Volume 76 No.2 THE MAGAZINE OF THE NAVY LEAGUE OF AUSTRALIA FEDERAL COUNCIL SOUTH AUSTRALIAN DIVISION President: Graham M Harris, RFD Patron: His Excellency, The Governor of South Australia. Senior Vice-President: John Jeremy President: Dean Watson, RFD Vice-Presidents: Hon. Secretary: Miss J E Gill 05 STRATEGY & SUBMARINES LCDR Roger Blythman, RFD, PO Box 3008, Unley, SA 5061 Mark Schweikert Telephone: (08) 8272 6435 By Richard R. Fernandez Hon. Secretary: Philip Corboy WESTERN AUSTRALIAN DIVISION PO Box 128, Clayfield, Qld 4011 Patron: His Excellency, Mob: 0421 280 481 The Governor of Western Australia. 11 NEW ZEALAND’S NAVY – Email: [email protected] President: Mason Hayman PRESENT AND FUTURE NEW SOUTH WALES DIVISION 33 Keane Street Patron: Her Excellency, Peppermint Grove, WA 6011 By Murray Dear The Governor of New South Wales. Telephone: (08) 9384 5794 Mob: 0404 949 282 President: R O Albert, AO, RFD, RD Hon. Secretary: Trevor Vincent, Hon. Secretary: Elizabeth Sykes 20 THE US “PIVOT TO THE PACIFIC:” 3 Prosser Way, Myaree, WA 6154 GPO Box 1719, Sydney, NSW 2001 Telephone: (08) 9330 5129 Telephone: (02) 9232 2144 IS IT REAL, OR IS IT MEMOREX? Mob: 0417 933 780 Email: [email protected] Fax: (08) 9330 5129 By Capt George Galdorisi USN (Ret) VICTORIA DIVISION Email: [email protected] Patron: His Excellency, FEDERAL ADVISORY COUNCIL The Governor of Victoria. Chairman: Vice Admiral Chris Ritchie 25 THE QUEEN ELIZABETH CLASS CVF President: LCDR Roger Blythman, RFD AO, RAN (Rtd) Hon. 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CORPORATE MEMBERS President: Harvey Greenfield The Australian Shipowners’ Association Hawker De Haviland Limited Correspondence: Strang International Pty Ltd GPO Box 1481, Brisbane Qld 4001 State Branches: Cairns: A Cunneen, REGULAR FEATURES PO Box 1009, Cairns, Qld 4870 Telephone: (07) 4054 1195 02 From the Crow’s Nest Townsville: I McDougall PO Box 1478, Townsville, Qld 4810 04 The President’s Page Telephone: (07) 4772 4588 Bundaberg: I Lohse, PO Box 5141 15 Flash Traffic Bundaberg West, Qld 4670 Product Review Telephone: (07) 4151 2210 30 32 League Policy Statement All letters and contributions to: The Office of The Editor THE NAVY Navy League of Australia GPO Box 1719 The opinions or assertions expressed in THE NAVY are those of the authors and Sydney, NSW 2001 not necessarily those of the Federal Council of the Navy League of Australia, the E-mail to: [email protected] Editor of THE NAVY, the RAN or the Department of Defence. The Editor welcomes correspondence, photographs and contributions and will assume that by making All Subscriptions, Membership and Advertising enquiries to: submissions, contributors agree that all material may be used free of charge, The Hon Secretary edited and amended at the Editor’s discretion. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the Editor. Navy League of Australia, NSW Division GPO Box 1719, Sydney NSW 2001 Front cover: The RNZN Navy Inshore Patrol Vessel HMNZS TAUPO (NZ Defence) Deadline for next edition 5 May 2014 FROM THE CROW’S NEST Themistocles INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH WENT THE NAVAL NAVY UNDER ATTACK SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY The last few months have been very difficult for the RAN on many fronts with a very high operational tempo and several operations and exercises Much has been written about the metaphorical ‘Valley of Death’ for to perform. It has also been the target of political and media attacks, Australian naval shipbuilding - the media love the term. Unions and which have also given rise to social media attacks as well. industry are claiming that if the new Government doesn’t place big orders for naval vessels very soon that jobs will be lost, as well as the Now while one might be tempted to think this is just the result of another capabilities to build naval vessels in the future. sex scandal and Navy should be used to it, this one isn’t. It’s far worse. When Navy, or the wider ADF, does wrong, of course it deserves public These claims are mostly true. For a start the last government failed scrutiny. But the most recent attacks started by the national broadcaster, to build or even place orders for any new naval ships over a six year the ABC (and perpetuated by the Greens and ALP) have been far more period - the current shipbuilding efforts being a legacy of the Howard malicious with undertones of a political agenda. Government. Lead times for new naval ships are very long. So the union’s and industry’s claims of heading for the valley of death are Several months ago the ABC published and promoted