Defence Major Projects repeatedly go off the rails wasting billions and harming national security. Rather than fix the problem, Labor has instructed the Auditor-General not to report on them. Former senator Rex Patrick reports.

Defence currently has a budget of almost $60 billion a year but that number is set to rise to about $100 billion by 2034. It’s the country’s biggest procurement opertaion by a long shot.

Defence is also the country’s biggest waster of money. 

It spent $4B to not buy French submarines. It cancelled a $3.8B on a Multi-Role Helicopter program that has now been shut down. It cancelled a $1.3B Sky Guardian attack drone program having spent $1.3B to get nothing. 

Billions have been wasted on an Army Battle Management system, Spartan battlefield airlift aircraft and a Tiger helicopter program.

Altogether, that’s vastly more than enough money to pay for, for example, 90 days of fuel reserve storage.

In 2024-25 there were two projects listed on the government’s own Projects of Concern (train smash) list and seven projects listed on the Projects of Interest (about to derail) list.

But you don’t have to believe MWM on Defence’s poor record.

In February 2024 Defence Minister Richard Marles went on Sky News and alluded to a need for a “culture of excellence, making sure that procurement is happening as quickly as it can, and we are very much in the process of doing all of that.”

“Now, governments have talked about this in the past, but we really do need to be making sure that we are moving at a faster pace,” he told the show’s audience.

In December 2025 Marles himself initiated a claimed major reform to Defence Acquisition, although the truth is he just shuffled the deck chairs.

Despite the mess that Defence procurement is in, and despite the plan to allocate Defence more taxpayers money to spend on projects, despite the increasingly concerning geo-strategic circumstances and despite the fact we’re embarked on the most costly and risky Defence program ever (AUKUS), the Labor controlled Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit has ordered the Auditor-General to stop producing it’s Major Project Review.

The move comes as Defence oversight moves to a newly established Joint Committee on Defence, that will only have the two major parties sitting on it and that will meet in secret.

One of the key accountability tools the public has for the overly secretive Defence Department is the Auditor-General’s annual Major Project review. 

It’s brought to the public by the same team that brought us Sport’s Rorts, the Leppington Triangle scandal and Car Park rorts affair.

The Auditor-General has the powers of a Royal Commissioner when it comes to getting access to information. She can order an official to provide information and documents (including Cabinet submissions) to her. 

She can take evidence and cross examine officials and she can even enter any Government premise to get what she needs to do her job of scrutinising government expenditure and management of public funds.

While the Auditor-General’s office sits administratively under the Prime Minister’s portfolio, the Auditor-General is an independent officer of the Parliament responsible to the Parliament’s Joint Public Accounts Committee.

The Major Projects review is the most informative document on Defence performance that is in the public domain.

It reports on the 20 (or thereabouts) Major Projects currently underway. It pulls no punches.

Last year’s report revealed that the variance between the cost of Defence projects when they were put before Government for approval and the current anticipated cost across the major projects was $37.335B. That’s 37,355 million dollars over-budget (for those that have trouble comprehending what a billion dollars is in practice).

It also revealed there was 404 months of schedule slippage across the major projects (that’s 33.6 years delay in total).

The new ‘do not examine’ instruction to the Auditor General represents the shutting down of any real public oversight of Defence.

Champagne corks will have been popping across Defence’s Russell Hill headquarters.

The Labor Government will be happy too. Defence is a high expenditure area of government and one that regularly generates bad budgetary news. Comfortable it is likely to be in government for this term, and at least the next, it doesn’t want scrutiny on this thorny area of Government (mis)management.

With the amount of public money being spent on AUKUS climbing towards 10 billion – with no deployable capability anywhere in sight – the Government would be particularly shy of having a 5 to 10 page Project Data Summary Sheet spelling out the details of the project; the budget, expenditure details, cost overruns, schedule details, delays, the risk and blunders for the project etc.

If the annual Major Project Review was to report on AUKUS the public would easily and clearly see the total money being spent on US and UK shipyards, for AUKUS, and which companies are on the gravy train, what the emerging problems are, and what the impacts are on the rest of the Defence portfolio and Defence Force capabilities.

How could that be politically helpful to Government? It can’t – best it rid itself of that problem.

In December 2019, seven years into a Coalition Government, Anthony Albanese made an address to the Chifley Research Centre Conference. He laid out a fresh and positive approach to our country’s future.

Albanese wanted whistleblowers protected; “expand their protections”. He hasn’t.

Albanese wanted a culture of disclosure in Government; “Reform freedom of information laws so they can’t be flouted by government. The current delays, obstacles, costs and exemptions make it easier for the government to hide information from the public. That is just not right.” 

He introduced an FOI Amendment Bill that threw up more obstacles and expanded secrecy. 

“People are subject to attack for putting their views,” he stated. He’s now passed laws through the Parliament that seek to criminalise some discussion topics.

Albanese wanted a National Integrity Commission to root out corruption intel federal sphere. The Commission was to have all the powers, independence and resources of a standing Royal Commission. He implemented a NACC that, unlike Royal Commissions, could not readily hold public hearings.

Albanse [sic] was adamant that. “You don’t govern in the national interest under a shroud of secrecy”. One of his major goals for a future Government under his leadership was to restore public accountability”. 

Now we see him quashing accountability over our biggest area of contract expenditure.

A year after his Chifley Research Centre speech Albanese, frustrated with the Morrison Government, rose in the House of Representatives and hurled criticism at the Morrison government, “There’s no responsibility. There’s no accountability. It’s all politics”.

One can’t ignore the sequence of counter-democracy moves by Albanese since coming to government, including now killing off of the Auditor-General’s examination of Defence Major Projects. 

Albanese has replicated the governance arrangements he once purportedly despised.

There’s no responsibility. There’s no accountability. 

It’s all politics.

https://michaelwest.com.au/biggest-loser-gets-buried-no-report-on-defence-projects-after-37b-blow-out/

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