Australian Naval Shipbuilding Essential In So Many Ways

Comments (of 6/8/17 1:39 AM and 11/8/17 1:20 AM) below Submarine Matters' article Could Australia be Pyne's major weapons exporter? Unkikely. have prompted me to write about the advantages of building major weapon systems (eg. ships, subs, tanks and jet aircraft) in Australia. Advantages include:

-  employing workers and management in Australia rather than overseas means all their living

   expenses are spent in Australia. The resulting money multiplier effect benefits surrounding

   communities, eg. Adelaide. If living expenses are spent in Adelaide it doesn't matter if the

   workforce carry the corporate identity of Naval Group, ASC, RAN, Lockheed Martin or other

   entities.

-  providing the skills to undertake major overhauls of weapons and repair major battle damage

   in wartime building and overhauling weapons in Australia can be done more safely than exposing

   them to enemy interference on long range journeys to foreign shipyards

-  maintaining skills (like designing and welding) for other manufacturing sectors including civilian
   shipbuilding. For background here is the Australian Manufacturing website and Defence Teaming 
   Centre Inc

-  Federal money spent on weapons building in specific states promotes national unity and equity for

   disadvantaged regions or states.

-  spending large amounts of money has inherent political dimensions eg. winning sufficient Federal

   seats in South Australia enabling the Turnbull Government to win the 2016 Election.

-  a production run of weapons built in Australia creates efficiencies for each successive unit built
   with resulting economies of scale for more competitive sales to foreign countries

-  domestic production runs also spawn more competitive sales of components to foreign countries

-  exporting weapons built in Australia has terms of trade benefits and diplomate benefits (eg. Pacific

   Patrol Boat to small island nations and larger vessels to New Zealand).

Are not these arguments compelling?  

The timeline/graph above (Courtesy Defence Teaming Centre Inc), is now out of date but the "Valley of Death" concern still applies. The Valley of Death applies to the downturn in AWD shipbuilding in Adelaide 2018-2021 that will not be totally rectified by the Federal Governments project to build 2 much smaller OPVs in Adelaide. The closing of the last car factory in Adelaide in October 2017 is an example of a different manufacturing sector contributing to Adelaide's manufacturing "Valley of Death".

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Timeline courtesy the Australian Government's Naval Shipbuilding Plan May 2017, page 15. This illustrates the continuous shipbuilding strategy which will particularly benefit South Australia, Western Australia and all other states to a lesser extent. Canberra (ACT) also benefits.

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Naval Shipbuilding Timeline Australian Government Budget 2016-2017. This more centralised government document also demonstrates continuous shipbuilding (and also overhaul) strategy.

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Pete