Interview with David Bevan, ABC Radio, Adelaide

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The Hon Peter Dutton MP

Minister for Defence

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Defence Media: media@defence.gov.au

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7 March 2022

DAVID BEVAN:

Good morning Peter Dutton.

PETER DUTTON:

Good morning David.

DAVID BEVAN:

Peter Dutton before we get on to the subs, you are the Member for Dickson in a northern seat in Brisbane. It's just worth pointing out that South Australians are keenly aware of how much your state has suffered over the last week or two with the floods. Brisbane, south Queensland and northern New South Wales. People are thinking of your constituents and the wider community there.

PETER DUTTON:

I really appreciate that David, thank you. There's a lot of devastation, a lot of heartbreak, and even in the last 24 hours some storms up in the Sunshine Coast region where one person has lost their life and the flash flooding continues just because of the saturation on the ground and the catchments are full. So the devastation in northern New South Wales, as you point out as well, is catastrophic. Much more than a flood – it's the ferocity and just the dump of the rain in such quick time, not sort of slow soaking rain in a normal flood event. It's destroyed houses and businesses in many hundreds or thousands and so there's a long recovery ahead. The Australian Defence Force is starting to play their role already. But thank you, I really appreciate the acknowledgement. A lot of people are doing it really tough.

DAVID BEVAN:

Regarding the subs, I think it's also fair that South Australia has been on a roller coaster of announcements and promises for several years now. Can you explain to us what is happening?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, we've got obviously a huge investment that we're making into defence proper. That includes an upgrade of the Collins Class submarines. We've got the acquisition of and the construction of the new submarines, the nuclear-powered submarines. We've determined obviously that there will be a build in South Australia, so thousands of jobs created there. We estimate over the course of the decade, or by the end of the decade there'll be about 15,000 Australian jobs in naval ship building – 5,000 of those will be in South Australia. So it's not just the subs.

The Prime Minister has announced today the desire to have an east coast base as well. So that's strategically important for us to spread our capability, not just to the south and the west, but also to the east of our country as well and we've announced $8 billion worth of support and upgrading of facilities across the north of Australia; so airfields, fuel reserves, basing the accommodation of troops etc.

So it's a national undertaking and in terms of what we're doing at Osborne, as you know, it's not just the subs, but it's the Hunter Class frigates, nine of those to be constructed and there'll be major upgrades to the three Hobart Class destroyers and that full-cycle docking of the Collins Class submarines. We've got six in that fleet as well. So it's a massive undertaking. There'll be lots of local jobs in South Australia for many years to come.

DAVID BEVAN:

Once they're built here, they go off the east coast to be based on the east coast and there's, I think, three options for that. How much maintenance work will be done on the east coast?

PETER DUTTON:

I think there will be maintenance, to be honest, across not just South Australia but the east coast, the west coast because we're talking not only about Australian submarines, we're also talking about significant visits to our country from the Astute Class. We had an Astute Class in WA only about two months ago. We have the prospect, I think, of significant visits from the United States fleet – not just their submarines – and also the Japanese visits, the British visits of their frigates. I think you'll see more activity from the Indians. I just think this is the new norm, tragically, because of the uncertainty within the Indo-Pacific and we'll see that ramp up over the next couple of years.

So I think there's sustainment. I think there's repair, there's replenishment and, as you know, when these ships come ashore, in some cases they're spending a million dollars a day just in the activities of the , let alone the repairs, the maintenance that needs to be done.

DAVID BEVAN:

So you're expecting a degree of maintenance work will still be done in South Australia, even though they will be based on the east coast?

PETER DUTTON:

I think that's the reality David. I think the bigger problem that I've got in my mind, is not whether there will be enough work for South Australia, it's where we find the workers and I think that's the reality for many small businesses at the moment. We've obviously ramped up our investments into defence, but there's a lot of money that's being spent in other parts of the economy.

It's not just at Osborne as well. I think it's important to point out, Steven Marshall's vision of the defence industry in South Australia is becoming a reality, and the multiplier effect across the broader economy of that defence industry investment, is quite phenomenal. The thousands of jobs that are created, the shop fitters, new vehicles that are purchased, the apprentices, the businesses that have confidence to headquarter their own operations in South Australia. All of that's an adjunct of it as well.

