Anthony Albanese defends Stephen Smith as ‘right person’ to co-chair defence review

Anthony Albanese says Stephen Smith is the right person to co-chair the eight-month review, despite steep cuts to the defence budget during his time in office.

Stephen Smith, left, Anthony Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Sir Angus Houston on Wednesday in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Anthony Albanese has been forced to defend the appointment of former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith to lead a major strategic review, given his failure during the Gillard government to prevent the biggest Defence budget cuts in 70 years.

Professor Smith and former defence force chief Sir Angus Houston will lead the eight-month defence review that will guide the nation’s strategic policy for decades.

The Prime Minister said the review would deliver a “frank assessment of our capabilities and (procurement) pipeline”. But the troubled $45bn Hunter-class frigate program will be shielded from being scrapped or scaled back.

In the 2012-13 budget, when Professor Smith was minister, the Defence budget was slashed to 1.56 per cent of GDP – its lowest level since 1938.

Former defence minister Stephen Smith. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said Professor Smith’s appointment was a “disgraceful politicisation” of the review, and raised serious concerns that Defence programs could be cut. “When Mr Smith was last in government – he cut and cancelled Defence projects, delayed decisions, and dismissed warnings about the strategic environment Australia was heading into a decade ago,” he said.

“Our ADF need capability now, not more reviews and cuts. Labor must guarantee that they will not use this review as a smokescreen for cuts and delay.”

Public interest defence watchdog the Australia Defence Association also condemned Professor Smith’s appointment as “grimly ironic”, saying he was “chronically indecisive” as defence minister.

ADA executive director Neil James said Professor Smith, an academic at the University of Western Australia, was “easily in the worst-five defence ministers of the last seven decades”, and bore “much responsibility for Labor’s share of Australia’s lost decade in warship construction”.

Mr Albanese said the review would respond to “the most complex strategic environment we have encountered as a nation in over 70 years”. He said Professor Smith and Sir Angus were “the right people” for the job, and Professor Smith’s experience as former defence and foreign minister “puts him in very good stead”.

Mr Albanese, who accused former prime minister Scott Morrison of launching dozens of reviews to avoid taking action, also defended the decision to launch another review so soon after the 2020 Defence Strategic Update.

“We foreshadowed this,” he said. “And this is necessary because we know there has been that significant gap between what governments have announced and what has been delivered.”

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the 2020 update made “profound observations” in overturning the previous assumption of a decade of “strategic warning time” before an attack on Australia. “But it did leave questions hanging in the air about what we’ll do about it,” he said. “It’s really the question what we’re now going to do, which is what this review will look at.”

Mr Marles said the Smith and Houston review would “apply a critical eye” to Defence’s $280bn pipeline of new investment.

He said major programs, such as the Hunter-class frigate program, “are not about to change” but “we‘re going to look at the integrated investment plan over the course of the next 10 years to make sure what we have as a schedule of procurements does meet the challenges that our strategic circumstances present”.