David Penberthy: Lazy eastern state scribes should look closely at the subs deal before they lob bombs

A GROUP of eastern states journalists have lobbed yet more rust-bucket accusations at South Australia and the submarines deal but they should look at the detail, writes David Penberthy.

Warren Brown, cartoon wed subs

• French firm wins $50b submarine contract
• Malcolm Turnbull: Our island nation needs a strong navy
• Andrew Bolt: Subs deal is not a silver bullet for SA’s problems
• Bernard Humphreys: Having a grudge over SA’s subs build success

THERE is a hairy-chested group of eastern states journalists whose computers have been fitted with a handy command-F10 button which spits out template comment pieces disparaging any policy initiative of benefit to South Australia.

They had all filed by lunchtime on Tuesday when Malcolm Turnbull announced the $50 billion subs deal.

The template works as follows. You just delete the words you don’t need, and add the dollar figure and a brief description of the relevant policy measure.

“The Federal Government has caved in/capitulated/folded/surrendered to calls from the rust belt/failed/mendicant/handout state of South Australia with X billion in funding for Y.”

There have been times when, sadly, the template has worked reliably, and provided accurate if bracing reading about our state.

There have also been times when we have been our own worst enemies in enabling such analysis.

With the car industry, we argued that Canberra could somehow stare down the insurmountable challenges of free trade, labour costs and a high dollar with an endless series of pointless bailouts.

On tax reform, we saw our State Government go cap-in-hand to Canberra urging a GST hike, wrongly arguing that SA had done all the heavy lifting it could in terms of reducing the size and cost of its own government.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Defence Minister Marise Payne take a tour of the ASC naval shipyards in Adelaide. Picture: AFP PHOTO/James Knowler

But on the question of subs, these journos are wrong.

Their analysis of the subs deal has focused almost exclusively on the politics and ignored most of the policy.

Perhaps this is now the Canberra curse. The tender process became tied up in ministerial sackings, the no-confidence motion against Tony Abbott and subsequent defence-related leaks under Malcolm Turnbull. In SA, the black cloud over the subs threatened to wipe out Coalition seats, amid the surge by Nick Xenophon and an aggressive taxpayer-funded campaign by the State Labor Government over what would have been a clear broken promise if a full dozen subs weren’t delivered.

All of that is interesting, and relevant, but it is the smallest part of the story.

This story is about three things of equal importance — national security, economic transformation, and people’s jobs.

It is worth recalling an excellent article written a couple of years ago by the now-Governor General Peter Cosgrove, the former ADF chief and Defence SA Advisory Board chairman.

“Whenever I am asked why we should build submarines in Australia, my short reply is that we can’t afford not to,” Cosgrove wrote.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stands with Vice Admiral Timothy Barrett at Adelaide’s ASC, after naming France as the winner of the subs build. Picture: AAP Image/Ben Macmahon

On national security, Cosgrove had this to say:

“Current Australian Government policy aims for self-reliance in the direct defence of Australia. That doesn’t mean we should have a full suite of capabilities for every occasion. Nor does it preclude a degree of dependence on allied nations for collaboration on certain technologies. But it is absolutely within our best interests to develop, own and keep as much intellectual capital and capability as possible.”

On economic transformation he said this:

“Our future submarine building project will ultimately not confine itself to the next 12 submarines. It sets a course toward the creation of an evolutionary industry — one of continuous build and continuous improvement, ingenuity and innovation.”

Critics of this deal are blind in their determination to take pot-shots at SA. So blind that they would have casually surrendered a key feature of our defence self-reliance, at a time of great international instability, and reduce us to the status of a customer on the world stage.

By fixating on the up-front cost they ignore the vast spin-offs this deal will have in helping us shift from an old-style manufacturing economy to being leading-edge makers and builders of sophisticated new things.

That transformation will underpin jobs today and the jobs of tomorrow, and send our universities in exciting new research and development directions over the coming decades. The comparison with NASA might be slightly overblown, but it’s still an apt one, as the vast scale and frontier nature of the project will require great inventiveness, the applications from which are unknown.

It’s easier of course to hit the F10 button and file your pre-prepared think piece on knife-edge marginals and pork barrels and skyrocketing South Australian unemployment figures. Think pieces like that don’t require any thought. Round it out with a few snide references to the Collins Class subs — relying on problems which occurred more than 20 years ago and have long since been rectified — and you’ll reach 800 words in no time.

And none of those words will be worth the paper they’re written on, written as they are by people who are too obsessed with purist economic theory and the intrigues of politics to focus on such trifles as the need to defend ourselves, transform our economy, keep people employed.