ON DEFENCE, LABOR IS ALL RHETORIC
AND NO REALITY, RESOURCES OR READINESS

Amidst the circus which is the Treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable, the Minister for Defence Industry’s speech yesterday at the Queensland Media Club went largely unnoticed.

But for those who saw it, there should be praise. Not for the Albanese Government, but for Australia’s defence industry which continues to punch above its weight in difficult circumstances.

If Pat Conroy’s speech proved anything at all, it’s that Australia’s small and medium-sized businesses have the ingenuity and drive to develop home-grown weapons and munitions at speed and scale.

And yet, they’re held back by this federal government which talks big, but spends small.

In speaking about investment ‘over the next 10 years’, Minister Conroy revealed that the Albanese Government is simply not serious about investing in the defence of Australia.

We need significant investment in defence – not over the decade, but right now – to equip our defence force with essential capabilities such as offensive and defensive missiles, drones and counter-drone technologies, and autonomous underwater vehicles.

Minister Conroy is right to commend the Australian Defence Force for the first firing of new missiles. But this is a distraction. He and the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, have not done the hard work to ensure that Australia is manufacturing missiles in their thousands.

Australia desperately needs capabilities like missiles and drones to play a meaningful role in helping to defend our nation and to deter the growing hostility and military aggression of the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s telling that, in Minister Conroy’s speech, he could not mention the Chinese Communist Party by name.

As has become typical of the Albanese Government, it’s incapable of being upfront with Australians about a great danger of our age.

Instead, it disregards and downplays that threat using vague phrases like, “Australia faces significant challenges in its strategic environment.”

If Australians don’t appreciate a threat, they’re unlikely to understand the need for policy responses – or indeed support them.

On defence, Labor is all rhetoric and no reality, resources or readiness.

The Coalition calls on the Albanese Government to lift defence spending to at least 3 per cent of GDP as a matter of urgency – and to stop silencing a candid national debate on the dangers posed by the Chinese Communist Party’s military aggression in our region and its foreign interference in our country.

Wednesday, 20 August 2025