That the Australian-made option has been estimated by some to cost $40 billion or more has been treated as a second-order consideration. For that entire time there has been a clear push for doing all the work on the future sub in Australia, though we clearly lack the capability to design a submarine and arguably the workforce to build one too. While the Japanese Soryu option has emerged only in the last few years, the rest of the contenders have been under consideration since 2009. And there’s a real risk of a capability gap in the future. The delay will cost billions of dollars to prop up the ageing Collins class subs for another decade. We’re six years into this project still without a basic idea on how it will proceed both Labor and Coalition governments have delayed decisions and Defence has hardly covered itself in glory. It’s hard to see why Australia needs to double the size of its submarine fleet, given the defence budget has been cut back in pretty much every other area and we can barely crew the six submarines we have now.īlame for the mess this project is in can be spread around like confetti.
The pressure to spend the defence budget propping up manufacturing in South Australia was a driving factor in committing to 12 submarines in the first place. Make-work programs for industry are exactly the wrong way to think about defence procurement: it should be about the best capabilities at the best price-but South Australians in particular don’t see it that way. Those seeking to build submarines in Adelaide sure know the difference though, because for them a big benefit of a formal tender process is that it’ll probably sink the Japanese Soryu option before it starts.įor some, the future submarine project is as much about money and jobs for South Australia as it is about defence requirements. It has committed to a ‘ competitive evaluation process’ for the future submarine project-a term not used in defence circles-and some seem unable to explain the difference between that and a tender. The government doesn’t seem to understand the words it has been saying on submarines.
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