Africa and the Defence White Paper

A rare 1818 map of the Eastern Hemisphere by John Pinkerton. Depicts Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia.For the first time, the most recent Defence White paper contained  multiple references to Africa, illustrating Australia’s growing interest and engagement with the continent. Australia is playing an active role in making Africa more secure and stable through participation in peacekeeping missions and counter-terrorism activities. Australia’s economic interests are focused on resources in Africa, and there are an increasing number of Australian companies and personnel operating there. The growth in Indo-Pacific maritime trade routes is apparent and Australia has a strong interest in ensuring their stability.

The inclusion of Africa in the White Paper shows that the continent is on the adgenda, and highlights the recognition amongst Australia’s leading policy makers that it needs to be given serious consideration within defence policy. This is also consistent with Australia’s position on the UN Security Council for two years, which will bring a heightened focus on Africa—a large percentage (well over 50%) of the Council’s work is on Africa.

The White Paper states that the Indian Ocean is becoming the ‘world’s busiest trade corridor’. ‘One-third of the world’s bulk cargo and around two-thirds of global oil shipments’ travel through it. It’s vitally important for Australia to keep the Indian Ocean waterways secure and stable, and this involves engaging with African states and understanding the nuances of politics and security on the African continent. Read more

Why does China spook the world?

Prime Minister E. G. Whitlam and Mrs Whitlam in front of the Temple of Heaven, Beijing, during Whitlam's visit to China in 1973.Former foreign minister Hayden said, “As Labor came to office in 1972 ‘China’ had become a symbol of a broad judgment of the need for change in many areas”. Stephen FitzGerald recalled of the atmosphere when Whitlam chose him as the first ambassador for Beijing: “I felt part of a movement for social change”. China is often erected as a symbol of a progressive golden age. And occasionally, by Americans, also as a symbol of adverse forces. Such abstraction is a perilous approach to the reality of China.

Japan helped pioneer China as a symbol in the 18th century, portraying it as giving non-Western meaning to Japan’s own existence. Russian thinkers in the same century took China as a symbol of virtue on the grounds that the Western Enlightenment esteemed Confucian China and therefore Russian intellectuals should too.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s and even today, the left in the west has erected China as a symbol for western guilt over imperialism (a stance useful to Beijing). In Japan, the left’s massive (unsuccessful) struggle against the US alliance in 1960 elevated China as the ‘anti-US’, and thus as brother to a Japan smothered by the American embrace. Today, China is popular among American intellectuals as a symbol of the west’s decline. Such declinists embrace the absurd Martin Jacques’ notion (in ‘When China rules the world’) that ‘China’s past is a symbol of the world’s future’. Read more

The Defence budget: a first look

Mark Thomson is squirreled away producing his usual tour de force budget analysis (on the streets May 30) so readers of The Strategist will have to make do with my first take on the Defence budget.

Let’s start with a look at the headline figures. A reasonable figure for how much money Defence will have is ‘Total Defence Funding’. Last year’s budget (as amended at Additional Estimates) provided Defence with $24.355 billion. This year’s figure is $25.434 billion—a nominal year-on-year increase of $1.079 billion, or 4.4%. But in real terms (allowing for inflation), the increase is a little over 2.1%, or about $519 million. It’s worth noting that the increase is against a pretty low baseline—as Mark pointed out, last year’s budget represented a greater than 10% real decrease on the previous year. Still, I suspect that Defence is relatively relieved by this outcome. At least for this year, the Lord giveth.

Table 1. Total Defence funding.

Table 1. Total Defence fundingSources: Defence Additional Estimates Feb 2013, Defence Portfolio Budget Statement May 2013.

One of my major interests is the capital acquisition budget; in crude terms, the money available to buy the ADF’s new equipment and the facilities and support required to operate them. Looking out across the forward estimates, there’s some extra cash there, amounting to more than $3.5 billion compared to last year. (See the table below.) But the budget papers say that the defence budget has been ‘re-profiled’ over the forward estimates. In other words, money has been taken from future years to allow investment to proceed in the near-term. In that sense, there’s actually no extra money for equipment in the long-term, apart from the $200 million earmarked for the Growler acquisition. That said, there’s more likelihood of the DMO actually being able to spend a more evenly distributed budget rather than eking out a living for a while and suddenly splurging.

