Turnbull must act on the deepening JSF debacle

Turnbull must act on the deepening JSF debacle

Well done, Malcolm Turnbull. As I will explain below, a GST increase introduced in the current environment would have been an absolute disaster for business and employment.

In fact, a higher GST was merely a smokescreen for lazy state and federal ministers in health, education and other areas who have been snowed by their public servants. They can slash duplication expenditure by billions without affecting services as per the Coalition 2013 election platform (The Coalition is stuck in ‘Yes Minister’ mode, February 5).

In some ways, the GST decision was easy. Our Prime Minister now faces a much tougher decision and one which is far more important in the longer term than the GST.

It takes a lot to shock me when it comes to the Joint Strike Fighter disaster, but over the weekend I received the report on the project from the man appointed by the President of the United States to check its progress (and other major US defence expenditures), Dr Mike Gilmore, who is Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

Each year he details the problems that have been encountered by the JSF and other projects during the past year. In most projects a few pages covers the situation, but in 2014 Mike Gilmore took 34 pages to detail the incredible problems he had discovered at the JSF. Many of those 2014 problems and fundamental flaws (and others in prior years) remain unsolved.

But now in 2015 he has come up with a new list of problems and flaws, which takes whopping 48 pages. It’s getting much worse, not better. I have attached the full report so Australians can see for themselves the JSF horror.

As readers of both Business Spectator and The Australian know, I have been alerting the country about the JSF for at least a decade because our premier air defence analytical group, Air Power Australia, isolated the problems. A succession of defence chiefs and ministers in Australia and the US ignored the warnings and the mounting problems.

But the penny is starting to drop and Cameron Stewart in The Australian this morning reveals the JSF will not be ready until the F/A-18 Hornets have past their use by dates.

Air Power Australia has been warning that this would happen for years but the problem is now far more serious than just delays. The plane has fantastic software, but has fundamental shape and other problems, so it will not match the planes being ordered by Indonesia, India and China.

To make matters worse, an alarmed Mike Gilmore goes further and says that due to “inadequate leadership and management on the part of both the Program Office and the contractor”, the program has failed to develop and deliver an adequate Verification Simulation (VSim) for use by either the developmental test team or the JSF Operational Test Team as has been planned for the past eight years.

To my knowledge Gilmore has never before used such words about the people running the JSF program.

When Malcolm Turnbull really looked hard at the GST, he saw it was a nonsense idea. I am sure he has never looked hard at the JSF, but in the national interest, he must do that. If and when he does, he will come to the same conclusion as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

When preparing for the 2015 Canadian election campaign, Trudeau examined the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft that both Canada and Australia were relying on to give them air superiority in coming decades. He saw the 2014 DOT & E report  and realised Canada  had to pull out of the disaster (Turnbull must reject the JSF, December 23).

But there is still hope that Australia can be an air power in our region. Just as Air Power Australia warned of the looming JSF disaster, so it has given the solution: we work really hard to convince the US to merge the JSF development and the F-22 (where production is mothballed) so that a really top aircraft is produced and we retain the massive industrial input Australia has given to the JSF.

Back to the higher GST. Why would it be so disastrous given that when it was introduced, it was not a disaster? In simple terms, we have an income recession so it’s very hard for business to increase prices.

In the apartment industry, for example, we would be looking at an enormous contraction of margins. Development would be greatly curtailed. The time to lift the GST is when there is growth and business can pass in the price rises.