Government Fails to Produce Papers – Taipan Helicopter Ditching

The Albanese government is rushing through legislation that will effectively give them similar power and control to World War era demands for ‘your papers please’. I’m not saying this is the intention of the Albanese government, but it is the framework that is being put in place in line with the initiative from the World Economic Forum, an international body founded by Klaus Schwab.

It’s ironic then, that the government is failing to produce its own papers. The Senate orders the government to produce papers and the government refuses. Like this situation here in the Senate, where there was an order to produce documents over 6 months ago relating to a non-fatal Taipan helicopter ditching in Jervis Bay. The government failed to produce any details even after Defence promised they would. Why? The hierarchy in Defence is covering up their mistakes.

The Taipan helicopters should have been pulled from service a decade ago. There were technical shortcomings in their capability that could not be defended. There were dangerous, catastrophic safety issues that Defence knew about. Instead of dealing with those issues or grounding the helicopter, as they should have, Defence and the politicians kept it in service and flying. Now four personnel who piloted and flew in that helicopter have died in a crash. We hope their families, despite their enormous loss, will find peace.

With so much at stake, the Australian people deserve to know the details. The senate is the house of review and when the senate orders the government to produce documents, then that is what must happen. Without transparency and accountability, we are not much better than the regime mentioned above.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Pursuant to standing order 164 and, by coincidence, genuinely by coincidence, with the previous motion, I seek an explanation from the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, Senator Wong, regarding the failure to respond to order for production of documents No. 243, agreed on 22 June 2023, in relation to the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter incident at Jervis Bay.

Senator Gallagher: I am happy to follow that up. We didn’t have notice of the OPD that Senator Roberts was going to refer to, so the minister isn’t here and able to provide a direct response. Normally, a heads-up is provided so that we can prepare an answer. I acknowledge you came over in question time and said that you would be doing this, but you didn’t inform us of what minister or OPD you were after. So I would have to come back to the chamber at a later time with an explanation. Could Senator Roberts indicate the number of the OPD he referred to?

Senator ROBERTS: Certainly; it’s No. 200. I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. So much for the Albanese Labor government’s promises to be transparent and accountable! Yet again, they’ve failed a transparency deadline, failing to produce the documents the Senate ordered them to produce six months ago. In March this year, a Taipan helicopter was forced to ditch into the sea in Jervis Bay. No people died. Two were injured. Thankfully, those injuries were minor due to the pilots’ skills—skills they shouldn’t have had to rely on yet had to, because Defence made them fly a dodgy helicopter. Separately, in July, a Taipan helicopter crashed in the Whitsundays, killing four Defence personnel. This order for the production of documents related to the non-fatal Jervis Bay incident in March. The government has failed to produce any details after the Defence brass promised they would produce such reports.

What you didn’t hear in the minister’s explanation is the true story of why these documents haven’t been produced. The hierarchy in Defence are covering up their mistakes. The Taipan helicopters should have been pulled from service a decade ago. There were technical shortcomings in their capability that could not be defended. There were dangerous, catastrophic safety issues that Defence knew about. Instead of dealing with those issues or grounding the helicopter, as they should have, Defence and the politicians kept it in service and flying. Now four personnel who piloted and flew in that helicopter have died in a crash. We remember now Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Laycock—or, as he was known, Phil—troop commander Captain Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent and Corporal Alexander Naggs. We hope their families, despite their enormous loss, will find peace.

Next—and I do not say this lightly—the Defence hierarchy and politicians who allowed the Taipan helicopter to continue flying have blood on their hands. No-one in Defence can claim not to know about this helicopter’s problems. The MRH-90 Taipan helicopter was identified on a list of ‘projects of concern’ in 2011, 12 years ago. The Taipan remained on that list until it was grounded for good after the Whitsundays crash, 13 years before its planned retirement. During its lifetime, the Taipan was grounded no fewer than nine times due to ongoing problems, yet Defence kept flying it—or, rather, Defence kept soldiers flying it. Australian taxpayers spent at least $3.7 billion on the project. The Taipan cost $50,000 an hour to fly. I can hear Senator Shoebridge laughing, and I understand why. Compare that to the Black Hawk, which costs an estimated $15,000 an hour, 30 per cent of the cost. The Australian National Audit Office identified some of the MRH-90 Taipan’s many serious problems. These included engine failure—without an engine, helicopters fly like a brick; transmission, oil cooler and fan failures; poor availability of spares; on the Navy aircraft, problems with the cargo hook; and, on the Army helicopters, problems with door gun mounts and the fast roping and rappelling device.

