Tory Shepherd: Shift in Defence White Paper focus is a boon for SA

ANALYSIS: ONE of the top people involved in the production of the Defence White Paper says South Australians will be very happy with it.

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ONE of the top people involved in the production of the Defence White Paper says South Australians will be very happy with it.

And they should be. Today the Government will announce a historic investment in major shipbuilding projects that will inject money, jobs and confidence into the state.

There will also be crucial information on the threats to our security and the needs of our army and air force, but down here it’s the ships and submarines we’re really interested in.

The most promising thing about this long overdue White Paper is that it has undergone something of a transformation.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has enthusiastically linked Defence to industry and senior ministers are talking about the “leverage” Defence has to create jobs. Mr Turnbull said, crucially: “We have to overturn the notion that a defence budget is provided simply to buy equipment, ships and planes from overseas.”

That seems to spell an end to the old, dry economic argument that the net cost of purchasing Defence equipment is what’s important, not how much of that money and knowledge and experience stays in Australia.

It will also be reassuring to industry to have the numbers — 12 submarines, nine frigates, 12 Offshore Patrol Vessels.

But industry and other interested parties will not pop the champagne just yet. We still don’t know exactly how much work from any of the projects will fall to SA.

After the Government has chosen an international partner from France, Germany and Japan, it will decide whether the biggest-ticket item, the Future Submarines, will be mostly built here. The hybrid option is more remote than ever before, but it’s still live.

And as Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said, 12 is an “easy promise”.

“Nine, 10, 11 and 12 are a problem for the prime minister of the 2030s,” he said.

The frigates will be built in Adelaide — as much as possible, anyway.

And the OPVs — the crucial link between existing shipbuilding work and future projects — are anyone’s guess. WA is very keen to win that work.

One thing we should find out today are the actual Defence costs. There have been wild promises and wilder speculation.

By the end of today there will be more known knowns, but still a hefty swag of known unknowns.