Where are the workers coming from? Let’s say it again: where are the workers coming from?
It’s a question that should be asked every day and at every stage of any debate about Australian industry, including Defence. The unemployment rate is 3.7%, the employment-to-population ratio is a smidge below all-time highs, the participation rate is sitting at 66.7%, and there are labour shortages across a host of critical occupations (the latest — a shortage of nearly 100,000 in residential construction). But idiot protectionism is still rampant.
Last week the government announced it was handing $4.6 billion over a decade to the Brits to help them expand capacity to provide components for the AUKUS submarines (the new ones, not the Dodgy Bros second-hand ones from the Americans that will arrive in the 2030s). That’s separate from the $4.53 billion we’ll give to the Americans to expand their production lines (which, like the Brits, also suffer from workforce shortages).
The announcement unleashed a strange collection of critics. Social media, inevitably, lit up. The Greens’ (normally sensible) David Shoebridge went completely, erm, overboard, tweeting “AUKUS is bleeding Australia dry“. Barnaby Joyce claimed it was “beyond belief” and that we should be developing our own nuclear industry. One of Sky News’ menagerie of right-wingers demanded of Defence Minister Richard Marles, “We’re paying the UK to do our nuclear work for us. Why not just reverse your nuclear policy and do it here?”
Nothing has changed in the fundamentally flawed nature of AUKUS. It remains the most expensive announceable in Australian political history, a stunt by a desperate Scott Morrison to wedge Labor that failed miserably, at a cost of what will become hundreds of billions of dollars. No rationale for these bespoke nuclear vessels — for which we are unlikely to ever have sufficient crews or maintenance workers — has ever been articulated beyond the equivalent of “China bad”. The unfortunate Marles, a man who’d be out of his depth in a rapidly drying puddle, has at no stage explained why Australia needs nuclear submarines.
But if we’re going to obtain such boats, paying other countries to make them is by far the cheaper option, given they already have the infrastructure, workforces, regulatory standards and expertise — however strained they may be currently. The only thing wrong with the AUKUS procurement plan is that we’re insisting on assembling some of the boats here, rather than outsourcing the entire job.
If there’s a strategic rationale for nuclear-power submarines, then the most efficient method of sourcing them would have been to ask the French to switch back to their nuclear submarine on which the now-abandoned Naval Group contract was based, and build them all in Cherbourg.
Presumably the protectionist critics of AUKUS would like Australia to attempt to poach a limited talent base from the Americans and the British to move to Adelaide, with suitable remuneration and relocation expenses, to commence work in an entirely new industry for which we have no expertise, infrastructure or regulatory framework. How much more would that cost taxpayers, and how much longer would that take for boats that won’t even get wet until our kids are running the country?
The same idiot protectionism can be seen on a smaller scale in the witless beat-up by the Nine press today over the purchase by a private Sydney company of Chinese-made buses. That prompted The Sydney Morning Herald — deliberately conflating the actions of a private company with the NSW government — to attack the Minns government for failing to honour its election promise to build trains and buses here. (How Chris Minns and co were supposed to establish an entirely new heavy manufacturing industry in 12 months is another mystery.)
In essence, the Herald wants NSW taxpayers to spend a lot of money building things that are far cheaper to buy offshore, in order to drag workers away from other, critical industries like building homes, caring for our seniors, cybersecurity, providing mental health services, looking after our kids and constructing crucial energy infrastructure and other projects suffering from workforce shortages. All to — what? Boast that NSW builds buses? Make NSW a bus superpower? Become the biggest train builder in the southern hemisphere?
The stupidity is breathtaking. Where are the workers coming from? You want buses? Trains? Nuclear power plants? Nuclear submarines? You want to become a renewable superpower? Explain where the workers are coming from.
Should Australia be paying the US and UK to build our subs? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Once upon a time we had public utilities, such as the SECV, or Telecom. They delivered services such as energy and telecommunications at affordable prices. They developed world-leading local technologies (fibre optics anyone?) in collaboration with our universities and the CSIRO. Their market strength was such that foreign firms, if they wanted to do business, had to set up shop here and bring their tech with them. They were major employers, providing secure employment which provided a base of moderate prosperity for many thousands (home ownership anyone?). And they were gargantuan providers of training – especially trade, engineering and scientific – from which all Australia benefitted.
Neoliberal ideology, of which our political “representatives” are slavish, although plainly witless, adherents, dictates that such public utilities are “uncompetitive”. Their propaganda apparatchiks in the media sought every opportunity to beat the “bureaucracy” drum. To our great loss we were persuaded that “privatisation” was the way to prosperity. Today we see one of the many costs of that con-job as we are being urged to import more millions of “skilled” workers – at further cost to our communities – but it helps prop up the bottom lines of the parasite class.
If we want to build stuff, we have to start by building our capability. The same capability we sold for a mess of pottage.
The great irony about growing skills shortages and inequality in Australia, the UK and US, is that it is the outcome of neoliberal (formerly “rational”) economic theory propounded by the Chicago School, Milton Friedman and the Mont Pelerin Society (google it), and foisted on us by right-wing govts led by Reagan and Thatcher, and yet populists like Dutton, Hanson, Lambie and Trump now blame “left-wing elites”. Assisted by the corporate international media, they killed off any opposition to neo-liberalism as “socialism”.
So having incessantly called for “less govt regulation and smaller govt”, they are now blaming govt for not having interfered in the market, and calling for govt to interfere in the market.
The great irony about using the term “neoliberal” in this circumstance is that the article defends the offshoring of defence industries, arguably a “neoliberal” behaviour, further demonstrating it is essentially a meaningless term and insult for the things the user does not like.
