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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Australia has spent almost 15 years trying to buy a fleet of new surface ships for the navy, but they are still yet to arrive.

That’s because government after government has thrown out the old plan, and come up with a new one.

Last week, the Albanese government was the latest to reveal their plans for the future of the Navy’s surface fleet, which will cost more than $20 billion than originally thought.

So, is it worth it?

Today, emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and contributor to The Saturday Paper, Hugh White, on Labor’s navy overhaul, and whether it’s just an expensive grab for votes in two states.

It’s Monday, February 26.

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ANGE:

Hugh, we know that Australia has committed a pretty eye-watering amount of money to buy submarines as part of the AUKUS deal. But some people may not be as familiar with another long running plan to buy new Navy boats. When you step back and look at how Australia is spending its money in defence, does this plan make sense alongside the money that we're spending elsewhere?

HUGH:

Look, I don't think it does. And there's a couple of reasons for that. The first is that this was originally meant to cost 35 billion, and they'd stop building in 2020. Since then, the price went up to 45 billion.

Now, there are reports just this last week that it was going to be 65 billion.

And last week the defence minister, Richard Marles, stood up on one of our warships in Sydney Harbour and made a big announcement about the government's plans for the future of the warship fleet.

Audio excerpt – Richard Marles:

“Today, the Albanese government is announcing an increase in the number of warships in the Royal Australian Navy to being the largest fleet since the end of the Second World War.”

HUGH:

A lot of money had already been spent on the Hunter class project, I mean, several billion dollars, but they're still going to be spending a huge sum of money on ships which are not really going to meet our needs.

What the government's going to do is to not just proceed with six of the nine original Hunter Class, but to introduce two new, separate classes of, new surface ships.

Audio excerpt – Richard Marles:

“We're also announcing today that we will procure a new general purpose frigate, which we will procure 11, and this will be a new class of ship for the Royal Australian Navy.”

HUGH:

They're going to buy, I reckon, 11, what they’re calling general purpose frigates, which are going to be smaller ships, less capable but cheaper and delivered quicker. And they're going to go for six what they're calling optionally crewed large surface vessels.

Audio excerpt – Richard Marles:

“The LOSV's are in development with the United States. They have the capacity to operate in an uncrewed fashion. But it is the intention of the Royal Australian Navy to crew these vessels.”

HUGH:

So the question is what use are surface ships today. They're things which surface ships are very useful. If we look at the kind of operations we've used, our operation Anzac ships for, like stabilisation of peacekeeping operations in the region or going to the Gulf to support sanctions enforcement, or, for example, the sorts of things that other countries are doing with their ships in the Red Sea at the moment, responding to the Houthi attacks on merchant shipping. Those are roles for which surface ships are valuable, but that relatively low level.

So it's really odd that at a time when around the world, people recognise that warships are becoming less and less valuable in high intensity warfare because of their vulnerability. The Australian government, the new government, has last week announced that we're going to double the size of our surface warship fleet.

ANGE:

And Hugh, on that surface fleet that we're now investing in. And, you know, you mentioned some of the questions or concerns around that investment. Can you paint me a picture of what kind of attacks those surface ships can be vulnerable to?

HUGH:

Yes. Look, if you think of a surface ship, it's very big and it moves relatively slowly.

But modern warships today can be attacked from a submarine with torpedoes that can be attacked by, by missiles. These missiles can be launched from aircraft that can be launched from other ships that can be launched from the land, that can be launched from drones.

And the anti-ship missiles are getting longer and longer range, and more and more accurate, and more and more deadly. Ships are also very vulnerable to sea mines. You put them on the floor of the sea. They can detect a ship as it's approaching. I can even tell one ship from another. They can launch what is, in effect, a mini torpedo up into the underneath of the hull of the ship. They're very cheap. They're very deadly. And so there's a lot of different ways in which ships can be detected and attacked these days.

And the thing about a ship is it's a very high value target. It's worth, you know, 3 or 4 billion bucks, then it's worth going to a lot of trouble to sink it.

One of the big challenges for any power today, including the United States, is whether their surface fleet is any longer survivable enough for it to be actually deployed into a major conflict.

And the fact that this is happening at the same time as where we're embarking on the AUKUS submarine adventure, suggests that we've really lost our way because I'm convinced that the AUKUS submarine adventure is a big mistake as well. Not that we don't need submarines. I think we do. But I think nuclear powered submarines are not what we need, and I don't think we're going to get them.

ANGE:

Hugh. All this money Australia is spending on our Navy. I mean, no government really likes to say this out loud particularly. But who exactly do we need this Navy to defend ourselves from?

HUGH:

That's a really good question. And the heart of the answer is that we don't know.

If we look at the increasing of countries like China and for that matter, India and if we look at the way that's changing Asia's strategic environment, it's true that the idea of Australia finding itself in a relatively high level conflict with a major power like China or India is still low, but is higher now than it used to be.

Does that mean that we face an imminent threat from China say? No, I don't think so at all. I think the chances of Australia being attacked by China over the next, you know, decade or so is very low.

Now, we as a country face a decision which we haven't really discussed, about how we should respond to that. And instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in responding to this, we should just live with that risk. We should do what we can diplomatically to avoid conflict. That is an option for Australia.

I myself don't favour that option. I do think it makes sense for Australia to manage the risk that we find ourselves in a conflict by building up our armed forces somewhat, but I think it's very important that we do it the right way, by the right stuff, that achieves the biggest strategic effects, most cost effectively.

And I think if we look at the way in which the government's now progressing the future of our surface fleet, and for that matter, the way in which our submarine fleet is going, I think we're doing exactly the wrong things.

ANGE:

Coming up after the break – Why Australian politicians are so bad at spending money on the military.

