Local Libs divided on submarines
Senior state Liberals have moved to distance the party from the statements of their colleague and former leadership aspirant Mitch Williams about the future of defence industries in South Australia.
With his leader and deputy leader both overseas, Williams told ABC radio that South Australia would be better off if the next submarine construction contract went to Japan.
Williams, who is also Parliamentary Secretary to the Opposition Leader, queried the value of a policy that insisted Australia’s next generation of submarines be built in Australia at the ASC shipyard in SA.
“Is that an efficient use of taxpayers’ money in the South Australian economy?
“Do we just spend the money willy-nilly or do we be more strategic and say look, we can, I guess, get two wins here – we can buy the submarines which we need for a particular purpose, for the nation’s defence, and have a whole bucket of money left over that we can then spend on something else.”
Williams, the Liberal MP for the south east regional seat of McKillop, made the comments after reports emerged that the contract to build 12 submarines would almost certain to go to Japan.
Today, his Liberal colleagues said he was wrong.
Shadow employment minister David Pisoni told 891 ABC Adelaide today Williams was on his own.
“Well Mitch Williams is speaking for himself, he’s not speaking about party policy,” he said.
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“We want manufacturing here in South Australia.”
Acting Opposition Leader Vickie Chapman hadn’t heard the Williams comments when InDaily spoke to her this morning – she’d just returned last night from a visit to New Zealand.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall is still in Europe.
“I haven’t seen the comments by Mitch but we’ve indicated our support for having the submarines built here,” Chapman said.
“Our understanding is that no decision’s been made yet and the Federal Government is waiting on a report on the question of whether we build it all here or do what’s been done with other projects and assemble an overseas designed product.
“What this highlights, however, is how fragile our local economy is and just how desperately we are looking for any opportunity.
“We don’t want to miss out on this project and be even more dependent on handouts.”
The Liberal’s division comes as Labor’s federal leader Bill Shorten arrived in town to talk to workers at the Australian Submarine Corporation and to reinforce his message that not building the submarines in Adelaide would be a broken promise.
“We’re capable of doing things well here,” he told Triple M listeners.
“Our country needs to get up the value chain; we don’t have to be a mine, a quarry or a tourist resort – we can make things.”
Industry analysts, meanwhile, said the most likely scenario was a joint venture with high-tech work on any new subs being done in Adelaide.
“I think what we’re likely to see is a submarine where the hulls and many of the propulsion systems are built in Japan, then it comes to Australia for the final assembly and inclusion of things like the weapons systems and combat systems,” senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Andrew Davies told the ABC’s AM program.
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“So I think we’ll end up integrating them into a Japanese-built hull.”
Vickie Chapman said that may not be too different to what’s been happening at the Adelaide shipyards since 1987.
“The Collins Class subs were a version of the Swedish Navy’s submarines,” she said.
Chapman’s correct. The bid by ASX listed Adelaide shipyard firm Eglo Engineering in the early 1980s to build submarines came off the back of a partnership between Eglo and Swedish submarine builder Kockums.
Eglo’s chief executive, Hans Ohff, would go on to be ASC’s first chief executive.
The question of whether it’s wise to build submarine from start to finish in SA has had its supporters and detractors for four decades.
It’s often driven by political imperatives.
Four years ago when current Defence Minister David Johnston was the opposition spokesman on defence he wasn’t too keen on the Gillard Government’s policy to build the next 12 submarines in Adelaide.
In October 2010 Johnston told The Australian the only option for Australia may be to purchase military off-the-shelf submarines, rather than wait to build a largely home-grown submarine.
“It is not necessarily the money, it is the fact the Japanese have the large submarine that on paper at least meets some of our requirements,” Johnston said.
“And also it’s a submarine that could come off an existing production line and therefore be delivered fairly quickly. They’re probably the factors that are weighing more heavily.”
Three years later and Johnston had a different view, promising in the lead up to the September 2013 election that “the Coalition today is committed to building 12 new submarines here in Adelaide”.
“We will get that task done,” he said.
“It’s a really important task, not just for the Navy, but for the nation.”
He reinforced that view in recent meetings with SA Premier Jay Weatherill.
“Just a couple of Fridays ago I was in Canberra and I met with the Minister for Defence,” the Premier told 891ABC Adelaide today.
“Obviously I’d seen the speculation about Japanese submarines and I asked point blank the Defence Minister about those matters and he was very positive about the future for submarine ship building in South Australia, gave me an assurance that no decisions had been taken.”
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