Table 2. Capital investment budget (major projects + minor projects + capital facilities) – all figures in billions of dollars.

Table 2. Capital investment budget (major projects + minor projects + capital facilities)

Sources: Defence PBS 2012-13 and 2013-14. Read more

Defence budget: give the dog a bone

A happy dog with a bone

Mark Thomson is widely quoted this morning as saying that the defence budget outcome is better than many observers hoped. Saved by the government’s decision to keep the overall budget in deficit, Defence was not subjected to some of the austerity measures that would have been needed to contribute to a national surplus outcome. I broadly agree with Mark’s assessment. But what has been delivered here is only a partial reversal of the large scale cuts implemented in the 2012 budget. Then, $5.5 billion was cut from the four year forward estimates. Last night, about $3 billion was added to the first three years of the new forward estimates, of which some $2.94 billion is earmarked for the ‘off book’ additional Super Hornet/Growler acquisition. And we don’t know what’s happened to the final year (it was not visible last year). In all likelihood, the new money in the first three years has simply been brought forward from that final year.

Pity the poor Defence budget planners who try to create some semblance of continuity from one year to the next. Although media headlines today point to how Defence was saved from even more dire outcomes, the best that can be said of the budget is that a proportion of last year’s slash and burn booty has been returned. It is as though the government has rethought its approach on Defence, and come to the conclusion that it can’t take the battalion completely over the lip of the trench into no man’s land. Read more

A farewell to nuclear submarines, for now

The Royal Navy's HMS Triumph, a Trafalgar Class nuclear submarine, glides into HM Naval Base Clyde in the early morning sun following a patrolThe Defence White Paper signals full-steam ahead for Australia’s most expensive defence project ever: the design and construction, in Australia, of 12 conventionally-powered submarines. With A$200m committed to funding initial designs, however, the enormity of the challenge will start to surface. Australia now has to create submarines with greater range and endurance than anything built by countries with generations of experience.

Hopefully, Canberra analysed its alternatives to the point of exhaustion. In about two years’ time, Adelaide will start to fill up with the 1,500-or-so foreign draughtsmen and engineers that RAND says Australia will have to import, just to execute the design work. And as these experienced submarine designers wrestle with the performance parameters set by government, they’ll pose one very awkward question: “Why are you asking us to design a nuclear-powered submarine without a nuclear engine?”

Currently, the government has no answer. The White Paper simply says that “consideration of a nuclear powered submarine capability [… has been] ruled out”. This reticence is mistake. As Collins Mk II rises from the drawing board, the case for purchasing nuclear-powered boats will only get stronger. Read more

A boat-load of jobs: the best strategy for Australia?

Spain's F100 multi-role Aegis missile frigate ALVARO DE BAZAN arrived in Sydney in March 2007 showcasing the design model for the RAN's forthcoming HOBART Class Air Warfare destroyer project.The latest Defence White Paper and the co-released Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan mark a distinct sea-change (pun intended) in the relationship between Defence and Industry, at least in the field of shipbuilding. If all goes according to plan, Defence and industry will form a partnership in which industry will have certainty of a steady stream of shipbuilding work for several decades, allowing the development and maintenance of a skilled workforce.  In return, Defence believes it will be able to acquire ships at a lower cost because of improved industry expertise and productivity.  This new approach meets many concerns expressed by Australian defence industry, including continuity of work, achieving economies of scale, reducing the costs of continually tendering, forming a long-term partnership with Defence and locking out subsided foreign competition.

The new shipbuilding approach reflects and is part of the Government’s wider program to revive Australian manufacturing industry.  The rationale for this is evident in its title—’A Plan for Australian Jobs‘—with manufacturing jobs seen as particularly rewarding.  The vision is to have innovative industries that deliver highly-skilled and well-paying jobs.