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ANGE:

Hugh, you're someone who's watched decades of defence spending, and it seems like with each new review and announcement, more often than not, Australia ends up spending too much money on something that might not actually keep us safer. Why does that keep happening?

HUGH:

Look, that's a really good question. And I think there are two parts to the answer.

The first is that we in Australia are very bad at doing what you might call a high level defence strategy. And there's a reason for that. And that is that for so long, we've been so sure that the United States would always come to our aid that we haven't really thought it was necessary.

Whereas now I think for the first time really in our history since European settlement, we have to think about how Australia can make its way in an Asia which is not dominated and made safe for us by a great and powerful friend like Britain or America.

Now that's something we have not done as a country in the past, and we're still not doing it very well. It's shocking, but we're spending nearly $50 billion a year on defence in Australia at the moment, and we don't have a military strategy that tells us what we really need to buy. That's the first problem.

The second problem is we're really bad at managing big projects. And one of the reasons for that is that we get far too ambitious. We want to go for the very, very best of everything. So, for example, Hunter class frigate project, we're buying a British design ship, but we're going to put an American designed combat system on it. That's the radars and the missiles and so on, because we think that's better for us. But that makes the project much, much more complicated and much, much more risky and much, much more expensive.

ANGE:

And what's the political play here if any, from the Labor government to not only go ahead with this game, but actually spend even more money on it?

HUGH:

Look, I think the politics of this are pretty significant. And I think there are two really big imperatives for Labor on that. The first is they want to look like they're strong on defence. Labor is always very sensitive to the, to the accusation from the Coalition that because they're left wing, they're soft on defence and don't take national security seriously.

And you can see this on border protection issues. But it's also very clear on defence. That's why they've embraced AUKUS. And I think that's why they've decided they really need to make a big push on this surface fleet review that they've now presented.

But the other part of it is the politics of naval shipbuilding. The South Australian Political system in the South Australian economy has become wedded to the idea of naval shipbuilding as a sort of a key future for their prosperity.

And I think politicians have started to accept that there's a huge political cost in South Australia for not promising to continue building lots and lots of warships, but the Labor government government's taken that one step further.

Audio excerpt – Richard Marles:

“But tonight we are also committing to continuous naval shipbuilding in Perth, and today's plan effectively establishes.”

HUGH:

They are now promising continuous build of warships in Western Australia as well. And so a great deal of this is that we're buying these ships because our government won't be able to promise, so South Australia and Western Australia that they're going to have jobs in shipbuilding in their states.

Audio excerpt – Richard Marles:

“But what this means in underpinning continuous naval shipbuilding in both Adelaide and Perth is that a person beginning their working life now in this exciting industrial endeavour, has the prospect of being out of work in that field for the entirety of their working life.”

HUGH:

Now that's a really bad way to do defence policy. It's bad strategically because we're buying ships we don't need. It's also very bad economics. It is a rod that successive governments have made for their own backs. They've promised continual shipbuilding in these states. They fear that they really will be very vulnerable electorally if they don't deliver it.

And so the issues do end up not being debated. The other point is, of course, that this is an issue that the politicians themselves don't know much about.

You talk to the average politician about tax policy or health policy. They're quite expert on the subject. So, you know, they understand these issues, but partly because their their constituents keep coming into their electorate office and harangue them about it.

Whereas you ask the average politician, for that matter, the average member of cabinet, for that matter, the average defence minister about this stuff, they don't know much about it.

And if they don't know much about it, they can't educate us about it and we can't hear them debate it. And so we as a community, I think, understand les and less. And that's not good.

ANGE:

So if conflict in our region is, as you say, becoming more and more likely, what are the consequences if Australia spends time and money on the wrong things? What position does that put us in?

HUGH:

Look, it does require a kind of a leap of the imagination to think that Australia would ever find itself in a position where it would actually have to fight a serious war against a major power.

This kind of defence spending is about major war between great powers. And, you know, there's been no major maritime war since 1945, since the end of the Second World War. So it takes a real leap of the imagination to think that this could all happen again.

I'm one of those who argue that the risk of a war with China over Taiwan, for example, is really quite high. The fact is, we are now moving into an era of history where, unlike but we've seen for the past many decades, the risk of a major power war is genuinely, I think, substantially higher. And the risk of Australia being drawn into that major power war is substantially higher than we have seen.

And on the one hand, everyone says we're facing, including our politicians. They say we're facing our worst strategic circumstances since 1945, which I think is true. But they don't act as if they really believe that. that's, you know, they're not, I don't think they really can really imagine it. And I think that failure of imagination is part of the problem.

It means, first of all, that we're less likely to be able to deter an adversary from attacking us or attacking our closest neighbours, because it will be clear to the adversary that we've bought the wrong things and that our defence forces can be easily disposed of.

If it's worth spending money on armed forces at all, then it's worth spending money on armed forces, which gives you the best chance of winning the wars you most need to fight. And, I don't think that's what we're doing at the moment. And I think that does make Australia less secure.

ANGE:

Hugh, thanks so much for your time today.

HUGH:

It's my pleasure.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

Education minister Jason Clare has foreshadowed big changes to education that will be coming later this year.

The minister revealed the government will make changes to HECS to make indexation of debts fairer, and promised to introduce more funding for public schools around Australia that will be legislated before the end of the year.

And…

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has apologised to the families of gay hate crime victims who lost loved ones during a period spanning from 1970 to 2010, over findings that police officers were indifferent, negligent and hostile.

Webb’s apology was prompted by an inquiry last year, which found evidence that bias against the LGBTQI community was likely a factor in dozens of unsolved deaths police had failed to fully investigate and solve.

In December last year, the judge responsible for the inquiry said: "the absence to date of an apology from the Commissioner of the NSW police force has been extremely difficult to understand.”

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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