Doorstop Interview, Avalon Airshow

SUBJECTS: Albanese Government Accelerates Defence Spending; First Australian HIMARS delivered; GWEO; Avalon Airshow. 

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: It’s great to be here as well with the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy. Tomorrow night, we have the Federal Budget and in the Federal Budget there will be an increase in Defence spending over the forward estimates of $10.6 billion. This is the most significant increase in Defence spending in peacetime Australia since the end of the Second World War. Part of the $10.6 billion sees bringing forward an additional billion dollars, and that's because of the need to accelerate Australia's capability development. What this will do is see us have ready HMAS Stirling, the Henderson Defence Precinct for the establishment of the marine rotation force– the Submarine Rotational Force–West. This will see us be able to move forward at a faster pace in establishing the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise. 

It's worth thinking about that for a moment. When we came to office, GWEO had allocated towards it by the former government just a billion dollars, which really provided very little in terms of actually acquiring a long‑range missile manufacturing capability here in Australia. What we have done is commit $16 – $21 billion towards this endeavour, and having the $10.6 billion over the forward estimates greatly enhances our ability to see GWEO happen in the here and now. And that is not about manufacturing guided weapons sometime in the never, never. It is about commencing the manufacture of guided weapons in Australia this year. It will see us be able to accelerate the purchase of the general purpose frigate into our surface fleet, which will see us take possession of the first of the general purpose frigates this decade, one of the fastest acquisitions in our Navy's history. 

All of this is a government which has been investing heavily in Defence. The $50 billion of additional funding over the 10 years is the biggest peacetime increase in Defence spending that we've seen in Australia since the end of the Second World War, and it stands in stark contrast to what we saw when the Liberals were governing. What we know from the Defence Strategic Review is that in their final years in government, they were secretly cutting $20 billion out of the Defence budget – that's in black and white. That is in the Defence Strategic review, that number. And so this is a government which is committed to increasing Australia's capability. We still do not have a commitment from the Coalition to support Labor's $50 billion worth of increased Defence spending. We need to see that the increasing Defence spending in our nation is a matter of bipartisan policy. Right now, there is one party which is doing it, there is one government which has implemented it, and that is the Albanese Labor Government. But Pat and I are certainly very proud to be a part of that. I'm proud to see that in tomorrow's night's Budget, there will be a $10.6 billion increase in Defence spending over the next four years.

PAT CONROY, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE INDUSTRY: Thanks, Deputy Prime Minister. I saw again over the weekend that Peter Dutton continues to lie about the record of the Albanese Labor Government. He continues to lie and claims that we somehow have cut $80 billion from the Defence equipment budget. Well, he's massively wrong. Far from a cut, we've increased the Defence equipment budget – the IIP – over the decade by $60 billion. So he's got his facts wrong by a sum total of $140 billion. Peter Dutton continues to lie about Defence, continues to get facts and figures wrong, this case by a scale of $140 billion and if you can't get basic facts right, you can't trust Peter Dutton with the defence of the nation. You just have to look at his appalling track record when he was in power. Thank you very much.

MARLES: Questions?

JOURNALIST: Can you just explain, why does Australia need these HIMARS? Why do we need them? 

MARLES: Well, what the HIMARS will do is really take the Australian Army into the long‑range missile age. Right now, we've got a capability to project missiles in the tens of kilometres. The Precision Strike Missile, and it's the larger of the two that you see behind me, has a range of more than 500 kilometres. And what the HIMARS units do is enable us to launch those missiles, but also in a highly protected and mobile way. As the name suggests, this is a very mobile capability; it can be deployed on a C‑17, on a C‑130, the Hercules, it can be deployed by sea as well. So we can have these units all around the country and we can have these units being deployed by our Navy ships. And they are able to move very quickly, very rapidly, to fire and then to move on at a rate which is quick enough that those who are detecting the source of the fire, that source is no longer there. This is transformational in terms of the Army's ability to fire missiles, both in terms of range and in terms of mobility.

JOURNALIST: How long until we see Lockheed Martin start manufacturing the missiles, and would that manufacturing missile facility be here in your electorate?

MARLES: Well, the decision in relation to the where is still to be made, and that will be made by Pat, he may not want to say anything about that. But as to the when, the commencement of the manufacture will be this year. That was our commitment. The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, the GMLRS, which is the smaller of the two, although that’s not to scale, the commencement of the manufacture of GMLRS will happen in Australia this year. And it's hard to overstate the significance of the reality of that. When we came to office, the whole proposition of the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise was just in the never, never. It was not properly funded. It was really fundamentally an announcement with nothing to back it up. We've allocated $16 – $21 billion which is there in the IIP to see this happen. And the fact that we've got these two units behind us now, the fact that we will be manufacturing GMLRS in Australia this year, the fact that we see $10.6 billion of increased Defence spending in tomorrow night's Budget, all of that is about changing the realities right now.

JOURNALIST: There’s a lot of opposition to these machines. Last time we had an expo of machines like this, it was the Land Forces expo in the city that turned out really badly with all the protesters. Are you concerned about all the activity that's planned for this week? 

