South Australia rides out interstate criticism to secure $90 billion naval shipbuilding program in 2017

The schedule for the $90 building naval shipbuilding program for South Australia announced in 2017.
Image courtesy Australian defence department

Getting $90 billion Australian in naval shipbuilding – the biggest national-building program in Australia’s history – given in 2017 to the Osborne shipyards in South Australia overcame eastern-states resistance and resentment – as well as rivalry for the work from Western Australia. This was especially so in regard to the $50 billion 12 Attack class submarines.

In 2009, the Australian government’s defence white paper announced that a class of twelve submarines would be built in Australia at South Australia’s Osborne shipyard used by ASC Pty Ltd but, if a company other than ASC was selected to build the submarines, they would be granted access to the government-owned yard. Concept work started in 2009 but delays occurred as other options were promoted, such as buying military off-the-shelf designed and built submarines from overseas.

By 2014, it increasingly speculated that Tony Abbot’s Coalition federal government would buy Soryu class submarines directly from Japan, without any tendering. A backlash from South Australian federal MPs, plus the state Labor government, saw the Abbott government announce “competitive evaluation process” between Japanese, French, and German designs for the submarines with an overseas build option. New prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 announced the Shortfin Barracuda, a conventionally-powered variant of the Barracuda-class nuclear submarine by French firm DCNS (now Naval Group), as the winner.

The national productivity commission in 2016 criticised federal government support of building the submarines in Australia. South Australia’s Christopher Pyne, who became federal defence industry minister that year, criticised such “analysis” by “armchair critics living in Sydney with no understanding of the tender process” and that there were “no military off-the-shelf options  that meet Australia’s (submarine) needs”.

Later, as defence minister, Pyne would be a valuable ally to South Australia’s shipbuilding program, confirmed in 2017 – in marked contrast to a predecessor, Western Australian senator David Johnston, who in 2014 said he wouldn’t trust the ASC “to build a canoe”.  His remarks were just before a byelection in South Australia that sent a clear rebuke to the federal government.