defence
2 Jul 2009
Guns Still More Important Than Mums
The massive spending promised in yesterday's Defence Capability Plan is astonishing given the budget pressures the Rudd Government is already facing, writes Ben Eltham
When John Faulkner took over from Joel Fitzgibbon as Defence Minister last month, he must have realised this would be one of the biggest challenges of his political career.During the Howard years, the senior powerbroker from the ALP's Left faction made a name for himself forensically cross-examining terrified bureaucrats in Senate estimates hearings. In government, Kevin Rudd drew on this experience and gave him a special brief to improve open governance procedures, including freedom of information laws. The jury is still out on whether the Rudd Government will indeed be more open than John Howard's, but Faulkner certainly made an impressive start.
Now the man with the boldest glasses since Yves Saint Laurent has been given the toughest portfolio in government. As we've argued a number of times here at newmatilda.com, Defence is almost a government in itself. The Defence Department is the nation's largest employer and largest landlord. It manages a bewildering array of complex acquisition projects and of course maintains a massive range of assets and equipment — everything from low-tech rifles and grenades to cutting-edge signals and intelligence technology. And, of course, Australia is still fighting a war in Afghanistan.
But Defence also has some of the nation's worst accounts. If it were a corporation, it would have long been mired in an Enron-style accounting scandal. Defence's books are a mess; the Commonwealth Auditor has regularly refused to sign off on their veracity over the past decade. Acquisition projects routinely run years and billions of dollars over budget; some prospective acquisitions, like the Navy's cancelled Super Seasprite helicopter, failed basic tests such as flying over water.
After promising beginnings, Joel Fitzgibbon soon proved out of his depth in Defence, militarily as well as politically. Faulkner is a different kettle of fish. And he has another of the Rudd Government's savviest operators, Greg Combet, to assist as his junior minister. Even with a couple of hard-nosed political operators in charge, however, managing Defence is always tough.
The release of yesterday's Defence Capability Plan shows why. This $60 billion document purports to explain how taxpayers' money is going to be spent for the next four years. It claims 5000 jobs will be created across 110 major projects.
It's a daunting list of spending programs. Big-ticket purchases in the plan include the Navy's three new Air Warfare Destroyers, down-payments on 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, and new artillery for the Army. Also on the list are upgrades for the C-130 Hercules transports, a replacement for the P-3 Orion maritime reconnaissance planes, various battlefield data and communications projects and first-stage funding to build a "future submarine" to replace the Collins class boats.
What's new about this Defence Capability Plan is its time-frame and detail. Previous plans stretched over 10 years and gave much less detail; this plan spans only four years and provides more information. The result is closer to a detailed list of government acquisition plans, whereas the old plans were more like a vague wish-list of future platforms which grossly underestimated spending requirements.
Even so, the new Defence Capability Plan shares many of the Defence's age-old problems. To begin with, it's a plan to buy the wrong things. Informed by the recent White Paper, the Defence Capability Plan sets out to purchase weapons systems and platforms that Australia probably won't need in future conflicts, or that are ill-adapted to the real threats our nation faces.
Take a look at the three biggest items on the shopping list: the Joint Strike Fighters, the Air Warfare Destroyers and the future submarines. Each of these weapons systems is effectively a high-stakes bet on the shape of future conflict, as they will be of little use in the kinds of small wars Australia is currently fighting and is most likely to be involved in through the next generation. The role of submarines has historically always been about sinking merchant shipping, not defending sea lanes; the Joint Strike Fighter is likely to be far less effective at its stated role as a fighter-bomber than a much cheaper flight of pilotless drones (and no match at all for air superiority planes like the F-22 Raptor or the latest generation of Russian-built Sukhois), while the Air Warfare Destroyers will be almost useless at doing what they're supposed to do, which is to defend a naval expedition from missile attack.
Can Australia afford these new toys at all?
It's a question worth asking given the scale of the Rudd Government's deficit spending over the next few years. Unlike the cash-splash elements of the stimulus package, defence acquisition spending generates proportionately less economic growth; much of the money goes straight to big US defence firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The latest Treasury papers have stated that Defence will be quarantined from Labor's plans to hold Government spending at only 2 per cent growth after 2011–12; but even with tens of billions of dollars budgeted to flow to Defence for acquisitions and expansion out to 2018–19, the numbers still don't add up. Chief financial officers at other public institutions like hospitals and universities would be astonished to discover that on budget night, Defence couldn't even explain its spending projections or where its billions of planned "savings" would come from.