Those are some of the problems. Yet Defence kept flying the helicopter. The Navy couldn’t hook cargo into its Taipans. The Army couldn’t fire guns at the same time that soldiers were in the helicopter. Our Australian Army consider the cabin and row equipment are not fit for purpose, as the seat size and harness cannot accommodate personnel wearing combat gear. Yet Defence kept flying it. They knew the engine could fail and the helicopter could drop out of the sky, yet they kept on flying it.

Defence analyst Marcus Hellyer wrote in 2021: Back when I worked in the Department of Defence, we used to occupy ourselves from time to time calculating how much money the taxpayer would save in the long run if we just walked away from the MRH-90 utility helicopter and bought Black Hawk helicopters instead. The answer was a lot. And the sooner you did it, the more you’d save, by avoiding sinking more acquisition dollars into the MRH-90 and realising the substantially lower operating costs of the Black Hawk. But even though those numbers were shared with Defence’s senior decision-makers, the department couldn’t bring itself to take that step.

Defence had all the information. They knew the Taipan was a waste of billions of dollars. They knew it could not do the job it was meant to do and supposed to do. They knew it had catastrophic safety risks. They knew all of this for more than a decade, yet Defence kept on flying it. That’s why this government will not answer this order for the production of documents after almost six months. The cost and particularly the fatalities—avoidable fatalities—are huge.

I also want to talk about another huge impact: the impact on the Defence Force’s morale. What happens when you ask someone to keep operating faulty, life-threatening equipment? What happens to trust? You know the
answer. Look at the hypocrisy of the Chief of the Defence Force awarding himself a medal reserved for those in action, when he was sitting a thousand kilometres from the action. How does that build trust? It destroys trust.

Some years ago, when I was working in the mining industry, I met two people who had come from the defence forces, officers from the Army specifically. One was so highly skilled that he had been asked on occasion to take six of his mates and go into the jungles of Vietnam, well beyond enemy lines, take on a job and come back. He rose to be in charge of jungle warfare training. Barry—along with John, who had been a captain in the army—told me the key to Army culture and Defence Force culture. That key is mateship. Barry had to lecture other countries’ defence forces and security forces on counterterrorism work. He said in most countries they did not understand what mateship was. It’s intangible, yet the impacts are so tangible.

He also talked about standards. Everyone who joins the Army, for example, comes into the Army and is then made equal with everyone else so that they get the feeling of looking after their mates. Then they’re trained to a very high standard, and they can rely on each other and those standards. I’ll tell you a little story. Barry and John both said that when you’re behind a log in incoming machine gun fire, the only thing worse than jumping over that log and going into that machine gun fire is running away and leaving your mate behind. That’s how strong it is in the Army. There will be lots of people from the Army who will be watching this parliament and will know exactly what I’m talking about.

The third part of mateship is trust. How can we have trust when the defence forces are going woke? I hear from so many soldiers and airmen and sailors that they’re sick and tired of the defence forces going woke and it will jeopardise their lives in battle.

That is not looking after our soldiers.

Then we talk about national security. All of that impacts on national security. I’ll say it again: the key strategic weapon we have in this country in our armed forces is at the mateship, the training, the standards and what used to be trust. The warriors are fine. The problem is the Chief of the Defence Force, the top brass and, as we’ve heard recently, the minister who is supposed to hold them accountable.

We’ve had some preliminary briefings, and I want to commend a young public servant who said that the problems with the Taipans are not just in the military but also in the politics and the politicians. These politicians and the top brass are responsible for deaths. They have blood on their hands. Even the slightest amount of scrutiny on this project will reveal the pervasive corruption in the Defence hierarchy, reveal politicians’ mistakes and show that these people in Defence and in politics have blood on their hands. One Nation will continue pushing to hold those in the Defence hierarchy to account and protect our warriors serving in the Defence Force.