Editorial: Cabinet penny-pinching leaves Adelaide on edge of a new ‘valley of death’

If cabinet lacks the resolve to push ahead with Adelaide’s $45bn frigate projects, what hope do we have when it’s time to build nuclear subs.

• EXCLUSIVE: Alarm bells for Adelaide frigate project

Downgrading the $45bn Hunter Class project to only three ships would scuttle a promised continuous Adelaide shipbuilding program and imperil national security.

The federal cabinet’s expenditure review committee (ERC) needs to be alive to the enormous damage that torpedoing the Hunter workforce would do to plans to build nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS security pact.

Put simply, constructing only three ships will leave the Osborne Naval Shipyard workforce without anything to build in the years leading up to the start of the AUKUS submarine program.

If the ERC baulks at the Hunter frigate program’s cost and Treasurer Jim Chalmers cannot find the necessary dollars in the May federal budget, then imagine their reaction to the $368bn cost of the AUKUS submarines.

Federal Labor is already facing serious criticism for breaching election promises and inaction on defence spending, while serious storm clouds gather on the global geopolitical front.

A reckoning is fast approaching.

Federal governments, whatever their persuasion, will have to face some stark choices on defence budgets.

Either they will have to cut costs on other programs to fund nuclear-powered submarines, in particular, or they will have to slash spending in other areas.

Alternatively, substantial funds will have to be borrowed or Australia’s defence forces will wither into insignificance.

Both Defence Minister Richard Marles and Premier Peter Malinauskas have repeatedly emphasised the importance of continuous naval shipbuilding in Adelaide.

Defence minister Richard Marles and Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas at Osborne shipyard. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Morgan Sette

The reason is obvious from experience in Australia and overseas.

Without continuous projects, highly skilled workforces that take a long time to build are depleted quickly.

The gap between projects has been termed a “valley of death” for workforces.

The next few weeks will be crucial, both for the Adelaide shipbuilding workforce and the future AUKUS submarine program.

If the Hunter-class program is torpedoed, so too is the future submarine program effectively plunged into a sea of troubles.

A huge nuclear-powered submarine is looming on the horizon.

Finding a skilled workforce is hard enough – without then needlessly scattering it again.