Similarly the focus of the new naval shipbuilding arrangements is long-term jobs.  The White Paper states ‘the Government will… support the Australian naval shipbuilding industry in developing and maintaining a workforce…’ (para 12.53)  The DMO skills plan quantifies the White Paper’s ambition as the retention of some 5000 jobs until at least the 2030s.  The underlying premise is that the rate of shipbuilding in Australia can be adjusted to have a continuous flow of work, avoiding peaks and troughs that necessitate a cycle of growing and then cutting skilled workforces.  This approach is seemingly bi-partisan. Read more

The growing Timor Gap

On 23 April, Timor-Leste notified Australia that it had initiated arbitration under the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty of a dispute related to the 2006 Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS). I’ve written a short piece on this elsewhere, but here I provide more context about this development.

The arbitration relates to the validity of the CMATS treaty. Timor-Leste argues that CMATS is invalid because it alleges that Australia didn’t conduct the treaty negotiations in 2004 in good faith by engaging in espionage.

The Timor Sea Treaty concluded between Australia and East Timor in 2002 (Annex B) provides for a three-person arbitral tribunal to settle disputes. A tribunal would consider whether it has jurisdiction to resolve this dispute. Assuming it did, then the tribunal would then judge the merits of Timor-Leste’s claim. Read more

Antarctic logistics—in for the long haul?

Guest editor Anthony BerginResearchers studying penguins while voyaging aboard the icebreaker Aurora Australis.Australia made its last significant new investment in Antarctic logistic capability during the Howard government years, when we funded an intercontinental air capability in the form of a commercial Airbus A319 flying from Hobart to an ice runway in Antarctica.

This was the first time a commercial wheeled jet aircraft had been licensed to fly to and land in Antarctica. The construction of Australia’s research and resupply icebreaker Aurora Australis in Newcastle (Australia) and a station rebuilding program in the 1980s were the previous major investments in Antarctic logistics. Read more

The Defence White Paper—between the lines

Chinese People's Liberation Army officers with the Beijing Military Region speak with U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Travis W. Hawthorne, right, about the M4 carbine during the 2012 Australian Army Skill at Arms Meeting (AASAM) in Puckapunyal, Australia, May 12, 2012. Over the past year, low-level but concerning brinkmanship has continued in the Asia Pacific, with China maintaining the pattern of provocation that emerged following the 2008 global financial crisis. As Ross Terrill put it recently, ‘China is probing on multiple fronts for more space and clout, sustaining quarrels with numerous neighbours who are Australia’s friends’.

Oh wait, that doesn’t sound right. What does the new Defence White Paper say about all this? Let me see… ok, I think I understand. Let me try again.

Over the past year, competing territorial claims in maritime Asia have remained unresolved. This is concerning because these flashpoints increase the risk of both ‘destabilising strategic competition’ and ‘miscalculation’. ‘Australia has interests in the peaceful resolution of territorial and maritime disputes including in the South China Sea in accordance with international law…’ ‘Events in the South China Sea may well reflect how a rising China and its neighbours manage their relationships’. Read more

A modest but effective international engagement plan from NSW

The recent release by the New South Wales Government of an International Engagement Strategy invites comparison with the federal blueprint, the Asian Century White Paper. Both aim to boost growth via more overseas contact but in other respects the two documents couldn’t be more different.

The NSW strategy is low-key, mercifully short at 38 pages, practical and sets measurable and achievable objectives. Its modest plans for increasing NSW’s trade and tourism offices overseas are costed and it seems the government will fund their go-ahead.

Contrast this with the Asian Century White Paper, launched six months ago and relentlessly promoted since. That strategy is a whopping 300 plus pages and proposes what can only be described as tectonic shifts in many areas of national life. It sets out no less than 25 national objectives for 2025 with multiple ‘policy pathways’ to achieve these goals. Targets are set to put Australia’s per capita GDP in the world’s top ten by 2025; our schools in the world’s top five; a national goal to be in the top ten innovating countries, and so on. Read more