Mr KHALIL (Wills) (15:37): If there were ever a time for a lesson in psychology, it would be today. If there were ever an MPI that highlighted the human capacity for denial, this one would be it. I'm actually floored that those opposite would seek to put up an MPI on the current government and talk about mismanagement when we can clearly see that the historical record of the last nine years of coalition government is the actual gold standard, the perfect example, of mismanagement. Psychological experts characterise what they're doing as something called 'projecting'. It's a condition from which those opposite are clearly suffering, amongst probably many other psychological maladies, which we've seen play out in the ABC documentary Nemesis. This condition of projecting is where those opposite want to externalise their own incompetence, negligence and mismanagement onto others—in this case, the current government. It's a sad psychological state of affairs, but they do it because—and this is the experts speaking—it helps the individuals protect their self-esteem and avoid confronting the uncomfortable truths about themselves and their own traits. I think that's a little bit late, given what we've seen on the ABC. The primary projector is none other than the opposition leader himself, Peter Dutton, who was a former minister for defence. We know that Mr Dutton oversaw the worst failures in the coalition during their nine years. We've heard it from previous speakers—the whopping $3.8 billion on the MRH-90 helicopters for the Army and special forces that cannot even fire their own weapons because the doors were too narrow. The coalition government spent $1.16 billion on new battlefield airlifter aircraft that can't fly into battlefields. Under the former government, poor-quality manufacturing led to pipes being contaminated and our sailors not even being given access to quality, safe drinking water. Perhaps, with all of that actual mismanagement—the facts of that, the historical record—the opposition leader may have to answer for that in the next doco. The current shadow minister for defence is Mr Hastie. I acknowledge his service to the country. I respect it and I acknowledge it. He himself is a former Assistant Minister for Defence, and he said this about his own party: … we squandered a lot of opportunity through leadership changes … which led to inertia institutionally… Mr Hastie also said that under his government defence had too many ministers. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): I'm just going to ask the member for Wills to use the member's title when referring to him. Mr KHALIL: The member for Canning said they had too many ministers in defence. If we're looking for factors contributing to mismanagement, look at the coalition mismanagement of defence. The coalition government had six ministers for defence in nine years. They had four ministers for defence industry over four years. And once again, who was central to all this—the leadership changes, the inertia and the mismanagement? It was the opposition leader. That brings me to my next psychological malady: deflection. The opposition leader is not only a master projector in that sense, projecting onto others, but also a compulsive deflector. The mismanagement goes beyond the coalition's record in defence. We saw yesterday the Richardson report handed down, after a review of allegations of systemic misuse of taxpayer money. Guess who oversaw this? The opposition leader. We know that. The opposition leader has a compulsive need to deflect from his abject failures as both the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Home Affairs in the previous coalition government. He likes to posture, he likes to deflect and he likes to project. Unfortunately, the rest of the team over there on the opposite side are following in those footsteps by bringing this MPI forward. In contrast, this government has taken responsibility for cleaning up the mess and mismanagement of nine long years under the coalition, and our focus has been solely on keeping Australians safe. Our first action as a government was to commission the Defence Strategic Review and set an ambitious agenda for Australia's defence that moves our country forward and ensures the safety of all Australians. And we've made substantive reforms—they say that we haven't—in relation to early warning criteria on projects of concern, in raising attention on emerging problems and encouraging early response, and in making sure that we're getting the defence budget back on track. We've added $30.5 billion to defence funding across the decade. Those opposite can project and deflect all they like, but it will never change the reality that their mismanagement of defence for nine years will always and forever be in the history books as a blight on their record.