Well chalk up another monumental policy failure by the rapidly decomposing Morrison government. This time the hollow man has managed to insult one of Australia’s longest serving allies, with his jingoistic nonsense. The brutal diplomatic snub with the sudden dumping of the submarine contract with France is wasteful, contemptible arrogance.
When the contract was first signed in 2016 by the Turnbull government there was always going to be a problem converting the French nuclear designed propulsion to diesel-electric, and the fact that nuclear propulsion is far superior was as obvious then as it is now.
The wasteful incompetent bungling of this coalition government is mind-blowing. Eight lost years of dithering; $2.5 billion lost, plus whatever the French will now sue us for, for breach of contract; and still no replacement subs until 2040, and only then if we get real lucky. China must be laughing at us.
The bizarre thing is that even with all the previous appalling corruption riddled monetary decisions including the $13 billion failure to properly monitor JobKeeper, the coalition still has the audacity to claim they are the better economic managers and that Labor is the party for wasting taxpayer dollars. Seriously, it’s little wonder that this corrupt government is fighting so hard to oppose a federal ICAC.
to be fair, we have had problems since the collins class program, an off-the-shelf german sub could be purchased for 500m… why spend 90b for a propriety model?
It’s not just about subs but about Australia’s Morrison-forged destiny to become the US’s land based aircraft carrier. We are reassured that our subs will not carry N-weapons but US warships? They never confirm or deny whether their ships are nuclear armed but now under AUKUS we can assume they will be in our city centres!
Many of the problems associated with the Collins class subs were politically amplified by the Conservatives. We did build all of them in Australia with a new inexperienced industry, and this led to many of the problems. The biggest problem was excessively noisy propellers and with help from the US, was eventually rectified. The Collins class subs are still a very efficient and capable diesel-electric submarine and will continue to be for years to come. The problem with the Conservatives is that they are so self-centered they never learn from past mistakes.
In joint exercises with the US navy the Collins Class subs had the drop on their nuclear subs and aircraft carriers several times without detection. Soon after that the anti-Collins propaganda started. I wonder why.