Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian submarine enterprise is approaching a significant decision milestone: where will the full-cycle dockings for the Collins class submarines be done in the future? Will it be in Adelaide, where it is currently done, or in Perth? The submarine enterprise is, according to its stakeholders, delivering and meeting their expectations. It has gone from what was probably best described as a collection of disparate entities working to their own interests to what is referred to as an effective enterprise working together towards common goals, achieving world's best practice and very high submarine availability. This is fantastic. It proves that Australia is capable of taking on the challenge of being a parent navy for a submarine class—something we know takes commitment, planning and leadership.

So it should come as no surprise that I am blown away when I see people framing up an argument to deconstruct a system that's working just to transfer it to another location for shallow reasons, at huge cost to the taxpayer and at great risk to submarine availability. I refer the chamber to a recent opinion piece on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's blog, The Strategist, by retired rear admiral Rowan Moffitt. After a long period of silence, he has popped his head up and weighed into a political debate. I don't understand why. He makes a very limited number of valid points. For example, in relation to transitioning ASC from a construction yard which built the Collins class submarines to a maintenance provider, he states, 'It took over a decade and the Coles review before an acceptable outcome was reliably achieved.'

Around about the turn of this decade, we had shocking submarine availability. At one stage, Cameron Stewart reported in The Australian that none of our six submarines could go to sea—not one! Not a single submarine could go to sea. The article reads:

The Australian understands the entire fleet of six Collins-class submarines cannot be put to sea despite the navy's claim that two of them remain officially "operational".

The situation is so dire the navy is believed to have deferred major scheduled maintenance work on its most seaworthy submarine, HMAS Waller, in the hope that at least one submarine will be available in the coming weeks.

That was where we were at in 2011. Bad press and pressure on the submarine by then shadow defence minister Johnston gave rise to a significant review of the state of our submarine force. This was conducted by John Coles over a couple of years. The Coles review, which became the basis for fixing our submarine enterprise, found that there were five root causes: unclear requirements, lack of performance based ethos, unclear lines of responsibility, poor planning and lack of a single set of accurate information to inform decision-making. The report was handed down in November 2012 and Navy and industry, including ASC, have done a great job in fixing the problem. As stated earlier, we now have a world-class submarine enterprise giving us unprecedented submarine availability. Australia and the Navy now have a sustainment model where the submarines undergo self-maintenance periods, with intermediate- and mid-cycle dockings in Western Australia and full-cycle dockings—the most complex deeper maintenance activities, which take 24 months—in Adelaide, where the deeper knowledge base is. And it works. We've spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars getting things to the point where they are now. We now have retired people like Mr Moffitt suggesting we pick up full-cycle docking work that is being carried out in Adelaide, spend more than a billion dollars to carry it across the Nullarbor knowing full well that a significant—