Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will come to nuclear, Senator Edwards; that is fine. I am sure you will address that in your contribution as well. The point I am making is not actually about propulsion. We could have a well-founded argument—through you, Chair—on whether they should be nuclear- or diesel-powered submarines.

The point I am putting to you is that these gigantic vessels, which are considered to be stealth submarines in 2015, by the mid-2020s, 2030s or 2040s you would not be able to put within hundreds of miles of combat because, by then, it seems increasing likely, as is happening in aviation, this will be the last generation of crewed vessels that put to sea. It will simply be too dangerous to put human beings in the line of fire in vessels such as those we are proposing to spend upwards of $50 billion procuring. So our argument is not necessarily whether or not we maintain a naval shipbuilding industry in Australia but that treating defence policy as industry policy is immensely dangerous. I think you could trace it back to the announcement by Prime Minister Rudd in the 2009 defence white paper—we are going to buy all these things, we are not going to budget for them, there will be 12 and they will be huge and that will be amazing. It overlooks developments and very rapid advancements in two key fields.

One development, as put out in the paper by the CSBA, is increasing computer processing power. The theory is that it may become possible, they say, to construct models that will detect vessels by observing minuscule surface changes caused by their underwater wake. That is about size; it is not about whether it is nuclear powered or conventionally powered. It is about the size of the vessel and the fact that, if you throw enough supercomputer power and enough remote sensing devices at these things, it would make the ocean effectively transparent. That is the theory. Yes, there is an arms race which has been going on probably for decades on detection of these vessels but nonetheless that is something we would want to be absolutely awake to.

Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has also noted the extraordinary implications of that spectacular growth of processing power. In 2033, which is at about the time these future submarines will be entering service, electronic devices will be a thousand times more powerful than those we use today and a million times more powerful than those used in 1993. Dr Davies says:

In principle, given enough processing power and enough sources of data, even low power signals can be extracted from background noise. And that’s where Moore’s Law and robots come in. Future processors will be faster and more powerful, and will be able to process large quantities of data fast enough to have a much better detection capability against quiet submarines or low radar signature aircraft. By having multiple sources of radar (or sonar) energy in different locations combined with multiple detectors also in different locations, the trick of reflecting radar away from the original source suddenly becomes much less effective.

Dr Davies' paper does not assume that that is all bad news for submariners but just that the kinds of vessels we build and deploy—if we continue down this road of arms races with other regional powers which, in itself, I suspect may be a grievous misallocation of resources—the boats that were fit for purpose in the 1980s or 1990s, which is what we appear to be about to plunge ahead and build, may well be a decision we significantly regret right at about the time these vessels are proposed to be put to sea.

The other key technological advance which potentially compromises the design of the vessels we are proposing to build is that of uncrewed or unmanned vessels, UUVs, which effectively would see the role of submarines relegated way behind the forward lines or areas in which we expect them to operate at the moment. Dr Davies says that the changes will make sneaking large submarines into contested spaces 'prohibitively difficult', which will potentially hurt the large Japanese submarines, the Soryus, just as badly as those Australia would be proposing to develop here.

The other question I would want to throw into the debate is whether these submarines are proposed for protecting Australia's territorial integrity or the sea lanes and approaches around Australia and, if so, why they are required to be such long-range vessels. Are these in fact designed to put an Australian capability into the South China Sea in the event of a conflict there? If so, we should not be pretending that these submarines are simply for defensive use and the protection of Australian maritime assets or the sea lanes and approaches around Australia and Indonesia.

Those are the sorts of questions which have been almost entirely missing from the debate as we rush to who can make the quickest jobs announcement in Adelaide. Of course jobs are important, but for $500 million of the $50 billion you could provide a rather extraordinary number of jobs in other sectors. Try to imagine that for $50 billion we could offer nearly 1.7 million people free university degrees. For $50 billion obviously we could wipe out the budget deficit and pay off a significant amount of debt but we could also provide 211,000 new homes in the middle of a housing affordability crisis or we could effectively invest to get the clean energy industry on its feet. To my mind, those opportunity costs are precisely what are being lost in this debate.

Finally, quite frequently lost in this debate are the opportunity costs of defence spending against all of the other things we could be putting these sorts of investments towards. It is only in defence policy where questions of industry protectionism simply go out the window. So all the Greens are asking is for the actual capability that we need to be at the front of the debate, not back of mind, rather than assuming that we need these submarines because of the decision made by Kevin Rudd in 2009. (Time expired)