Why do both sides of federal politics continue to think we need to have a shipbuilding industry as part of our naval defence sector?

Every year we spend billions of dollars trying to build ships in Australia when the most cost effective thing to do is import them off the shelf from our allies.

For all the money we waste building ships here we would be far better off investing it in ag science and ag tech which would help generate national wealth which we could then use for buying more ships and weapons in a timely manner, off the shelf. 

This is what we do with most of our farm machinery – we buy the big complex things like tractors and headers and make what we have the skills to make.

We seem to manage just fine with an air force without an aircraft manufacturing industry but for some reason our politicians can’t get away from welding up boats when all the advice is to buy them ready made.

To understand just how much the push to bring shipbuilding jobs onshore is costing us, let’s look at some of the numbers and who is benefiting.

Readers will recall how the Morrison Government made much fanfare of dumping the deal with the French to build 12 Barracuda diesel-electric submarines and replace them with 8 UK US-designed AUKUS nuclear submarines.

The original deal required the French subs to be built in Australia at a total cost of $66 billion, which equated to around $5.5 billion a hull.

The new deal ramps that cost up closer to double the amount at around US$10 billion each, by far and away the most expensive subs in the world.

To put that in perspective, to buy a new (older design) Virginia Class US sub off the shelf would set you back $US3.6 billion, which is what we are currently negotiating to pay for three US subs to cover the gap until the new AUKUS ones come online in 100 years’ time.

If we were allowed, we could wait and buy the next generation US hunter-killer at a cost of between US$5.8 and US$6.2 billion per boat, but the Americans won’t be giving us access to those subs in a hurry.

The decision to suffer through the years to take a brand new design and build the boats in Australia rather than doing what we do with aircraft and simply buying something off the shelf like the new Blackhawk helicopters, is madness when faced with the world we currently live in.

If we had stuck to diesel-electric and were prepared to stick with the French and have them build our new design in a French boatyard we would have kept the cost at under $US3 billion each.

If we were to buy an existing design off the shelf from the Germans, Japanese or Koreans, with the latest US weapons systems we would be up for no more than $US1 billion each.

In fact, the latest 3000-ton Japanese Taigei-class boat, launched last year and similar in size to Australia’s Collins class, has a list price of $US585m. A bargain at the price, with world class design and Japanese quality control.

 But no, we have to build them in South Australia as both sides of politics are too scared of the electoral backlash of doing anything else.

 But it’s not only home-built subs that come at a vastly inflated price.

The latest announcement of the federal government will see Australia build the world’s most expensive frigate, the US$4.5 billion Hunter Class warship, plus a host of smaller frigates.

The UK designed Hunter, after years of engineering design work, has turned out to be a big, fat, underpowered, and undergunned boat, with just 36 missiles, which means it would last about 37 minutes in a fight against 37 Ukrainian drones.

Recall the Russian cruiser, the Moskva, the latest and greatest of the Russian surface fleet. At 9300 tons, it went to the bottom after being struck by a couple of million-dollar Ukrainian cruise missiles, while the Russian landing ship, the Caesar Kunikov, was sunk by two cheap $10,000 drones.

These days, surface ships are sitting ducks with the combination of cheap drones and cruise missiles hunting them at a fraction of the cost of what it takes to defend a ship.

The Americans are aware of this and are building ships at a rapid rate. Their latest, the US Arleigh Burkes class, carries 90 missile pods but they are coming in at half the cost of ours at $US2.2 billion each.

The Japanese are building the Maya class destroyers, which are armed with 96 missiles and are even cheaper at a cost of around US$1 billion each.

And it’s not just the Mayas that are cheap firepower. Take Japan’s smaller Mogami-class frigates – speedy, stealthy 5,500 ton warships. While lightly armed with 16 VLS cells, they only cost US$372 million each.

We could have 12 of them for every one of our Hunters. It’s like the government demanding we have an Australian-built header and finding out it will cost $3m a unit. No farmer would buy one.

At the time of the Hunter decision, Morrison told us the build would create 4000 direct jobs in Adelaide, the hometown of then Defence Industry Liberal Minister Christopher Pyne, and a must-win state for the coalition at the time to hold onto power.

In hindsight, it would have been smarter to offer to pay any volunteers from South Australia a sign up bonus of $200,000 to join the Defence forces to fill the growing gap in personnel.

The dollars works out the same as paying 4000 shipbuilders $200,000 a year as a salary.

At least sign up bonuses might have helped fill the shortage of nearly 900 crew the navy are suffering from which has left part of our fleet permanently tied up.

But it’s not only building new Hunter class frigates. The Albanese Government has recently announced it will spend AU$65 billion on six unmanned drone frigates plus 11 new general-purpose frigates, each between 3000 and 5000 tonnes.

This time they are claiming the domestic build program will create 20,000 jobs; enough to employ everyone involved in the live sheep and cattle industry when they shut them down.

Apparently, the latest cost adds up to 30 years of work at $18 million apiece per person. Think of it as a job for life with early retirement with a lifetime ticket to a stateroom on the QEII.

It reminds me of the madness of past governments endlessly supporting the Adelaide and Melbourne-based car industry, which became must-win marginal seats where the effective subsidies for each Holden or Ford eventually exceeded the value of the cars themselves.

If we are paying double the cost to build 30 navy ships and submarines over the next 30 years, it’s effectively costing the taxpayer $6 billion a year over and above what it would cost to buy ships off the shelf.

All this to buy votes in two states, South Australia and now Western Australia, not to mention attracting 20,000 skilled jobs out of the mining, manufacturing and regional communities thereby pushing up costs for the rest of the economy.

What’s all this got to do with agriculture?

Not much unless you want to pay more tax, lose more skilled workers to the city, accept the government has less money for health education and agricultural science and you are comfortable with your kids growing rice for the new regime of colonisers that will inevitably take over Australia and your farm when our adversaries work out we can’t defend ourselves.