Defence hawks are getting rattled by the intense scepticism surrounding the AUKUS submarine plan. Navy chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond last week attacked critics of the program, saying “the conversation around AUKUS is still being hijacked by people with other specific agendas”. The term “hijack” was clearly intended to suggest bad faith on the part of AUKUS critics, whose ranks include former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating. If the Navy’s approach to scepticism is ad hominem attacks on critics, Hammond would do better to keep his trap shut.
Now the defence think tank Lowy Institute has released a pamphlet by Ross Babbage defending AUKUS against critics and offering a decidedly Pollyannaish view of the program.
Babbage is a former defence bureaucrat, academic and security consultant, and a long-time advocate of acquiring nuclear submarines to confront China. In 2003, he declared the Bush administration’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction “remarkably strong“. In 2004, he accused Labor of endangering Australian troops by proposing to withdraw from Iraq. In 2007, he accused people who wanted a withdrawal from the Iraq debacle of having a “glass jaw” and “anti-American prejudice”. In 2014, he wanted Australia to send troops back to Iraq.
True, Babbage is only one of many apologists for the Iraq disaster who were badly wrong and who have never been held to account. The more important point is that he has consistently demonstrated a gullibility about security and defence institutions, which makes him a poor source for any “critique of the critics”, as Lowy purports to offer.
Take, for instance, his blithe assurance that the AUKUS nuclear submarines can be readily assembled in Adelaide. It will, Babbage suggests, be relatively straightforward: “It is simply a modified version of the process demonstrated in the long-running Virginia-class program and now in the much larger Columbia-class ballistic missile-firing submarine program in the United States.”
Babbage evidently has failed to read any of the many auditor-general reports on the spectacular failures of major Defence projects in recent years. In February, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) revealed that already significant delays in Defence’s major projects had worsened to an average of more than two years (the department’s main response has been to try to keep its delays and cost blowouts a secret).
Before Babbage wrote about how the submarines will be put together by BAE Systems and the Australian Submarine Corporation in Adelaide, did he read the ANAO report on the Hunter-class frigates being built by BAE in Adelaide, which detailed staggering breaches of procurement rules by Defence and delays and cost blowouts before construction even began?
It’s become obvious that Defence simply cannot be trusted with taxpayer money, and if the February major projects audit is any guide, its performance is getting worse, not better.
Babbage at least admits there’s a serious workforce issue regarding both workers needed to build the vessels in Australia, the US and the UK, and sailors needed to crew them for Australia. “A national maritime skills training and development program will be essential,” he admits. Bizarrely, he says “advice from American and British industry executives suggests that some experienced personnel from these countries will be willing to take up positions in Australia”, but then goes on to admit both the US and UK workforces have been run down and need to expand as well.
His cheerfully optimistic conclusion that “when the Royal Australian Navy receives its first Virginia-class boats in the early 2030s, it should be able to operate the boats with almost all billets filled by Royal Australian Navy personnel” seems rather at odds with the fact that the RAN can’t crew its existing fleet and is considering mothballing vessels because they can’t go to sea.
And not to worry about the cost, Babbage assures us that “the 30-year cost of the AUKUS submarine project is dwarfed by the extraordinary cost growth of some other federal programs. AUKUS will, for instance, probably cost less than one-tenth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme during this period.”
Except, the point of government spending is what value taxpayers get for it. The NDIS delivers services for Australians. It improves their quality of life and helps them participate in the economy. What will AUKUS deliver, beyond a few thousand massively subsidised jobs in an economy with widespread skill shortages and generous profits for US and UK defence contractors?
Despite this purporting to be a “critique of the critics”, Babbage completely ignores one of the most trenchant criticisms of the whole scheme, from Malcolm Turnbull, that France could have delivered nuclear submarines far sooner and cheaper than under the almost absurdly complex AUKUS deal. AUKUS requires Australia to take second-hand submarines from the US to cover the enormous gap between our current generation of submarines and the AUKUS boats — a gap that is likely to blow out still further as inevitable construction delays occur.
But perhaps the most glaring absence from the document is any explanation of why, exactly, nuclear submarines are needed — beyond his statement that they offer greater capability than diesel-electric submarines and “deliver levels of deterrence that cannot be approached by diesel-electric boats”. The mere assertion that nuclear submarines are better, without an explanation of exactly what they are better at doing that Australia requires them to do, is a persistent characteristic of AUKUS’ defenders.
While understandable in the case of slow-witted Defence Minister Richard Marles, Babbage’s failure to detail exactly what our nuclear submarines will be doing in Australia’s defence that diesel-electric submarines can’t — beyond that our “defence needs are much more demanding” — now points to a major flaw in the entire case for AUKUS. Remember, this began life not as the result of a fundamental reconsideration of Australia’s strategic interests and the growing military power of China, but in Scott Morrison’s desperation for a big announceable to reset his dying government and a wedge to use against Labor.
That Labor has persisted with it means the responsibility for the debacle that is AUKUS will rest permanently on the Albanese government — and the apologists who were too gullible to see the reality of an incompetent Defence Department.
Is AUKUS a reckless or necessary project? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
