Mr BEVIS (11:14 AM) —I join with my colleagues on this side of the House in supporting the Defence Legislation Amendment Bill 2003 and taking the opportunity that this omnibus bill provides to us to talk more broadly on a range of defence matters. I am particularly pleased to follow the member for Swan, and I agree with the comments that he has made this morning in relation to the specifics of the bill. I followed with interest the comments last night and earlier today on this side of the House. The member for Cowan, a Vietnam veteran, talked with great authority and integrity on matters to do with medals and the provisions in the bill dealing with those things.

The member for Denison last night put the argument very forthrightly on behalf of those who have some interest in civil liberties and human rights in respect of the Australian citizens Hicks and Habib held in Guantanamo Bay. I have a private member's motion on the Notice Paper dealing with this matter and it strikes me as not just peculiar but a disgrace that we have allowed two Australian citizens to be held virtually without any rights, to be held at the sole discretion of the President of the United States for a period of something now exceeding two years, to be held in conditions that Nazi war criminals were not subjected to, and to be denied the rights that even Nazi war criminals were afforded. That will forever blight our history in this parliament. I think the comments made by the member for Denison should be read by all members of the parliament.

Particularly I want to acknowledge the contribution of the member for Chifley, who more than anybody in this parliament deserves credit for the initiatives in military justice that this bill proposes. As Deputy Chair and a very active member of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, he has been extremely committed and diligent in pursuing the rights of service personnel to proper judicial process. This bill in no small measure is a result of the work which he has done over many years. I think it is a great credit to him and an indication of what you can do sometimes in this parliament through committee work.

At a time when security issues are so prominent in the public mind, it is a matter of concern that this government wishes to garner the greatest amount of political spin it can without providing the substance that is needed. Our defence forces deserve much better than this government has provided. There has been a litany of incompetence and mismanagement since this government was elected in 1996. It likes the tabloid press release, it likes the spin to be right, but, when it comes to actually performing and to delivering the goods in the most critical of areas for a national parliament, it fails miserably.

The government released with great fanfare their 2000 white paper and referred in it to a quite extensive program to acquire a substantial amount of new platforms and equipment. I was interested therefore in the assessment of our current defence budget conducted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ASPI, and what it had to say about this government's management of that budget. Bear in mind that ASPI is an organisation that is basically independent. We might quibble from time to time on both sides of the House as to members appointed to its board, but I think it is fair to say it has a decent cross-section of good, intellectually capable security analysts. ASPI said this in its look at the current defence budget:

That is $850 million that the government have not been able to keep on track just two years into a 10-year program. What is it going to be like five years into the 10-year program? The program has only just started and they are already $850 million off track. Why are they off track? Because they have not been able to properly administer their own program because they have been too concerned about the public spin, they have been too concerned about talking about `children overboard' and they been too concerned about talking about border security, when in fact they should have been concerned about at least implementing their own program. If they cannot get it right in the first 24 months of a 120-month program, I think it augurs badly for the future. But sadly that is the position the government have put us in.

But it does not stop there. The government have managed to pay over $800 million for 40-year-old Seasprite helicopters that we do not even have yet. We are not going to have them until some time next year, but they forked out the money up front. Not content with forking out the money up front, they paid $31 million to service the helicopters on a service contract. So we have spent $31 million to service helicopters that we have already paid for but we are not going to get until next year. This is supposed to be good project management! They purchased torpedoes for our Collins class submarines that were too heavy. They purchased torpedoes that did not fit in the submarines, so we, as Australian taxpayers, then had to spend a couple of hundred million dollars to alter the submarines to fit—

Mr Brough —Madam Deputy Speaker Corcoran, I rise on a point of order. Just to aid the member for Brisbane so he does not mislead the House, I inform him that in fact the Seasprites have been received into service.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms Corcoran)—Your point of order—

Mr BEVIS —I am happy to stand corrected if they are now in service. That is obviously a fairly recent addition. The minister might like to tell us exactly when they entered service. The government have also committed, without any program of evaluation, $US150 million to the Joint Strike Fighter program—something I spoke about recently in the parliament. It is extraordinarily pre-emptive, in that the program for evaluation of that platform was only beginning when they closed it. The other companies that were involved in the bidding were totally surprised. British Aerospace found out the program had been concluded when a journalist rang them up, and the French consortium that were planning to bid for the project knew nothing of it. The person heading up their bid got off the plane in Canberra on the morning that the government announced they had made their decision. He was supposed to be here to head up a bidding program for four years. On the day he got here to set up he found out the government had already made up their mind on what will be the single most important acquisition for defence purposes to be made in the next decade. The normal processes of evaluation had been cast aside by this government in the most important acquisition we will make. Not only is it important; it will be the single most costly acquisition in Australian defence history.

This is a big-ticket item, by any definition, and this government has decided on the outcome without any evaluation process. The proof of that, of course, is that the other companies involved in the bidding have packed up and gone home. The French have no desire to participate any more in our acquisition program and the British Aerospace bid, of course, is no longer on foot, because the government has determined the outcome. The JSF may turn out to be an extremely good asset for our purposes or it may not. The simple fact is that none of us knows. That is why we have exhaustive investigative processes when we go about acquiring these sorts of platforms for our Defence Force. But the government has dispensed with all that.

