Federation Chamber on Wednesday 29th October 2025

Check against delivery

We all bring personal experience to this place. I want to start back in April 2013, when a parliamentary delegation visited Tarin Kowt in Afghanistan and I was deployed at the time. I remember interacting very briefly with the parliamentarians who were sent over there—including the former member for Longman, Wyatt Roy. It struck me that, whilst we had good interaction with those parliamentarians, we didn't actually get to brief them directly on the operations that were being conducted. Looking back on that time now, I think that was troubling, because the parliament does have a responsibility to the Australian people to make sure that, when our troops are at war, or when our sailors and airmen are serving us at the pointy end, in harms way, we hold the government to account and we make sure that, whatever strategy or operation we're part of, we're doing the very best by our people and we're also making sure that we can win whatever war we're undertaking.

So, if we'd had a committee visiting back then, I hope they might have asked for our view on the strategy of the war—on how it was going. Perhaps we would have told them that we were failing and failing badly—that we were resorting to a strategy of body-count, just like we did in Vietnam. I, personally, would have liked to have talked about how Australian national policy was hamstringing people on the ground. I think of the force ratios that were forced upon Australian soldiers. You couldn't go outside the wire back then without 50 per cent of your force being Afghan. That meant that we had to drop medics and other critical enablers—including engineers, who were really critical for dealing with improved explosive devices—off helicopters, so we were actually down capability as a result of national policy. I would have told them about that.

I would have told them that the catch-and-release policy was incentivising the extrajudicial killing of targets. We would launch on a target, using signals intelligence; risk up to 30 Australian lives—Afghans as well—and helicopters; head out; capture someone; and not have any evidence on them to put them through the faux judicial system that we were trying to establish, and then they'd be released in three days. The very signals intelligence that we launched on was enough for ISAF forces to drop a bomb on those people, yet we would risk our lives, capture those people and then release them a couple of days later. It's no wonder that we've ended up where we are—and I'm thinking of and referring directly to the Brereton report here.

I would have said the judicial system was failing. I remember going on an operation with an Afghan prosecutor, who was there to uphold human rights. His direct advice to me was, 'You may as well kill the prisoners here, because there's no room in the jails for them back in Tarin Kowt.'

I would have told them the trust with the Afghan partner force was incredibly low after multiple 'green on blues', where Afghan soldiers killed Australian diggers. I would have told them that we had very little trust in the local police force that we were partnered with—and we were only partnering with them because of national policy. We had partnered with a national force, the National Directorate of Security, but someone wiser than us, in Kabul, decided that, because of human rights violations, we could no longer work with the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, and we had to partner with a local police force—who, by the way, had a penchant for beating and wanting to execute prisoners as well. We had to make all that work on the ground.

Added to that, we also had equipment issues. We might have avoided a significant civilian casualty had we had a laser guided piece of equipment, which would have helped us direct close air support onto a target. Instead we were relying on 10-figure grid references. These are all the things, if we had had a committee back then, that I hope I would have had the courage to relay directly to parliamentarians, who would have been responsible for oversight of the war.

All that is to say that I'm very happy that this bill is back in the House. Upfront, you might be asking: 'Why do you support this bill now? You didn't support it last year in the last parliament.' Fundamentally, the internal politics for me have changed. I did not have the support of my leadership last term. This is a good bill, it's the same bill as last time, and I support it now. It's as simple as that. I'm glad that it's been brought back, I hope it passes and I hope we establish this committee as quickly as possible.

Back in 2020, in the wake of the Brereton inquiry, I said that a committee of this kind was a 'missing piece of institutional architecture'. In the op-ed that I wrote back then, which was published in the Australian newspaper, I said:

There is no independent Joint Defence Committee where tough questions can be asked in a classified, protected space. Parliamentary scrutiny these days is surface level. It amounts to senior Defence leadership presenting a few PowerPoint slides and giving parliamentarians a pat on the head.

This is an area of urgently needed reform.

That was my view then, it still is now, and that's why I'm glad that this bill is back in.

In the last parliament, I advocated internally, and I want to acknowledge the Deputy Prime Minister for the good-faith work that he did with me behind the scenes. I wrote personally to him, asking him to bring on this bill and establish a committee. I lobbied the member for Wills, the member for Paterson and the member for Bruce. I even lobbied Ambassador Kevin Rudd over videoconference last year as well. We got to the point where we almost got it over the line.

All we wanted was a committee modelled on and with the same security and secrecy provisions as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which I chaired for four years over the last decade. It plays a really important role. I think one of the best things about the PJCIS is the relationship that you build with the intelligence heads who work in the national intelligence community. Of course, there's a lot of scrutiny that goes on in a classified environment, which the public don't see, but it's a very important mechanism and one that I think has served our nation well.