DAVID BEVAN:

Is there a chance another batch of subs will have to be bought to fill the gap? Because this nuclear-powered boats won't be in the water until – what – 2040?

PETER DUTTON:

We'll have more to say about that maybe mid-year or in that sort of order I think about what we'll do in the next stage of the AUKUS discussions. There's been speculation around the 2040s. That's not my expectation. I think we can build and we can put into service much sooner than the 2040s. But we're going through an 18-month process at the moment with both the United States and the United Kingdom talking about the transfer of that IP, talking about the way in which we can build up that capability.

We had the head of nuclear technology out of the UK and Admiral Caldwell out of the US who heads their nuclear program visiting Osborne only in the last couple of weeks, just to talk about what upgrades are needed to the facility there, what additional money we need to spend. So there's a lot that is taking place behind the scenes that I think will, you know, really bolster the activity at Osborne, but across South Australia as well.

Just to answer your question specifically around the subs, which is the point I was getting to. What we don't want to do is get into an immature design of a third class of subs. Navy is going to be stretched to run the Collins Class into the mid-2040s, on top of the new nuclear-powered submarines. To have a sort of son of Collins or a daughter of Collins, as it's been referred to, so a third class of submarines, I just don't think it's feasible. And we've look very closely at the merit and at the positive and the negatives of that. It would take years and years to develop the design and then to build those and I just don't…my judgement is it's not feasible.

DAVID BEVAN:

So could we just buy a standard nuclear-powered ship – boat in the short term to just fill the gap? Something off the shelf?

PETER DUTTON:

I'd love to say yes, but it's not like going down to the local Hyundai dealership and, you know, saying, "I'd like the second-hand, you know, 2016 model, and I'll take the 2019 model while I'm here as well." I mean the whole world production at the moment of submarines, it's a really interesting study when you go around the world and look at where there is capability to build submarines. Everybody is building to capacity at the moment because they're worried about the rate at which China and Russia and other countries are increasing their military capability.

So everybody has, you know, capacity constraints at the moment – and that's true in the UK and the US also. It's why we need to build our capability at Osborne as quickly as humanly possible and it will mean the life of type extension for the Collins Class. I mean the Collins Class had a bad rap in the 1980s and the 1990s, but to Kim Beazley's credit, he had the vision for it and successive Liberal Labor Governments stuck with it. It is now according to our partners – not just our subjective assessment, but according to our partners – one of the most capable submarines in the Indo-Pacific. It's ability to project forward, to collect and the expertise that we have on those boats is world renowned.

So don't underestimate what we're doing with the Collins Class now and to bring another boat off the shelf, it's just not a reality. We can work with our partners and, as I say, the 18-month process that we've got on at the moment includes a discussion with partners about what we could do. There's been discussion about refuelling of the vessel. I just haven't ruled anything in or out. I think we can achieve capability in the near term and that we can build well before the 2040s, and that's the work that's underway at the moment.

DAVID BEVAN:

Minister, you've got to go. One last question: is NATO right to resist Ukraine's calls to enforce a no-fly zone?

PETER DUTTON:

Well it breaks our hearts and it's devastating to watch the scenes, David. Everybody from around the world has, you know, the same desire for the Russians to stop and what can we do, what more can NATO do, what more can the United States do to stop the horrific scenes that we're seeing unfold. The calculation that NATO needs to make is if they provided that no-fly zone, would President Putin carry out his veiled threats that he would switch to a nuclear response, and then the circumstance, of course, would be much more catastrophic. Europe would be at war and it would spread beyond the borders of the Ukraine. And that's the calculation – the horrible, horrible calculation that they need to contemplate at the moment.

And as we've said all along, the reality is that President Xi is the only person in the world that can bring pressure to bear on President Putin given the special relationship that Russia and China have announced. If we want Russia out of there as quickly as possible, I do think it's China, the Chinese Government, that can make that call. They're refusing to do it.

In fact, we're seeing reports today that Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, is providing support to Russia to keep their internet up and running to sustain the attacks from hackers around the world, that are attacking different infrastructure and naval and military assets of Russia, which is deeply concerning I must say, when every other responsible country in the world is looking at ways that they can sanction and stop trading with Russia to keep the pressure up on President Putin to stop these horrific acts of war crimes that we're seeing committed by Russia at the moment.

DAVID BEVAN:

Peter Dutton, thanks for your time.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks David. Thank you.

[ends]

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