the fanciful inaccurate, for we are actually already there. Companies involved in accusations of a people smuggler (hardly an impeachable source) that naval shipbuilding have already laid people off. This will get more serious our Navy personal tortured his clients on the high seas. Other news in 2015 when the LHDs CANBERRA and ADELAIDE are completed. In agencies investigated the issue and decided it was ‘bogus’ before the 2018 when the last of the Hobart class destroyers is launched this will ABC decided to run with it, and run with it and run with it. The ABC’s be even worse. subsequent treatment of our navy as a proxy tool for its attacks on the government and its border protection policy have been nothing less than The fact of the matter is that it takes years to do the design work and go appalling gutter journalism. through the government processes to approve the build of sophisticated high-end naval ships. Apart from industry’s position, the previous So why has the ABC done this? Well, our navy is proving just how government’s inaction also impacted naval capability. professional it is with its involvement in the Government’s Operation Sovereign Borders campaign to stop illegal people smuggling. Our navy The replenishment vessel HMAS SUCCESS is 28 years old with no has been central to the Government’s policy success. So much so those replacement in sight. The previous government delayed the project to with an opposing political agenda are now attacking it. replace her, probably due to its reducing the defence budget by $16 billion. Her replacement should have been ordered at least two years So not only does the RAN now have to cope with sneaky and desperate ago. The economic legacy inherited by the new government is now people smugglers playing, at times, lethal games, but has had to endure impacting its ability to try and remedy this sad state of affairs. being stabbed in the back by the national broadcaster - the broadcaster that uses the same source of funding as our navy, the tax payer. Every government of every persuasion has had to deal with the issue of Australian naval shipbuilding. None seems to have got it right. The Navy If the ABC is looking for news stories that celebrate Australia and League in the past has contributed to this debate through submissions Australians then it should be reporting that fewer sailors are presenting to parliamentary inquires on the matter. All to no avail. The answer is for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) treatment, as they haven’t pretty easy, keep the build going and do it through very few yards or had to fish the decomposing dead bodies of men, women, children just one yard. and babies out of the water since Operation Sovereign Borders started. They should be rejoicing in the number of lives saved by our navy, The greatest testimony to the failure of governments to sustain a naval for under the previous Government’s policy one person was dying on shipbuilding industry would have to be Cockatoo Island dockyard in average every two days (nearly 1,100 people in total). The ABC should Sydney Harbour. This once southern hemisphere centre of excellence be reporting how incredibly professional our navy is at this new form for naval shipbuilding and repair was allowed to slowly wither away and of border protection and how it is now leading the world in tackling the die during the late 1980s (the list of warships previously built there, global people trafficking problem (where high death rates are also the let alone repaired, is impressive). No orders where forthcoming after norm). HMAS SUCCESS was launched. Perhaps the previous Government’s Communications Minister had a The one glimmer of hope to sustaining a national submarine building point about placing controls on the media to stop this sort of politically capability is the project SEA 1000 which is still aiming to produce 12 motivated bias. Which brings up the issue of Senator Stephen Conroy, submarines. Twelve submarines will actually mean a continuous build, then Communications Minister, now Shadow Minister for Defence. for as the last enters service the first could be decommissioned and the His recent ‘lack of judgement’ over accusations of a political cover replacement project started. This would prevent the Adelaide ‘Techport’ up against the uniformed Joint Head of Operation Sovereign Borders, site suffering the same fate as Cockatoo Island. LTGEN Angus Campbell DSC AM, is further proof of just how far some As for the SUCCESS replacement, this should probably be the highest will go to attack the government’s policy success.