But as I alluded to at the start of my remarks, this committee is necessary because, when Australians go to war, we should all support our troops in the field but there should be a forum whereby we can ask hard questions of the senior leadership of defence who are prosecuting wars on our behalf. People should be able to ask those questions without being accused of betraying troops in field or, indeed, of undermining the national effort. That is why having a committee that is classified and protected is so important, because it is a place where parliamentarians, in good faith and from different sides of the chamber, can ask hard questions of our defence leadership without being smeared in the process.

I do want to acknowledge my former colleagues in the Senate: Linda Reynolds, David Fawcett and the late Senator Jim Molan, a great patriot who also advocated for this defence committee for some years. The world has not changed much since the May election. It is very clear that we are living in an increasingly dangerous world, the threats remain and that is why this is so important.

AUKUS is one of the biggest multigenerational nation-building tasks this country has undertaken in the last 50 or so years, and this committee will act as an unblinking eye on that project. The challenge of AUKUS is that it is a trilateral agreement with the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. In the US is the legislature with the Senate and Congress, and the executive of the White House. It seems the United States has rolling elections. The UK has parliamentary elections every five years and here we have elections every three years. So you have three countries bound together through AUKUS, which are all democratic in nature and which every couple of years change the composition of their legislatures and their governments, which makes it challenging, which is why this committee is such an important piece of institutional architecture for the Australian parliament. It will provide a forum of continuity on the question of AUKUS and will make sure we deliver it in a timely fashion.

We think this committee should be for sensible members of parliament. It must be competent and strengthen the oversight of defence. It is not another platform for political games. One of the worst aspects of estimates is that people ask questions with the intent to generate likes online. A lot of the questioning is performative, not serious scrutiny. Estimates can go on, of course—it is a good thing—but I do sense there is a lack of seriousness in estimates. This committee would mean we can ask hard questions of the defence bureaucracy and those in uniform in a protected classified environment. We need continuity, competence and bipartisanship, which is why we should follow the proven model of the PJCIS with government and opposition parties being involved.

The member over there seemed to react to my comments. I was referring to the Greens, member for Kooyong. The appointment of Greens, who hold deeply antidefence views, would undermine the legitimacy of the committee, which is why I said last year and will say again that the Greens show themselves consistently as an unserious political party with unserious political views, in fact views that are contrary to Australia's national interest, and we should not compromise on our national security. We need serious parliamentarians, not performative ones chasing online outrage. I will quote from the Greens' plan, which says, 'Work to stop the $375 billion purchase of AUKUS nuclear submarines and reform the system that allowed the project to be approved.' There a whole range of things we can talk about with the Greens but they are a nonserious political party, which is why we insist that the Prime Minister look very carefully at the composition of the committee and withhold it from people who act contrary to the national interest.

The really important part of this bill is the committee functions it outlines. It talks about the reviewing, monitoring and reporting on the administration and operations of all Australian defence agencies, including the ADF, the Department of Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. So we'll look at annual reports. I think what is really important, though, is that this committee will look at high-level matters such as the white papers, the reviews and other policy documents dealing with strategies, planning and contingencies of Australian defence agencies.

A really important part of this will be the scrutiny of Australia's defence capability—its development, acquisitions and sustainment. I think that's a real problem within defence. It needs massive overhaul and massive reform. The Minister for Defence and I have debates here, but a lot of the time the real enemy is the bureaucracy. A good minister for defence will use this committee to put pressure on the bureaucracy to deliver better results for the Australian people. That's an important part of getting defence capability sorted.

I think Veterans' Affairs will remain an issue for some time. Then there's the point about the committee examining and being appraised of war or warlike operations, including ongoing conflicts. That means that, if we find ourselves in another war—I hope we don't, but look at human history; it's pretty bleak—that committee should be able to ask hard questions of strategy, operation and tactics, and perhaps we might avoid some of the challenges that we faced in the wake of the war in Afghanistan.

It goes on to talk about the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. They do an important job in retaining oversight over the ADF. But every single person is fallible; therefore, every single institution is fallible, and every institution needs accountability of some sort. Having the parliament hold the IGADF to account in the same way we hold the NACC to account—because we're not living in some utopia here. People make mistakes; it doesn't matter where you work. We all need to have accountability built in, and I think this is a really good thing.

Finally, the committee will be responsible for AUKUS and for considering the operations, resources, independence and performance of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator.

I also see this committee as being a tool of diplomacy. A good government will be able to send this committee to the US, to shipyards, to the UK and, in fact, across the world to visit allies and do diplomacy with foreign militaries and also with other parliaments and governments, which is a great thing.

In closing, I support this bill. It's a good week to bring it on, particularly when we have our defence members in our offices this week. I'm very proud to have in my office Lieutenant Colonel David Caligari, who has a longstanding tradition of family service. There you are; you're in Hansard. We wish all our defence personnel the best, and that's why this committee is so important.