The government’s announcement of an ‘$89 billion shipbuilding program’ today is bold on two fronts. First, in the implicit assumption that much of the price premiums paid on past and current projects and the poor …
Articles by: "Mark Thomson"
As everybody now knows, the Chinese economy has a big impact on Australia. Chinese demand for Australian commodities influences our rate of economic growth, the value of our currency and—critically for the government—our tax revenues. …
There’s a degree of cynicism surrounding the government’s Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) for the future submarine project. That’s to be expected; the process was forced upon the government in the turmoil of an internal leadership …
At the ASPI land power conference a few weeks ago, the PM promised an enterprise-level naval shipbuilding plan based around a rolling-build program. This will bring joy to the hearts of the burghers of South …
My first exposure to defence economics came from a wonderful book called The Cost of Sea Power by Phillip Pugh. Among its many insights was a clever way of displaying the relative defence efforts of …
At present, Defence is executing around 180 major capital investment projects with an aggregate value in excess of $123 billion. Consistent with what’s at stake, defence acquisition is subject to annual audit and periodic external …
Three weeks ago, the finance minister announced the third delay, and the fourth get-well initiative, for the beleaguered Air Warfare Destroyer program. In case you’ve lost track, delays and remediation initiatives were announced in 2011 …
It’s hard to say which is worse: the Navy’s attempt to hide its performance behind a cloak of secrecy or its abject failure to do so effectively. Back in late 2012, it was possible to …
On the morning after the Federal Budget I posted a version of the above graph along with some basic numbers describing what’s going on. Today, my final analysis of the budget is launched. Not much …
To properly understand last week’s announcement from the government about the beleaguered Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project, some background is needed. Back in June 2014, the government received the independent ‘White–Winter report’ into the project. …
The adjectives applied by the government to describe the forthcoming Defence White Paper and its accompanying plan for the ADF include ‘fully costed’, ‘externally assured’, ‘achievable’, ‘affordable’, ‘credible’, ‘realistic’, ‘properly funded’ and ‘enduring’. This is …
Reform programs come and go in the Australian Defence establishment. Sometimes they fulfil their intent; sometimes they don’t. The extent to which the changes sought by the First Principles Review occur will depend on the …