The man who lost his job as defence minister after quipping that he wouldn’t trust the government’s shipbuilder to construct a canoe, let alone a submarine, is now in charge of selling Australia’s defence industry to the world.
Christopher Pyne announced David Johnston had been appointed the first “Australian defence export advocate” as part of the government’s plan to increase the nation’s defence exports.
“This appointment will greatly expand the government’s reach in promoting Australia’s world-class defence industry,” the defence industry minister said.
The former Western Australian senator is best remembered for comments he made in 2014, when, as defence minister, he said he would not trust South Australian shipbuilders ASC (previously known as the Australian Submarine Corporation) “to build a canoe”.
“You wonder why I’m worried about ASC and what they’re delivering to the Australian taxpayers? You wonder why I wouldn’t trust them to build a canoe? Because what they’ve done on AWD [we have] had to repair,” he told the Senate in November 2014, after a project cost blowout.
Johnston quickly apologised, describing the remark as “rhetorical flourish”, but he was officially censured by the Senate.
The then prime minister, Tony Abbott, defended Johnston and said he had his “full confidence”, but the frontbencher lost his position to Kevin Andrews in a cabinet reshuffle just four weeks later.
He later supported Malcolm Turnbull’s 2016 decision to build 12 French-designed submarines in South Australia, when the French company DCNS won a $50bn contract that has ASC supplying much of the labour.
Pyne pointed to Johnston’s former defence ministry experience as a boon for the new role but Labor’s defence spokesman, Richard Marles, disagreed.
“This feels like the minister is trying to win a bet about how inappropriate a person he could appoint,” he said.
