Madam Chairman, speaking for this side of the House I want to say how delighted I am to have this opportunity to ask questions on the estimates. This is an important step for parliamentary responsibility. We can see that there has been a tremendous turnout of Liberals on this side of the House to participate in asking these questions.
I propose to ask my questions on the estimates. I do not think this was ever intended to be a general debate on defence policy and so I will confine myself to that type of question.
There is one question I have wanted to ask for a very long time because of the questions in question period and that is with respect to the Challenger. Is it not true that the type of aircraft that the Challenger is is very suitable for conveying units like joint task force 2 to any theatre of operations in the world and that indeed most major military nations, most nations with a sophisticated military, have executive jets like that in their military establishments?