Budget 2024
Acting Deputy President, I know you share my passion for the defence of Australia. What we've seen in recent documents, like last night's budget, the National Defence Strategy and the IIP document that accompanied it, is a problem that I foresee we really need to solve. That problem was highlighted in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, where we were told that we no longer have a 10-year warning time before a major war. A 10-year warning time has gone, yet when you look at the budget, the IIP and what spending has been planned for not just by this government but by the previous government, the large platforms that make up the bulk of the spending are 10 years away. That's well outside the window of warning that we still no longer have.
How do we reconcile the fact that Australia could be held at risk tomorrow? I trust we will not be, but in the very near future we could be held at risk by an enemy, and all our spending and the preparation of our ADF to protect us is off in the never-never. I know there was $5.3 billion across the forward estimates in last night's budget, and that's welcome. That will be spent on some interesting things. But, as a country, we face a dilemma. We have to find a way to fund the Defence capability and personnel that we need right now while still looking at funding the large platforms that we will need in the future. I'm not saying there is an easy answer to this; there's not. This is a very difficult problem, but it's a can that's been kicked too many times. I as an independent senator will try to hold the government and the bureaucracies to account such that we don't face these dilemmas any longer than we have to.
We need to decide what we do now and in the short term. I was pleased that, in the Treasurer's budget speech last night when he talked about investing in a Future Made in Australia, he did actually mention strengthening our defence capabilities and economic security. Hopefully, some of the money set aside for Future Made in Australia won't just go on solar panels and other pet projects. I'm hoping that, between the Treasurer, the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Defence Industry, we can start looking at things that can be done now for the defence of Australia should—and I hope against hope it doesn't—the shooting war start tomorrow. Those large, expensive platforms that we are funding further down the track are going to be needed to keep open our sea lanes of communication. Why? We don't supply any munitions ourselves, so if we want to be able to fight a war, we need to be able to keep those sea lines open. Yet, at the moment, we can't. Why aren't we looking at manufacturing missiles and rockets here in Australia? We have on order 20 HIMARS. The last time I checked, there's a five-year wait for HIMARS. Imagine if there's a shooting war. We're not going to get the rockets and missiles that that system will launch. We have to be able to make them here ourselves. We have to be able to make rocket motors and 155 millimetre ammunition. Australian Defence Industries is capable of doing that now. It's more than capable of standing up and getting everything else that we need done in time for a war. It has to start now. We can't leave pushing expenditure onto large expensive ships and submarines. We need to do those things too, but we need to look at how we support our sovereign Australian defence industry manufacturing base to be able to look after us should a war start in a very short time.
