Once again we have embarked on a federal budget and an election campaign without the single most important issue — the defence of Australia — playing the slightest role. Speaking technically, that’s completely nuts.
Let me digress. I owe my nodding acquaintance with the works of Anton Chekhov to Bob Carr.
Perhaps nothing could be quite so salutary for Australians at this moment as reading these beautiful plays and short stories.
They deal predominantly with the Russian gentry — not the aristocracy and not the peasants. In other words, as near as Russia had to a middle class.
The stories are domestic, establish brilliantly their mood, deal with trials and tribulations of middle-class life — estates in decline, incomes not quite meeting expenses, all sorts of personal issues.
Chekhov died in 1904. None of his characters imagined they were living through the last moments, of a life that would be destroyed forever by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
Looking back, if anyone had any money in a Chekhov play, their smartest move would have been to migrate to America.
I am not predicting disaster on that scale for Australia. But every element in our strategic circumstances is getting worse, yet we are doing effectively nothing to produce a defence force that might deter our enemies, bolster our friends and defend our nation.
How can this be, with $50 billion for 12 new submarines, $38bn for nine new frigates and $17bn for 72 Joint Strike Fighters?
All of these programs are going to take so long to deliver that we will have passed through the strategic challenge of our time before they arrive. Also, a lot of the money is fictional in that it exists only as a concept long beyond the forward estimates. Nothing is easier for a government to cut than defence money beyond the forward estimates.
On budget night my email inbox, like that of all journalists, pinged relentlessly like a sonar in a nest of enemy ships, with endless emails demanding more social spending. Left-handed hockey trainers beyond the Blue Mountains — neglected in the budget! Inner-city Esperanto therapy — shamelessly ignored!
Most of the causes were worthy but, while we are very wealthy, we are paying ourselves more than we can afford and promising ourselves more than we can deliver, and neglecting basic defence. Our defence strategy is still simply to rely on the Americans.
Our boutique forces are not designed to generate war-fighting capability or any independent strategic effect.
They are designed to slide into the US order of battle in the hope that in return the Americans will always look after us.
Our forces are too small and will be delivered too late. I have written about the new submarines before, but it’s worth recapping the dereliction they represent.
The 2009 defence white paper identified the urgent national priority to double our submarine fleet from six to 12 and make sure these were regionally superior, long-range submarines.
Both governments then made an absolute mess of the project.
The Abbott government announced we would get the first replacement subs by the mid-2020s. That has now slipped a decade and the first of the new subs, if everything goes according to plan, will be fully deployable by 2034 or 2035, according to Defence planning. If we get a new one every two years after that we get our full fleet by 2057. This could conceivably happen a bit earlier or a bit later.
For the sake of rounding, say we get our full fleet by 2059. That means we identified an urgent national priority in 2009 and took about 50 years to address it — 10 years longer than the time from the start of World War I to the end of World War II.
That is not a sign of a nation that takes its own security remotely seriously.
The poor old Collins will be serving antiques, living museums, relics of a bygone era before they are all replaced.
And 12 are not enough anyway.
When the Russians rudely and somewhat bizarrely sent a warship to sit menacingly off the Brisbane coast during the G20 meeting we hosted there in 2014, we couldn’t even send a single submarine to shadow it.
They were all — or those of them that were serviceable at the time — on the other side of Australia. If only the Russians had done the polite thing and given us proper advance notice.
A more realistic number for subs would be 18, with nine based on one side of the continent and nine on the other.
The second biggest defence project is the new anti-submarine warfare frigates, a $38bn commitment. We are increasing from eight to nine, though the new frigates will be much bigger and more powerful than the old. This is part of our recognition of our advancing maritime challenge.
So when do we get all nine? Not before 2042-43. We don’t get the first one until 2030. If everything goes to schedule, a huge if, we will be able to retire the last Anzac frigate and replace it after the Anzac has been in service 36 years. And the frigates, though simpler than the subs, will have huge complexities associated with them. As usual, we chose a design that does not yet exist in a physical ship. BAE, the company involved, makes very good ships and will do a good job for us. But it will only just have built the first of its new design when it is building the first of ours.
As defence analyst Marcus Hellyer has pointed out, our ships will use a different helicopter, different weapons, different radar, a different combat management system. Any chance of a time slippage do you think?
The most on time of the big projects is the 72 Joint Strike Fighter F-35s we are buying. Despite the nonsense you’ll read here and there, these are superb planes and will be regionally superior.
Their delivery date has already slipped a great deal but theoretically, if everything goes right from here, we get all 72 by 2023.
That’s more or less the good news. The JSFs are meant to replace the Hornets, the Super Hornets and the Growlers. But ask yourself this — can we really defend and secure in all circumstances an area the size of the continental US with 70-odd aircraft?
After six years of Coalition government, defence spending, including all operations and the Signals Directorate, comes in at 1.9 per cent of GDP. Defence preparedness is the best way to promote peace. We are not a serious nation. Let’s hope the Americans never tire of defending us.
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