Security risk’: Defence blasted over ageing submarines

Defence of Australia’s maritime borders is operating on a “wing and a prayer” with Collins class submarines, parliament has heard.

Defence of Australia’s maritime borders was operating on a “wing and a prayer” with Collins class submarines to be well beyond their used-by-date before new submarine acquisitions could be secured, parliament has heard.

Opposition Senate Leader Penny Wong on Wednesday tore through Australian Defence Force chiefs as she queried capability and security “gaps” between when the Collins submarines would be replaced by a yet-undetermined new sub.

Senator Penny Wong in the Senate’s defence estimates hearing. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gary Ramage

Under the AUKUS trilateral alliance announced last month between Australia, Britain and the US, Australia is to be provided with a nuclear-powered submarine capability with at least one boat in the RAN before 2040.

But Senator Wong, in the Senate’s defence estimates hearing, said the current Collins class had been around since she was at university and while their life cycle was being extended with refits to 2048 there would still exist a gap of several years and a “substantial risk” to security.

Senator Marise Payne appears before the committee in Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gary Ramage

This at a time, she said, when Defence and the government has consistently been warning of a deteriorating security situation in the Pacific.

She also questioned how the several hundreds of jobs lost through the cancelling of the French submarine contract, in favour of the AUKUS nuclear option, could not significantly delay any new submarine building program in Australia.

Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Sheean arrives for a logistics port visit last April in Hobart. Picture: LSIS Leo Baumgartner/Australian Defence Force via Getty Images

At one stage, a verbal stoush between Senator Wong and Foreign Minister Marise Payne on Australia’s ship building capacity – including the quiet abandoning of a pledge to build a ship in Australia to assist neighbours in the Pacific – became so heated committee chair Eric Abetz after several warnings was forced to suspend proceedings.

ADF chiefs dismissed both suggestions, saying jobs would be preserved for a few years beyond when a nuclear submarine timeline of introduction could be established, with that timeline due in the next 18 months.

On the question of security, the ADF said it had yet to probe how or if the Collins’ life could be extended yet again.

But there were various other platforms to fill any question of “gap” between submarine programs, ADF chief General Angus Campbell said by then the ADF would have much enhanced strike capabilities air, land and sea that was “part of our story” in national defence. Those capabilities include long-range missiles.

On the issue of French unhappiness with the tearing up, under the AUKUS pact, of its $88 billion submarine contract to develop an attack class submarine with Australia, Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty said the French were “surprised and disappointed understandably”.