Sophie Mirabella.
MEMBER for Indi Sophie Mirabella is concerned and angry that the Bandiana warehouse project has been delayed 18 months.
“This is what happens when a desperately incompetent government wastes millions,” Mrs Mirabella said yesterday.
She said the savage defence cuts were a consequence of budget blow-outs in areas such as immigration and border protection, but defence hadn’t been the only portfolio to feel the heat.
Mrs Mirabella said she was aware that senior people in defence “have been gutted” by decisions arising from the $5.5 billion cut in the defence budget, announced in last year’s budget.
“They are hoping for a regime change after the election this year,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mrs Mirabella will ask the Defence Department to clarify the new timetable for the Bandiana project, which had been expected to be finished in 2015.
“I will also raise it in the Senate estimates after we return to Parliament next month,” she said.
Mrs Mirabella said the Bandiana deferral was just one consequence of government mismanagement last year as it tried to achieve a budget surplus, a target now abandoned.
“In October, the Chief of Army, General David Morrison, criticised the cuts, something unprecedented for an army chief,” she said.
Brigadier Darren Naumann told a parliamentary inquiry that without the new warehouse, Bandiana would continue to have “inadequate” old warehouses not capable of supporting the future logistics network.