You know, most people consider skills shortages a good thing as it helps the wages of those in in-demand jobs, unless increasing wage growth too is a “neoliberal” objective? Inequality only really rises when there is lots of surplus labour and businesses can bargain against them.
A very good challenge to those publishing such nonsense, but it is sadly quaint to expect any respect for facts and logic. The ‘journalism’ Keane is criticising is just another form of the Fox News style of outrage-generating propaganda, which detached itself from reality long ago. All that matters is getting and keeping attention. It’s another example of the world of alternative facts and flooding the zone with sh—t. Things have sunk to the point where, in the UK, the regulator that is supposed to ensure news coverage is balanced has declined to do anything about GB News and its relentless promotion of the more deranged section of the Tory Party on the grounds that it is not a news channel. In other words, the quality of its news is so bad that it cannot be regulated as news. It’s all just entertainment.
But apart from that, there is a terrible problem with Labor’s reflex tactic of dodging any Coalition wedge by instantly and unconditionally agreeing with it. It’s more or less a necessary part of any real wedge that it must be fundamentally bad policy only put forward because opposing the policy opens the opponent to a (contrived) attack. When Labor agrees with these wedges, Labor does great damage to the national interest, sometimes on an extraordinary scale and vast cost. The Northern Teritory intervention, the Stage Three tax cuts (although Labor after several years finally made some adjustments, that remains terrible policy) and AUKUS are all dreadful examples of the harm done to the country over decades by the reckless wedging games played by the Coalition and inflicted on the country by Labor’s cynical, calculated, spineless lack of any principles.
It’s not called Nine Entertainment for nothing.
Depends on what you consider to be ‘entertainment’; to me Nine Entertainment is an oxymNine Enteoron.oron.
Aside from AUKUS etc. need to address core issues of working age cohort when RW MSM etc. deflect to dog whistling immigrants, students, population growth and temporary churn of outsiders.
This ignore insiders and core issues for employees i.e. permanent population ageing & longevity vs. decline in working age; kept artificially young by including international students, net financial contributors, into the estimated resident population via the NOM (then majority depart).
Much of our long term permanent population growth is attributable to ageing and longevity, i.e. more retirees, but the ‘big die off’ has or is about to start, 5 million+ over two decades….join the dots.
Damn straight, SSR – rather than accepting this drivel and having arguments about the flavour of it, we should be refusing to move off the point that it’s simply unacceptable.
USUKA criticism should be laser-focused on the point that subs are stupid, that there’s no possible rationale to excuse this incredibly harmful waste of money, time, and effort, and that it’s an obvious rort cooked up by obviously dodgy characters – and, as you say, shouldn’t have survived a change of government – why indeed are we stuck with it?
If we ARE going to be drawn into a digression presupposing it goes ahead, it should be all about whether MMT proponents are correct that blowing a trillion dollars of public money on a ridiculous boondoggle we should refuse to take seriously need necessarily condemn us to decades of brutal austerity.
The Wikipedia article on “Cargo cult” reads in part: “Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.” The identity of a spiritual agent is unclear, but the similarity with AUKUS is striking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
David Pope drew a brilliant cartoon on this very cargo cult issue a few weeks ago
I checked out what I could of his work; he’s top notch. Couldn’t find a way past that hard paywall though, so I couldn’t see the one you’re referring to.
Why does the ADF get its way all the time? The ADF thinks the memory of Gallipoli gives it the right to demand anything. How about Crikey exposing the incompetence of the ADF. Australians somehow think the ADF is sacrosanct.
Are you confusing the ADF with the Defence Department?
It’s hard to separate them, given the crossover and incestuous relationships between them. However, Defence projects have a long history of failure, time and cost overruns that are not the fault of the ADF. How many years are we behind in those projects now??? Ah but let’s just do it again….yeah right.
That’s near enough my point. Although we all pay a high price for the blundering of Defence, those in the ADF can pay the highest price of all. The notorious rotation of very senior ADF officers into senior positions in Defence still leaves the two organisations as quite separate in aims and ethos. Those in Defence enjoy the perks of being féted and courted by some of the most generous and wealthy corporations in the world, while only those in the ADF have to agree to be shot at, shelled and bombed on demand as part of their job description, equipped only with whatever eventually emerges from the shambles known as defence procurement.
Only ignorant Australians and politicians without real depth and breadth of ADF experience think the ADF is sacrosanct. Some with ADF experience have their own vested interests in promoting the ADF as sacrosanct as it is part of their identity. Many swallow the spin.
The unfortunate Marles, a man who’d be out of his depth in a rapidly drying puddle, has at no stage explained why Australia needs nuclear submarines.
Beautifully encapsulated, BK.
Yes the whole USUKA thing is a monumental mistake. Who knows why we need subs (we could have persisted with the French ones I guess). Attack class stuff for us? a little nation at the bottom of the pacific in thrall to Uncle Sam? All th money we’ve already committed to shelling out simply give money to our AUKUS partners to do with as they will with zero guarantee of anything useful for us. Why isn’t some of the money going into future technologies, and even equipping ourselves with a few useful drones for defence.
The unfortunate Marles, a man who’d be out of his depth in a rapidly drying puddle.. To funny.
Drandy! We are going to pull apart those helicopters that are deemed dangerous ( wasted taxpayer money) we could send them to Ukraine and let there mechanics work on them.
This Government could not find it’s way out of wet paper bag.
Neither could the previous one. None of them understand Defence or the ADF yet they’re in charge of them. A recipe for disaster.
Defence never wanted those helicopters – that was another mistake by the Lying Rodent. Defence selected the Amican ones.
Ronni Salt on Twitter describes Marles as “The Perfumed Warrior”. Suits perfectly.