Even in this new Defence Capability Plan, many projects still have costing estimates of figures such as "$100–$500 million" — in other words, there are billions of dollars worth of wriggle-room across the whole plan. Historically, of course, projects rarely come in at the lower end of such estimates, and all too often exceed even the upper projection. A recent example is the RAAF's Wedgetail radar planes, which are running years behind schedule owing to problems with Boeing's plane and the software for the radar domes.
It's a sobering thought that Australia's long-awaited paid maternity leave scheme will cost just $146 million annually, yet is being delayed until January 2011 because of budget pressures. $146 million is a rounding error when compared to the Defence Capability Plan.
It's hard not to conclude that under John Faulkner and Kevin Rudd, just as under Brendan Nelson and John Howard, guns are more important than mothers.
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Oh yes, the jingoism rings loud when Defence comes knocking at the poorbox.
Another disaster looms with a new round of non-working un-manable subs, each with a set of steak knives of course.
Look, up on the Darling Downs, hidden in an old coalmine shaft somewhere, are hundreds of WW2 Spitfires, hidden from view just in case Nth Qld ever attempted to breakaway from Brisbane… Qld’s own airforce ready and waiting to go.
Why don’t we dig them up and refit them with underwing missiles?
Each broken down rural town across this wide-brown-land has an ack-ack gun, a Howitzer, and 25lber and maybe even a Brengun carrier tucked away in readiness for ‘the next big one’.
It’s a work-for-the-dole scheme waiting to happen NOW.
Let’s dig out the RSL members who flew-drove-manned these fine weapons and let’s get them going again in this latest assault on us all, the GFC.
Who needs Abrams tanks when we’ve still got Centurions and Shermans to get going again?
Whatever happened to the Lanc’, the greatest warbird ever? Bring out G for Godly from the War Memorial and get her flying again.
We can do it Australia… we have the means… we have the men…(we just don’t have the dollars it seems).
We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do, we’ve got the Spits, we’ve got the Lancs, we’ve got Centurions too.
And of course, John Falkner is really Superman, isn’t he, and when the time is right, when defence has wasted all the latest billions on sinking-subs, non-hovering hellies, and rustbucket Liberty ships, he’ll simply slip into a phone box, a quick change of clothes, and save us all.
Well, if that Mexican bandido hadn’t removed all the phone boxes he would.
Foiled again.
Well said ML (?).
Err, anyway, the timing is the thing - as soon as the election promise to look at takeover health from the states started getting traction, involving big dollars, we suddenly saw Faulkner’s defence budget paper or whatever grab the oxygen.
It also had the benefit of wrong stepping any coverage of Turnbull in Iraq.
Those spindoctors. They sure know how to run good public policy around in circles to manage the media cycle. But it can only end in tears eventually.
Turnbull in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Sorry about that.
According to rumourcontrol [10-Mar-08] "in the 2007-08 financial year Australia’s defence budget (was) $22 billion.
"http://www.rumourcontrol.com.au/hot_topics/top30_100308.htmlhttp://www.rumourcontrol.com.au/hot_topics/top30_100308.html
And on 1-Jul-09, Senator the Hon John Faulkner,
Minister for Defence, at the Defence + Industry Conference at the
Adelaide Convention Centre, delivered a speech on Australia’s ’
DEFENCE CAPABILITY PLANNING:
THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE DEFENCE - INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP.
Notably, it emphasised the budget spending commitments out of The Defence White Paper 2009 and the massive defence spending focus guided out of the Defence Capability Plan 2009, released that day.
Faulkner outlined significant growth in Defence procurement "despite the global economic crisis" of maintaining the 3 per cent average real growth to 2017, and 2.2% thereafter. "No other sector has such a solid predictable growth plan locked in for the future."
Faulkner went on: "Over the next four years, the Defence Capability Plan predicts sustainable average local growth of around 4 per cent per annum. The amount to be spent in Australian industry by the Defence Materiel Organisation will increase from $4.5 billion to $5.6 billion over the next four years. The Defence Capability Plan shows that over the next four years the electronics and maritime sectors will grow significantly and the land and vehicle sector will also experience growth."
Why is Defence the dominant spending priority for Australia?
What threats loom that we don’t know about? What strategic regional defence arrangements have been struck with the US?
Why are we committing to premium prices for untried US technologies when superior state-of-the-art non-US fighters for instance are used and proven by our regional neighbours that can fly faster, further, higher and with greater weapons payload and win hands down in a one-on-one fire fight? What message is this sending to our fighter pilots?
SOURCE: http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/FaulknerSpeechtpl.cfm?CurrentId=9226