MARLES: I'm not, and I don't accept that there's that opposition at all really. I mean, you've got a few people who are out there who are very much a minority. I mean, this is a really important week. It's an important week for Australia's defence industry, it's an important week for the Australian Defence Force, and particularly the Royal Australian Air Force. Can I say as the local member, it's a really important week for Geelong. We'll have more than a couple of hundred thousand people come through Avalon over the course of next weekend. There is no event in this region which is bigger than that. And people are voting with their feet in terms of seeing these incredible platforms, this amazing technology and what it can do. A very small number of people trying to disrupt this, not by virtue of putting out there their ideas, but simply by engaging in acts of vandalism and disruption, which is what we have seen, is actually appalling behaviour. We expect people to have their say in our society, but we also expect people to do so in a way which is peaceful and which is in accordance with the law and which doesn't disrupt everyone else's lives in terms of what they're going about. And I really look forward to a very successful week at Avalon this week.

JOURNALIST: With the $1 billion that you're bringing forward in the Budget for guided weapons manufacture, and HMAS Stirling, and Henderson. What new timeline does that deliver? What does that mean for those projects?

MARLES: Well, the timelines we have out there, I mean, the acceleration of the $1 billion is really there to ensure that the very ambitious timelines that we have in relation to all of this are going to be met, and they are. I mean, every key moment that we have established in relation to– through AUKUS, the acquisition of a nuclear‑powered submarine capability, we're meeting and we will continue to do that through the establishment of SRF-West. And the Submarine Rotational Force–West being based at HMAS Stirling in Fremantle is scheduled to be there, the beginnings of it, in 2027. That is a really important moment, but we're on track for that to happen. What we have seen with the HIMARS firstly, is the first two of the 42 here, right now. The beginnings of the manufacture of guided missiles in Australia this year, that will happen. We will see us take possession of the first general purpose frigate this decade. Again, to put that in contrast, when we came to government, we inherited the oldest surface fleet that the Royal Australian Navy had been operating since the end of the Second World War in terms of surface combatants, and there was no prospect of having a new surface combatant into service until the mid-2030s. But we’ve brought all of that forward, and we will now see us receiving the first of the general purpose frigates in this decade. And of course, perhaps the biggest of all is the acquisition of the Virginia class submarines. Again, when we came to office, there was no prospect of there being a new nuclear‑powered submarine in the Royal Australian Navy until the early 2040s. Through the acquisition of the Virginia class submarines, we will have an Australian, new Australian flagged submarine not in the early 2040s, but in the early 2030s and that goes a long way to closing the submarine capability gap which we inherited from the Liberals.

JOURNALIST: So when do you expect the other 40 then to arrive?

CONROY: Thank you. So we will receive another six of the HIMARS launchers by the middle of this year, and the intention is that four of them will be deployed to Exercise Talisman Sabre later this year. We'll have the first battery, which is 12 in a battery, and another eight, so we'll have 20 delivered by quarter three next year and then all will be delivered by 2028. And this is really important point that both the DPM and I made in our remarks. We have brought forward this capability by four years. We've accelerated this by four years compared to the last government's plan, and we've more than doubled the number of these being purchased. So first battery by quarter three next year, full regiment stood up by 2028, four years earlier than the previous government's plan, with more than twice the number of units. 

JOURNALIST: Minister these HIMARS can't reportedly be driven on Australian roads. So how does the Defence Force plan to move them around?

CONROY: Well, I'm not going to comment on that. What I'll say to you is all Army vehicles, all ADF vehicles, go through the normal approvals process to be registered and to be moved around. These are incredibly mobile. They can be obviously driven, they can be transported by aircraft and on ships. But we'll go through those normal regulatory processes, as we do with all new capability acquisitions that the government pursues. 

JOURNALIST: Is that more how you envisage that they’d be used, like on ships and elsewhere, not necessarily stationed in places around the country? 

CONROY: I'll invite General Blain and Brigadier Wilson to give you some more detailed answers. But their operational concept is that they would drive to where they go and fire, but to get them to where they need to go in theatre, as the DPM said, you'll use ships or aircraft to transport them to where they need to go. 

JOURNALIST: That’s in the archipelagic regions around Australia, Pacific islands, that kind of–?

CONROY: I won't comment on specifics, but they are very mobile, both on a battlefield and in any theatre of operation. 

MARLES: Mobility gives us the ability to project. What we've been trying to build as a result of the Defence Strategic Review, and now the National Defence Strategy is a much more mobile Army; an Army which can move around our region and it needs equipment that can move with it and this is an example of that. And obviously, in terms of where this is going to fire from, it's not going to be limited by where there's a road. It's a highly mobile platform which will be able to deploy its missiles where it can. 

JOURNALIST: So is this literally, it could be operational tomorrow or–?

MARLES: Well, so again, ask these questions of these guys because I'll give you a better answer, but the crews who are here, around us, over here, have been training in America on this capability right now. This is what they now do. They are based in Edinburgh, RAAF Base Edinburgh right now, which is where this capability is going to be based. So these are two operational units with the soldiers who are there who have had the training to operate them, and we will continue the process of building up our capability in respect of this as we acquire more of the units. 

CONROY: If I could add also, an important part of this is obviously– well, first there'll be firing of these at Exercise Talisman Sabre, which is due to occur later this year. But importantly, you don't just have the launcher, you need the missiles as the DPM said. We'll be manufacturing Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles here this year, and the Precision Strike Missile, the larger missile behind us, we've brought forward the delivery of those. So the first one of those we brought forward by 18 months, and the first PrSMs will be delivered this year as well. So you need missiles and launches, and we’ve brought forward both, such is the urgency and the commitment to the defence the nation of the Albanese Labor Government. 

ENDS