Anthony Albanese’s visit to Washington will be completely undermined by the reality of his government’s woeful performance on defence capability and AUKUS delivery.
Increasingly, national security conversations in Washington, London and Canberra are taking note of the almost complete paralysis of the Albanese government in delivering any defence funding, platforms or weapons.
Also notable is the complete lack of any serious preparation for what are notional AUKUS commitments, such as the government’s continued refusal to identify the site, much less provide any funding for, an east coast nuclear submarine base.
Joe Biden will flatter the Australian Prime Minister. That’s what Americans do with valued allies. Not only that, the public diplomacy side of AUKUS is still valuable to Washington as it looks like US allies are rallying to its side.
But serious US national security and policy making figures can see the disarray in the Australian defence program, and the lack of any effort by the Albanese government to fix it.
Just this week we’ve had the Defence Department produce its annual report which shows the incredible shrinking Australian Defence Force, now 3400 personnel short of its target.
More important, and more indicative of program chaos, the department underspent its allocated budget by $670 million, and had to return this money to Treasury.
Richard Marles is so far turning into one of the worst defence ministers in a decade. He talks a good game but has so far delivered nothing. He certainly hasn’t sorted out the mess in defence.
This is now acknowledged by serious defence observers whatever their strategic outlook. Thus James Curran commented in The Australian Financial Review: “The government talks a big game, but the fiscal muscle to deliver its defence policy of ‘impactful projection’ remains missing.”
This week the Albanese government provided two of the most historically bizarre answers to parliamentary Dorothy Dixers in Australian history. Unintentionally, these answers lay bare the complete fiasco of Australian Defence policy.
Marles told parliament once more that Australia confronted “the biggest challenge in strategic circumstances... since the end of the Second World War”. He revealed, shockingly, that our surface fleet – the three Air Warfare Destroyers and eight Anzac frigates – “is now the oldest fleet that the Navy has ever operated”. The number of available days from the surface fleet was 3915 in the last year of the Gillard government, but had now fallen to 2749.
That’s all true enough. The Coalition governments deserve every criticism. But, Marles proudly proclaimed, the Albanese government would fix this all up. He then proceeded to announce absolutely nothing. He won’t even respond to the review of the surface fleet, which was the only action which emerged regarding the surface fleet from the Defence Strategic Review, until February or March next year.
So the government will have been in office for two years before it takes a single decision on anything in relation to what in its own terms is a pitiful surface fleet, in the midst of the most dangerous strategic circumstances we’ve faced in 80 years.
When the government announced the Defence Strategic Review conducted by Angus Houston and Stephen Smith, it said this mechanism was chosen because there was an urgent need for new measures and everything could happen under the DSR much more quickly than if a normal White Paper process was followed.
Instead the DSR was censored and bowdlerised and led only to eight new reviews and absolutely no action in terms of acquiring any new combat capabilities, especially no new action on the surface fleet.
A Dorothy Dixer to Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy was equally bizarre. He lambasted the previous government, then listed his own government’s achievements. The new government would complete the Army’s Infantry Fighting Vehicles more quickly than planned. He didn’t mention this is because they cut the number from 450 to 129.
But wait! Conroy announced the crowning glory from the new government. The Coalition commissioned supply ships in which it turned out some taps were leaking metal and some sections of thee ships gave impure drinking water to the crew.
The Albanese government had heroically fixed the Defence emergency. Clean drinking water would be restored in all sections of the supply ships. Nothing at all, of course, about any combat capability.
Marles was humiliated in the Expenditure Review Committee which decided that Defence had to effectively cut capabilities, such as not going ahead with the planned, last squadron of the F-35 fighter aircraft.
But it turns out that under Marles’s leadership Defence can’t even spend the money it’s allocated because the government has produced only chaos, paralysis, delay and strangulation by review.
Is there a hard head on any side of the Pacific who thinks this indicates a capability to actually build nuclear submarines in Adelaide, or that the Americans would give any of their subs to such a shower of incompetence?
The government is using the fraudulent symbolism of AUKUS to avoid doing anything substantial in defence for the entirety of its first term.
Biden will give Albanese a bear hug. But the Americans aren’t fools.
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