Early in the New Year, this government will take what will come to be seen as its single most significant Defence decision. More than anything else, the choice of new submarine will become the issue that defines Labor’s strategic legacy.

That’s why so much political capital has been invested in the vessel. The prospect of the government scuppering it is inconceivable. However, this means that there’s a risk that the project will become removed from its original requirement—that the sub will be built simply because the government has already staked so much on the project. But it’s worth asking, urgently, if a submarine is really the best way of meeting our strategic requirements.

Think back to the very beginning. It was the 2009 Defence White Paper, commissioned by Kevin Rudd, which originally identified the requirement for a new submarine. Normally, such documents offer governments a unique opportunity to start afresh. Because they supposedly represent a distillation of untainted and impartial expert advice, they’re less likely to face political attacks from the opposition; because they pretend to peer well into the future, they effectively establish the parameters of the debate for years to come. Unfortunately, however, there can be little confidence about the purity of the decision making process that entrenched the submarine as a cornerstone of our future force or, indeed, its technical wisdom. Read more