{"id":13336,"date":"2014-04-10T14:30:34","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T04:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=13336"},"modified":"2014-04-13T19:38:02","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T09:38:02","slug":"the-politics-of-submarines-and-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-politics-of-submarines-and-budgets\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of submarines and budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blank<\/a>The Abbott government is hard at work burying the 2013 Defence White Paper as it prepares a new version to be released next year. Because of the way my mind works, I carried a copy of the Labor White Paper with me to the ASPI Submarine Choice conference. <\/span>Listening to the defence minister<\/a> (PDF) while writing the <\/span>post that went up yesterday<\/a>, I turned to the shortest chapter in that 2013 policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter seven, \u2018Defence Budget and Finances\u2019, needs only one and a half pages to make the money statements in 17 terse paragraphs. The third and final page of the chapter has only three words\u2014Page Intentionally Blank.<\/p>\n

The beauty of the Intentionally Blank page\u2014as joke or Delphic editorial comment\u2014is that it allows the reader to insert almost any punch line. Overhauling the 2013 White Paper to produce a 2015 version, the Abbott government can scribble happily in that blank space.<\/p>\n

The truth of such policy documents is that however much they change and rearrange, a lot of the old finds its way into the new. And some of the language and mindset of the 2013 Paper will surge into the 2015 replacement. Nearly half of the 17 paragraphs in Labor\u2019s budget chapter are devoted to how tough the task is: \u2018fiscal discipline\u2019 crops up a couple of times, along with phrases like \u2018the sustainability of the budget\u2019, \u2018complex choices\u2019, and \u2018achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness\u2019. This is the language of budget pain and hard choices which is building in volume and intensity towards Canberra\u2019s annual budget crescendo on 13 May.<\/p>\n

In discussing the politics of submarines (and, thus, the politics of defence spending) Australia hasn\u2019t yet seen the identity of the Abbott government. We\u2019ve been taking our entertainment and making premature judgements during the phony war.<\/p>\n

Next month, the real stuff starts; the bell sounds and the true fight begins. The first budget is when choices are announced<\/a>, policies set and priorities picked in all their polarising glory.<\/p>\n

As Nikki Savva observes<\/a>, this could be the most important budget in 20 years, revealing the government\u2019s DNA: \u2018Does it have the tough gene and the smart gene in equal parts in its make-up, or will the recessive, populist, weak-ticker gene, prove to be dominant?\u2019<\/p>\n

In warming up for the heavy lifting, the defence minister\u2019s speech\u2014announcing the decision to \u2018re-examine\u2019 the number of subs\u2014was described on The Strategist<\/i><\/a> as the government\u2019s first big defence announcement.<\/p>\n

The \u2018re-examine\u2019 pledge implies an answer that says six new subs, not 12; halving the number takes 40% out of the budget estimates, freeing up a big chunk of defence cash if 12 subs would have cost $40\u201350 billion.<\/p>\n

Halving the number of subs in the shift from the 2013 to the 2015 white paper helps with a political and budget must\u2014get a shopping list of defence kit which goes close to matching\u00a0the cash on offer in the budget forward estimates. As Canberra\u2019s annual May moment of fiscal theatre always makes manifest,\u00a0the forward estimates reign and will always drive and define the politics.<\/p>\n

Mentioning a political\/budget imperative requires a reference to Mark Thomson\u2019s wonderful post<\/a>\u00a0and accompanying essay<\/a>\u00a0(PDF) on the three musts of the submarine question: there must be a Collins replacement, it must be built in South Australia and it must have conventional (not nuclear) propulsion.<\/p>\n

Other political musts feed into Mark\u2019s model. The Abbott government was at the wheel when Australia gave up local car manufacturing; this isn\u2019t going to be the government that also gives up local ship building.<\/p>\n

During the South Australian election, Prime Minister Abbott was brave enough to say<\/a> that defence wasn\u2019t \u2018some kind of job creation programme\u2019. The cheering defenceniks should\u00a0read the rest of the quote. Abbott\u2019s tough love was trumped by a repeat of the golden promise:<\/p>\n

For years now, we\u2019ve been saying that work on the future generation of submarines would centre on the South Australian shipyards. So I want to make that crystal clear, just as we said before the election, so we will do after the election, we will ensure that work on the future submarines centres on the South Australian shipyards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Defence budgets are torn by myriad forces, not least the tyranny of forward estimates, ever at war with the political musts.<\/p>\n

Graeme Dobell is the ASPI journalism fellow. Image courtesy of Department of Defence<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Abbott government is hard at work burying the 2013 Defence White Paper as it prepares a new version to be released next year. Because of the way my mind works, I carried a copy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465],"tags":[120,126,1425,684,376,223],"class_list":["post-13336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-submarine-choice","tag-budget","tag-defence-industry","tag-defence-white-paper-2013","tag-defence-white-paper-2015","tag-politics","tag-submarines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe politics of submarines and budgets | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-politics-of-submarines-and-budgets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The politics of submarines and budgets | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Abbott government is hard at work burying the 2013 Defence White Paper as it prepares a new version to be released next year. 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