Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Defence has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

(1) The Joint Ministerial Media Release of the Ministers for Defence and Defence Materiel on 26 May 2011 was based upon advice from the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) Alliance on changes to the allocation of block assembly work for the AWD construction program and information that without this action the first ship would be two years late.

The AWD Alliance also advised that the allocation changes would reduce the delay of the completion of Ship 1 by up to 12 months and of all three AWDs by up to 12 months.

Based on this initial analysis, the DMO and the AWD Alliance are working to a delay of 12 months on the contracted 90 month delivery schedule for the first Air Warfare Destroyer; a 13.3 per cent schedule slip where the Early Indicators and Warning System (EI&W) schedule trigger point is 20 per cent.

(2) Action taken by the AWD Aliance to limit potential slippage mitigated the risk of further schedule slip and predated the implementation of the EI&W System. The AWD Program has triggered no EI&W criteria or thresholds since the implementation of the EI&W System in June 2011.