Christopher Pyne has said that Australia needs to become more self-sufficient in defence manufacturing and should even export military equipment. He might be right.

These are disturbing times. There is terrorism, ISIS, North Korea and tensions seething throughout the world. But the most disturbing thing of all is that I find myself agreeing with Christopher Pyne. Disturbing times, indeed.

As well as being annoying and controversial, Christopher Pyne is also the Defence Industry Minister, which may come as a surprise if not a shock to many people. Yes, Christopher Pyne is in charge of the nation’s defence industry. What were we saying about disturbing times?

And, as Defence Industry Minister, Christopher Pyne has talked about defence industry.

You may not think it at all odd that the Defence Industry Minister would be talking about defence industry. If you think this way then you obviously do not follow politics. These days it is very odd for government ministers to talk about anything to do with their portfolio. They usually like to talk about Climate Change or gay marriage or any fashionable left wing cause that stops them from having to talk about what they are actually paid to do.

So, credit to him for actually doing his job.

Christopher Pyne has said that we need to become more self-sufficient at defence industry. And he is not wrong.

There is an attitude found among some commentators and politicians that we should just buy all our military equipment from overseas. They buy their cars and luxury goods from overseas and that seems to work. So, why not buy all of our defence equipment from overseas? Unfortunately, that is about the level of depth they put into thinking about this issue.

Their argument is usually along the lines that they make good military equipment overseas and they can do it cheaper than what we can do it here, so let’s buy from overseas. Easy. Except it is not so easy.

The trouble with military equipment is that it is to be used when times are tough. Access to new equipment, parts and expertise might not be readily available when times are tough.

The countries we buy things from might be little preoccupied fighting for their survival to be able to help us. So, having some defence industry capability in Australia gives us some robustness in our military capability. In other words, we want a defence force that is capable of fighting when times are tough, not just when times are good.

He also talked about the need to export military equipment. The idea is that in order to make defence industry big enough to be viable we would need to export. This is not a ridiculous notion but, of course, there are problems with exporting military equipment. Mostly, we have to make sure we export to our friends and not our enemies.

Attacking Christopher Pyne is one of the nation’s great joys. But we should give credit where credit is due. And he did the right thing in talking about defence industry self-sufficiency.

It is a big issue. And it is going to need a lot more talking about.

Michael J. Thompson