A conversation around AUKUS

Charting New Waters - a keynote speech by Sir Nick Hine

Sally Neville OAM gave the opening remarks and welcome from Amcham before handing over to Stephen Mullighan , Treasurer, Minister of Defence and Space Industries. He opened up the luncheon by sharing the scale of expansion required in South Australia, that 14,000 defence employees in South Australia will need to double within 15 years. Plus, we have the challenge of adding all of the associated infrastructure. “Overall, we have a tremendous opportunity for South Australia and, with Aukus Pillar 2, to embrace AI and all the advanced technologies this will bring too.”

Sir Nick Hine gave us the keynote address and some meaty sound bites. The defence strategic review has given Australia major opportunities which we must address and the challenge to resource and deliver these multi-decade programmes is “Australia’s moonshot which is everyone’s responsibility”.

Whether it is a 2% or 2.5% of GDP we need to spend on defence, "the spend is the number for whatever it takes to keep us safe’. It’s not just spending on military hardware, it is collaboration, reforming systems and processes. And he said, ‘one thing is clear, no one has ever said you can have too many submarines, especially nuclear-powered subs’. Sir Nick talked about the complexity of the submarine lifecycle, the complexity of the supply chain and frameworks, how the USA and UK had to mitigate risks working with Australia as our nascent submarine programme builds out.

He posed the question of how do we get success for tomorrow? A collaborative approach is vital to deliver at the pace needed. The collaboration between HII and Babcock International Group in forming H&B Defence to create the defence capability for sovereign powered nuclear submarines shows what is possible.

We need to ensure we have the right people, skills and materiel, and 'not just for the primes to deliver this'. He mentioned that in the UK this is a ‘national endeavour’. For instance, it is a ‘decades long strategy’ to ensure there are the supporting skills to supply defence for instance the 75,000 electricians, welders and so on with all the necessary training, qualifications, accreditation and retention strategies. ?He said there will be an exchange of skilled people to develop resources here which will have dividends for South Australia and its innovation hub.

He commented that it wasn’t simply a strategy of ‘build’. He said ‘build is hard, but sustainment is harder’. Sustainment was needed to be designed in at the start of a project. All clients want assets back from repair asap, and to do that we need better workforce planning, supply chain planning and resilience in the supply chain. He mentioned @Joscar and @JoscarAU as an example of this holistic approach. And, in dealing with disposal (of nuclear assets I assume) it is vital to start planning early enough in the lifecycle as you need to keep a social license to operate. ???

Sir Nick declared that these activities must not be done by governments in isolation, they need to be 'delivered by industry on the government’s behalf'. And to have a ‘credible deterrent’ industry needs to have clarity, cash, assurance and commitment. Importantly, he said, 'critical programmes must be funded over the life of the programme not the life of government, to protect the economic security of our countries'.

How do we ensure we have national response in the defence strategic review? He said this is an international issue not state-by-state and that there is more than enough opportunity for everyone. The workforce doesn’t migrate as well here in Australia compared to the UK/ USA but overall, he said we need to build sovereign capability, and this is “Australia’s moonshot which is everyone’s responsibility’. I got the strong sense that collaboration is the key and the overarching goal to ‘build a credible defence’ overrides any individual’s aspirations.

Vice Admiral Jonathan?Mead of the Royal Australian Navy and Director-General of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA) discussed the challenges of sharing resources and the long-term partnership needed to ensure capabilities were built in sufficient scale. It is a tri-national endeavour to which we have made a ‘great start but we need to keep pushing harder’

Paddy Gregg CEO of Austal identified the massive jobs growth here and in Western Australia that is needed across defence primes and all of the associated secondary infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and in needing to find these people that a ‘national response was needed’.

Libby Day CEO of Defence Teaming Centre commented that we need ‘cross-sector industry collaboration and for companies to be proactive’ and a great example of this is once again H&B Defence. She said that overall we need to move forward away from being ‘transactional to relationship based.’ She noted there are challenges within defence procurement such as how do we also ensure that SMEs remain included in the procurement strategy? She said that it would be a ‘terrible outcome if industry said defence was all too hard/ better choices elsewhere’.

Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead commented that all industries are competing for the talent pool across Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects. Some careers need to be framed that they are ‘nationally important’ and ‘at the cutting edge’ to give extra heft for people to enter. For instance, give school kids a dream of ‘she will be commander of nuclear-powered submarine one day.’ Overall STEM needs ‘more focus’ and ‘are academic sectors set up for the future of defence?’ He commented that everyone has the responsibility to ensure you get the right education and he’s heading to MIT shortly for further education as his way of setting the right example.

Paddy Gregg identified that the biggest recent change is the potential for 'longevity of a career in defence given the commitment by Government and the order book'. He also commented that we need to free up information flow, ensure we had sensible, common-sense restrictions in place that allowed nations to support each other for instance in the Columbia and Virginia class submarine programmes.

Sir Nick Hine also closed on the efficiency theme where we needed to move from defence systems being ‘interoperable to interchangeable and Governments needed to help with these choices that would help the flow of materiel and resources'.

Overall an insightful and enjoyable lunch giving a sense of scale and opportunities ahead for all of us. Kindly sponsored by Babcock International Group and DW Fox Tucker Lawyers , Government of South Australia and DCI Data Centers . #defence #AUKUS #collaboration Babcock Australia & New Zealand Howwe ANZ Pty Ltd

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