Senate censures David Johnston for canoe slur against submarine builder

David Johnston was censured in the Senate on Wednesday over his “canoe” slur against a submarine maker even as the prime minister defended his conduct.

The defence minister has come under fire from Labor and from within the South Australian branch of his own party, the Liberal party, for telling the upper house he would not trust the government-owned Australian Submarine Corporation “to build a canoe”.

ASC is in charge of building air warfare destroyer planes and maintaining Australia’s fleet of Collins class submarines.

Labor, the Greens and the majority of the crossbench supported a censure motion against the senator on Wednesday afternoon, passing the motion 37 to 31. Only Family First’s Bob Day and the Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm voted with the Coalition to oppose the censure.

Although the motion has no practical effect, except increasing pressure on the already embattled Johnston, there has not been a censure motion against a cabinet minister since Amanda Vanstone in 2005. The assistant minister for health, Fiona Nash, who is not a cabinet minister, was censured in March.

The newly independent senator Jacqui Lambie, who has vowed to vote against all government legislation until a better pay deal for the defence forces is offered, supported the censure motion. She said Johnston had made “big-noting, self-serving, hypocritical speeches on Remembrance Day” but persisted in cutting pay and entitlements for the defence forces.

Tony Abbott defended his minister during a rowdy question time in the House of Representatives, saying he was “doing an outstanding job”.

“This minister does not deserve to be undermined by members opposite … just because of a slip of the tongue in the Senate yesterday,” the prime minister said. “He has my full confidence.”

Labor doggedly pursued Johnston in both houses during question time, asking Coalition frontbenchers repeatedly if the defence minister would be sacked. Ten Labor MPs were ejected by Speaker of the house, Bronwyn Bishop.

Abbott tried to redirect the debate, accusing Bill Shorten of racism for rejecting potential submarine tenders from Japan.

“The leader of the opposition says that we could have submarines as long as they have nothing to do with Japan because of what happened in world war two,” Abbott told the house. “He’s kind of like a reverse John Cleese – remember the war.

“He takes off his alternative prime minister’s cap, puts on his union leaders cap and plays the xenophobe card.”

Shorten denied making comments slamming Japanese submarine makers.

The opposition’s defence spokesman, Stephen Conroy, said the Coalition had abandoned Johnston, saying he “knows he’s going to be done like a dinner”. “The minister’s frontbench colleagues have abandoned him … The minister has no friends on his own backbench either.”

The opposition’s leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, said Johnston had compromised the procurement process for future submarine contracts by casting doubt on ASC. She told parliament that billions of dollars and thousands of jobs were in jeopardy as a result of his comments.

Johnston ridiculed the suggestion. “If we had a petulance olympics, she would be a gold medallist,” Johnston said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Johnston made a statement to the Senate expressing regret for making the canoe comment but stopped short of apologising.

“I did not intend to cause offence and of course may I say on the record here and now that I regret that offence may have been taken,” he said. “Of course I was directing my remarks at a legacy of issues and certainly not the workers in ASC who may have in my regret taken offence at those remarks. I consider them to be world class.”

Earlier he told ABC radio the comments had been a “rhetorical flourish”.

The assistant national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Glenn Thompson, told Guardian Australian that he wasn’t sold on that argument.

“The minister needs to go down to ASC in Adelaide and apologise personally to the hard-working men and women there, workers who ensure that our naval personnel have the highest quality ships and submarines,” he said.

Professionals Australia, the union representing defence engineers and scientists, said Johnston’s position was untenable because he had compromised his relationship with workers.

“Significant numbers of our members have lost confidence in the capacity of the minister. He might think he can’t trust the ASC to build a canoe, but they can’t trust him to run our defence organisation,” said its director, David Smith.

“Our concern is that minister Johnston’s comments hopelessly compromise him in making a sensible decision on the future of our submarine program, which is expected in the next month. It is time for the minister to step aside and ensure that how we build submarines goes properly to competitive tender.

“In May, this minister labelled defence public servants facing job losses as ‘a bit fat and happy’, more recently he created chaos by presenting defence force personnel with an insultingly low pay deal – at a time of deployment in Iraq. This week he has seen fit to sledge our submarine builders. It is hard to imagine who might be next.”