After a year of questions, Defence releases document on Australian submarine jobs
DEFENCE said the document did not exist. Then the Department said it did exist, but access was denied.
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AFTER a year of fighting to find out the plan for the Australian industry on the $50 billion Future Submarines project, a mysterious document has finally been tabled - in heavily redacted form.
The level of Australian involvement in the project has been a matter of keen interest since the battle began between France, Germany and Japan to win the contract.
Japan was considered the hot favourite, but the plan was to build the submarines there, minimising local employment.
France’s Naval Group - then DCNS - won, and part of their bid was a plan for Australian industry. Former Senator Nick Xenophon started trying to find out that plan one year and three days ago - his replacement Rex Patrick took up the fight and the document was finally tabled. Senator Patrick likened it to “pulling teeth from a rhinoceros”. The Government and the Department had argued that releasing the plan would threaten national security, or international relations, or commercial dealings.
Senator Patrick criticised the difficulty in getting the document, the secrecy of the redacted sections, and said Adelaide shipbuilders ASC were clearly part of DCNS’s plans but had since been sidelined.
“As a consequence of Centre Alliance’s efforts, Defence Minister Marise Payne has now been embarrassed into a partial release of a document that the Defence Department first claimed did not exist and which was then completely withheld on spurious claims that any release of information would damage Australia’s international relations.”
On Wednesday, Senator Payne had said that anyone who knew anything about tendering or national security knew it was “perfectly reasonable” to “properly consider what to release”.
“It frankly remains a mystery to all Australians interested in Australia having a continuous naval shipbuilding program why, alone amongst the vast majority of Australians, Mr Patrick remains unable to support that himself,” she said, adding it was “typical histrionics”.
Senator Payne wrote that the redacted material included information that could damage Australia’s international relations or undermine the project.
Meanwhile, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union yesterday protested at Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne’s city offices following the news that 200 jobs are set to go from the shipyard as work winds down on the Air Warfare Destroyers.