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We can’t afford not to build submarines

Jul 29, 2014

During a visit to Adelaide before the federal election, then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott cast doubt on the idea of building submarines in Australia.

Remarkably, it elicited little fear and loathing and, at a stretch, the now PM’s words could be claimed as a mandate.

They are certainly something to fear.

It means that right now, South Australia’s defence industries future looks about as bright as BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam expansion plans.

The Abbott Government’s discussion paper being released this week ahead of the June 2015 Defence White Paper pushes forward its preferred option of buying future submarines “off the shelf” from another country.

Yes, it would be a cheaper option, if buying a submarine was like popping down to Harvey Norman for a dishwasher. Which it is not.

“Off the shelf” is a fatuous phrase when applied to submarines.

Building submarines is an industry of strategic national importance, given Australia has one of the largest marine jurisdictions in the world, with an offshore exclusive economic zone of about 10 million square kilometres.

Submarine design, manufacture and sustainment is challenging and complex, requiring thousands of high-tech, high-skilled jobs. The cost of a new submarine is minuscule compared to the long-term spin-offs gained throughout its 25 to 30-year operational life.

It is an industry that builds and strengthens defence capabilities, fuels regional economies, fires up the next generation of scientists and engineers, and ignites imagination and innovation.

Having accelerated the demise of Australia’s car industry, the Abbott Government appears ready to put much of Australia’s number-one advanced manufacturing industry – naval defence and engineering – to the sword.

Australia has the means, the people and the wit to design and build submarines.

What we lack is the leadership to forge ahead.

Instead of heading into an industrial abyss, and de-skilling big chunks of our industry base, we need to target our future as a knowledge economy and build our defence capability for security abroad.

Handing over or even sharing the submarine industry with a foreign country would power down our capability, deplete jobs, reduce overseas and local investment, trash research and development opportunities, and effectively export billions of Australian dollars to another country (probably Japan).

Australia has been in the submarine business for 100 years.

In the past 25 years, this country has acquired an unrivalled body of  knowledge and expertise about conventional long-range submarine manufacture and sustainment.

Far from the Collins Class being the Achilles heel of the defence industry, its faults have driven a huge body of collaborative research and development work, which has enabled the industry to learn, grow and excel.

Now, the Abbott Government is actually seriously developing a plan to order the downing of tools and abandoning a hard-earned, very expensive, strategic capability.

So who is left to protect the industry and calculate the real cost of such as loss?

The guardians of our national interest should be the Opposition, but it was the Rudd/Gillard Government’s inability to make a decision that led us to this point.

Its inertia was reminiscent of General Robert Lee’s famous quote:

“I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.”

That Labor at the federal level did absolutely nothing – and I mean nothing – to progress the future submarine project during its entire tenure of Government was a gross abdication of its responsibilities and promises.

And now we have an Abbott Government that has an entirely new agenda to offshore industries and jobs in the pursuit of a short-term lower bottom line.

We saw evidence of this visionary new myopia when Adelaide-based Rossi Boots acted as our canary in the mineshaft and lost a $15 million contract to supply boots to the ADF.

That decision signalled toxic times ahead for defence procurement in this country.

It would be unthinkable in many first-world countries – including Canada, the US, Japan and most of Europe – to allow foreign companies to step in over the top of their local industrial base to supply goods and services to their defence forces.

Defence in any country is a huge customer and every contract is worth millions or billions.  It is an incubator for innovation, with many spill-over benefits, and one of the reasons why smart nations seek to capture these industries.

While we can’t and don’t manufacture all that we need on-shore – the Joint Strike Fighters are a good example – Australia should at least maintain the competencies it has already acquired and be allowed to build on them.

In the words of another great general, now Australia’s Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove:

Whenever I am asked why we should build submarines in Australia, my short reply is that we can’t afford not to.”

Now there’s a leader worth following.

Jill Bottrall is a communications consultant. She was an adviser to former Premier Mike Rann. A version of this article was first published on her website.

Defence Minister David Johnston is scheduled address the Defence + Industry Conference today at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

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