The Albanese Government is reinforcing and rewarding failure with its review of the Australian Navy\u2019s surface fleet, released today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than a decade after it was conceived the Hunter Frigate program is being backed in with the same eye-watering price tag of $45 billion but producing six instead of nine ships. If ever built they will be the most expensive, and some of the least useful, warships of their class on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hunter Frigates program was referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission last year by the Greens due to the lack of value-for-money assessment, uncompetitive tender and systemic failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remarkably, the same senior people in Defence that landed us with the Hunter Frigates mess are now being rewarded with an extra $11.1 billion to buy a new class of unidentified Tier 2 ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current price tag for Labor\u2019s \u201cenhanced lethality surface combatant fleet\u201d review is a total spend of $54.2 billion over the next decade. This is on top of the $368 billion on yet-to-be-designed AUKUS submarines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, Defence has kept all their money, kept all their failed projects and been given more money and more projects to play with. Rewarding failure like this makes us less safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greens Defence Spokesperson Senator David Shoebridge said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “This review is about reinforcing failure, recommitting to the disastrous $45 billion Hunter Frigates and expecting the same team that led us into this mess to fix it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwo years of dithering by Defence Minister Marles has led us to this point. The push for continuous shipbuilding in Adelaide, linked to local politics and the hope to keep a nuclear submarine workforce, is what\u2019s driving this multi-billion dollar mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo matter how many times Defence leadership fails, both overcharging and underdelivering, they keep their jobs and get rewarded with billions more public dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe goal in this review is to more than double the size of the combat surface fleet, with unclear timelines and increasing budgets. It is not a review it is a shopping list and it will be impossible to hold Defence to account for the inevitable future failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The framing of this review to increase lethality and Defence expenditure should tell you everything you need to know, it is all about threatening our neighbours not defending Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the most remarkable features of this $54 billion shopping list is how little it connects with the $368 billion AUKUS submarine project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you were looking for a coherent plan to defend Australia you won’t find it in this review,\u201d Senator Shoebridge said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Albanese Government is reinforcing and rewarding failure with its review of the Australian Navy\u2019s surface fleet, released today. More than a decade after it was conceived the Hunter Frigate program is being backed in with the same eye-watering price tag of $45 billion but producing six instead of nine ships. If ever built they … Continue reading “REINFORCING FAILURE, LABOR REFUSES TO MAKE THE HARD CALL TO CANCEL THE DISASTROUS $45 BILLION HUNTER FRIGATES”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25323,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25322\/revisions\/25323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}