It is interesting to note that, at the moment, the JSF has a few weight problems and it looks like they are not going to get a vertical variant of the aircraft because it is too heavy to take off in vertical configuration. It is also interesting to note that the United States Navy have cut their order of JSFs by 400. All is not rosy in the JSF program, yet we have committed to it years out from the delivery of any aircraft; and, in that process, we have also decided that we will retire early our F111s, presumably to be replaced by the JSF—the Joint Strike Fighter—which is yet to be in operation, and I think it will be 2012 or 2015 at the earliest before we get the aircraft. This is another case of terrible mismanagement.

There is one other example that I will mention, although there are others that I could refer to, and that is the decision the Howard government made not long after it was elected in June 1996 to buy some AGM142 missiles for the F111. These are not expected to be fitted to the aircraft until 2005—nine years after they ordered them. Why? Because they have not been able to make the modifications to the F111s that were required. These are not things that competent governments do in the management of defence. But it should not be too much of a surprise because, if you look over the period that this government has been in office, it has managed to have four secretaries of the department and four defence ministers in just five years. There is no continuity amongst the most senior people, either here in the parliament or across at Russell. Thankfully, those in uniform have maintained the usual consistency of position and high standard. I suspect that without the professionalism of our defence forces—those at Russell and throughout the defence community—we would be in an even worse position.

One of the specific areas that this bill before us touches on is the question of medals and their misuse. I want to refer to one area of the medals issue that has troubled me since I first learnt about it some years ago: the medals associated with the Battle of Long Tan. As all of us know, the Battle of Long Tan was an occasion during the Vietnam War in which a comparatively small force of Australians was ambushed by a very large force of both regular Vietnamese soldiers and Vietcong. In the face of quite overbearing odds, the Australians were able to extricate themselves and, indeed, do the job required of them incredibly well. There were comparatively few casualties, although I think it was the single incident that created more casualties for Australia than any other. During the course of that battle, Australian troops came under heavy fire and some of the company commanders were killed early in the battle. That required NCOs and junior officers to take on responsibilities that they would not normally have had to carry out.

Sadly, when it came to recognising what were amongst the most heroic deeds of that war, the medals for which they were recommended were downgraded. This fact only came to light after the 30-year rule allowed the disclosure of the documents, so it has only been in the last few years that we have known the true story of what happened. In spite of my repeated efforts and those of other members on this side of the House, including the member for Cowan, to have this matter dealt with, the government has refused to reconsider the matter. I want to refer to a question I asked when this first came to my attention in December 1999. I asked the then minister:

That question, I have to say, is rhetorical: every one of those statements is true. Those soldiers were recommended for a Military Cross, a deservedly higher order, because of their bravery in the fiercest battle of the Vietnam War involving Australian soldiers. What did they end up getting? They got a much lesser award: Mentioned in Dispatches. Just to rub salt into the wound, the very medals list that had their MIDs on it also had a Mentioned in Dispatches for the postal clerk in Vung Tau. Their bravery on the battlefield, in the fiercest fight that Australians faced in the Vietnam War, was regarded by the hierarchy at the time as worthy of nothing more than what the postal clerk in Vung Tau received. I am happy enough for the postal clerk in Vung Tau to get a Mentioned in Dispatches. I guess he did a good job, but I do not know. What I do know is that those people who were in the middle of that battle at Long Tan deserved higher recognition. But it gets worse. I also asked the minister:

in fact, he got a Distinguished Service Order—

So whilst the soldiers in the thick of it were awarded Mentioned in Dispatches, the Battle Commander, who was not even there, managed to pick up a Distinguished Service Order. I also asked the minister:

So the brigadier, who was not actually anywhere near where the bullets were fired, got a Distinguished Service Order. I asked:

The minister of the day, Mr Scott, answered that question by saying:

He did not know where that came from. That is a reassuring sentiment to pass on to those Vietnam vets. But it really does offend when I look at the last part of that question. I asked these three questions in 1999:

Finally, I asked:

I have it on the authority of a number of the troops who were in that battle that that is exactly what transpired. In spite of the fact that the most senior officer in the battlefield recommended that honours be provided to his platoon commanders, they were downgraded and this government has refused to deal with it. What did the minister say in answer to the last three questions to which I have just referred? He replied:

That is fantastic, Minister! It is not surprising that most of the Vietnam vets involved in that battle who know about those questions and answers were outraged by them. One wrote to the minister at the time and asked the question that perplexes all of them, and I must say bewilders me. He said:

It is a puzzling question. I have referred here to the Australian and Imperial medals that have not been provided to those troops who clearly deserve them. I must say it does grate to know that those in the battle who were recommended for a Military Cross and did not receive one had to watch while people who were at the Little Pattie and Col Joye concert got one. That is an interesting turn of events, but that is what happened and this government has ignored it. This is something the facts of which have only been publicly known since 1996, 30 years after the battle. In spite of repeated efforts by the troops concerned, by me and by other members in this place, this government has refused to address that issue.

This bill deals with medals and how they are to be handled after they are issued. There is a more fundamental and important question that needs to be addressed and that is: who gets medals and in what circumstances do they get them? There are all manner of people now saying that you should get a medal just because you enlisted. That is a debate for another day.

Mr Brough —What are your thoughts?

Mr BEVIS —That is a debate for another day. I know this: those brave and decent soldiers in the battle of Long Tan, who were there because a government sent them there, have been deserted by the government—and, as it turns out, a government of the same political persuasion. I hope that the minister has listened to some of what I have said about the Long Tan battle and that there may actually be some take-up of it. It is long overdue that those involved receive their proper recognition and that it is put right. It is a clear case of injustice and the sooner it is fixed, the better will be the outcome.