Mr HOWARTH (Petrie) (16:05): I rise today to talk about this matter of public importance, and I am quite happy to do so. An opposition member: Tell us about David Johnston! Mr HOWARTH: I will get to the minister in a minute, member for Batman. The Labor Party are all about political point-scoring. Their MPI debates, their 90-second statements and their constituency statements are all negative. There is nothing positive. On this side of the House we are very positive about the Australian Defence Force. Mr Champion interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Wakefield— Mr HOWARTH: We heard from the member for Batman. He got up on this MPI and said the reason the Defence minister needs to go is that he has not made enough speeches. Member for Batman: it is not about speeches, mate, it is about performance. That is what counts here. The member for Port Adelaide got up and said, 'This minister's got slip-ups in incompetence.' Then he went on a rant that was totally unfounded. The member for Canberra—who has decided to leave and not even stick around for the rest of the debate—gets up and wants to go on about ADF pay and conditions, yet she was a member of the previous government that saw the biggest fiscal turnaround in this country since federation in 1901. We left them with billions in the bank. They racked up billions in debt. We have $1 billion a month that we are repaying in debt. And she wants to go on about ADF pay and conditions. Well, she should have thought of that before she spent a truck load of money and left all these people up here in the gallery, and every other Australian, with a heap of debt. Mr Fitzgibbon: Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: can I seek clarification as to whether the member said 'Johnson' or 'Johnston'? The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. In fact it is disorderly, and the member for Hunter should know that. Mr HOWARTH: The member for Makin spoke about South Australian members and so forth. Well, defence affects all members of this parliament. Defence affects all Australians. He wants to give us advice on defence acquisitions. Well, on this side of the House we take advice from the minister; and also from the assistant minister, the member for Fadden, who had a distinguished career in the Defence Force; and also from the member for Bass, who spoke on this MPI today, who was a distinguished brigadier in the Defence Force and sits on our defence backbench committee. I am quite happy to take recommendations from those members on our side of the parliament. Opposition members interjecting— Mr HOWARTH: The Labor Party are negative. I am quite happy to talk about the Minister for Defence. I judge people by what I see when I meet them. I have spoken to the Minister for Defence on several occasions and I believe he is passionate about the ADF and believes Australia needs to have a strong Defence Force. Let's look at what the minister said today in the Senate. He said: 'The frustrations of successive governments with the performance of both the Collins class sustainment and the AWD program are well documented. I am committed to leading the effort to fix our problems. I did express my frustrations in the past performance of ASC— Opposition members interjecting— Mr HOWARTH: Listen up, 'shadow minister'. He said: 'In these comments I never intended to cause offence and regret that offence may have been taken.' But that is not good enough for the opposition because they are Mr and Mrs Negativity. What is Labor's record on defence? We have heard it from other members, and I will not go into it all again, but we know that they launched a defence white paper and then cut $16 billion out of defence. Many new members are sitting around me here. We made the decision to run for our seats in parliament because of your past performance, because of the cuts that you made to defence and the many, many things that you did—and you have the gall to come in here and raise this in an MPI debate. Under Labor, defence spending dropped to 1.56 per cent, the lowest since 1938. We have made a commitment to invest in defence. We will continue to do so and ensure taxpayers' money is spent well. (Time expired)