The speech to the Lowy Institute involved some brave and soundly based rhetoric but in defence terms it was equal parts fantasy and misrepresentation.
The Prime Minister’s words on Ukraine and China are sound and true, and exhibit good values and some national courage. And they’re important.
But his words on our national defence are simply unreal.
The burden of the announcement is that while threats in our region are increasing daily, we will do absolutely nothing about them. China seizes the South China Sea – we produce a white paper. Russia seizes Ukraine – we institute a committee to examine a submarine base, without any submarines, for 10 or 20 years hence. We will decide on the base’s location in 2023. And the government has allocated $10bn for the project.
Except this is $10bn over 20 years for whatever new facilities we might need for the nuclear subs. Is there anything more worthless than governments talking airily of billions of dollars beyond the forward estimates?
Our military force structure, which has been the same since the 1960s, has not changed despite everything that China has done in the region, has not changed despite the new realities created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and apparently will not change under this government.
Surely under AUKUS the government has committed to nuclear submarines, and that’s a change isn’t it? Except there is no way on God’s green earth that anything meaningful can come of this in the next 15 years. Imagine if Volodymyr Zelensky, when he saw Russia’s growing threat to Ukraine, based his response on weapons that could not come, under even the best circumstances, for another 15 years.
The government also never gets its story straight. Defence Minister Peter Dutton implied on Insiders that the big announcement about which nuclear-propelled sub we would seek to acquire would come “within a couple of months”. We simple-minded media folk took that to mean before the election.
On Monday, Morrison made it clear there would be no decision before the election. Was this sloppy strategic communication? Were the PM and Defence Minister at odds? Or did the US and Britain express alarm at the railroading of this project’s timing for an election announcement?
Nothing the PM said in his speech was exactly untrue but it certainly communicated a false picture of our defence. He said the government would “enhance our long-range strike capabilities to boost the ADF’s ability to deliver strike effects across our land, air and maritime domains”.
This implies we already have some strike capability, But let’s be absolutely clear. Neither navy nor air force nor army has any strike capability at all.
There are things the government could, and should, do in the next five to 10 years. We could start buying and building missiles straight away.
In announcing a never-never base for a never-never sub, the government has determined it will do nothing in the immediate or even middle distance future.
This speaks to a government, and perhaps a nation, which is not serious about security.
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Scott Morrison’s speech announcing a committee to look at a location for a possible east coast submarine base came in what is one of the most profoundly disappointing prime ministerial speeches in modern times.