Time and time again, the committee on which I used to serve was not, in my view, afforded the appropriate respect that it should have had.
This bill has been a long time in the making. It was supported by people I respect immensely in this field. The Government may have their name on it now, but this was a Coalition invention. It was developed by Senator Jim Molan, Linda Reynolds, David Fawcett, Andrew Hastie and me. The Labor Party were nowhere to be seen on this issue all those years ago, but I am glad you have joined the party because it is a good thing, and I celebrate the bipartisanship, even if I will not miss the opportunity to have the odd crack.
Jim Molan, 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 committee. In the inside cover of the book he wrote before his passing, he wrote: “To the second-best Chair of the Defence Committee, my good friend Andrew Wallace.” It is a book I treasure greatly.
The people who led the charge on this, Jim Molan, Linda Reynolds and David Fawcett, are giants in defence, and this Parliament is worse off for their absence. Defence itself and the ADF are worse off because those people are not in this place to hold them to account. So it is incumbent upon those of us who follow to develop a process, a forum that can build expertise in defence, just like we have done in the intelligence and security world.
For the last three and a half years, I have had the privilege of being the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The legislation for the proposed Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence effectively mirrors the PJCIS in composition and in many other ways.
Without people like the late Jim Molan and Senator Fawcett, and while I accept that there are still members in this place like the Member for Solomon with significant experience in the Army, we need to build up that knowledge in members in this place because it is not something that comes overnight. Having worked on this committee for years, you still learn as you go.
This committee is incredibly important because the reality is we find ourselves in the most geostrategically challenged time since 1945. Once upon a time, the Labor Party could not bring themselves to say that, but they do now. The National Defence Strategy and Defence Strategic Review both identify that what we once enjoyed, a ten-year warning time, is gone.
The risk this country faces of being involved in conflict is as high today as it has been since 1945. No one in this place wants to see this country in conflict. No one wins in conflict. It is 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 incumbent upon every member in this place and the other, 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, to the point where our adversaries say, “Not today. Not Australia.” That is where the value of the AUKUS submarines comes 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 now Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton.
In order to deter our adversaries, we must be equipped with the most competent, capable equipment and personnel. The AUKUS submarines under Pillar One are the apex predator of the seas. If you want an example of where an adversary might think to themselves “not today,” look at a nuclear-propelled submarine.
A nuclear-propelled submarine delivered under the AUKUS program provides that pause for thought far better than what we have with our diesel-electric submarines.
There will be an exchange of top-secret information between Australia, the UK and the United States in the development of AUKUS Pillar One, and of course Pillar Two. With this exchange of top-secret information, it is incredibly important that our Defence Department and our ADF still have appropriate parliamentary oversight, constrained by the same principles as the PJCIS, for example under the Intelligence Services Act, which requires members to hold secret what is revealed to them, under penalty of imprisonment.
Members must know that if they breach that confidentiality, they will no longer serve in this House or the other. That is incredibly important.
The Coalition is absolutely driven to ensure this country equips our ADF and 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 talks the big talk about spending more money on defence, but the reality is they are only spending an additional $700 million over the next four years. The reality is they are cannibalising the budgets of 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, as ASPI has indicated, we have a paper Defence Force.
I am sure the Member for Solomon would agree 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 the death of a thousand cuts because this Government is bleeding them dry as it pours all its money into the AUKUS submarines.
We will not have a local defence manufacturing base in Australia if this Government keeps on its current trajectory.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the bill. We need to get behind our Defence Force, but we need to ensure they have the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.
END
Media Contact: Brendan West – 0402 556 646 – Brendan.west@aph.gov.au