Defence minister David Johnston yesterday
lashed out at Australian Submarine Corporation as incapable of building a canoe
though has today expressed regret at offending workers.
The ABC and others report that Senator
Johnston yesterday said the ASC was $350 million over budget in the delivery of
three Air Warfare Destroyers.
“I’m
being conservative. It’s probably more than $600 million, but because the data
is so bad, I can’t tell you,” he said.
“You
wonder why I’m worried about ASC and wonder what they’re delivering to the
Australian taxpayer? You wonder why I wouldn’t trust them to build a
canoe?”
The
opposition, workers from the Adelaide-based ASC, and infrastructure minister Jamie
Briggs criticised the comments, which Johnston said today were merely “rhetorical
flourish”.
“[R]egrettably, in rhetorical
flourish, I did express my frustrations in the past performance of ASC,” The Australian reports him as saying.
“In these comments I never
intended to cause offence and I regret that offence may have been taken.”
The government is under
pressure to say where it will have the next next line of submarines built, with
the Japanese Soryu class often speculated as the favourite to replace the
ageing Collins class.
Others, including from Germany,
France and Sweden, have been lobbying for the work.
The ASC has itself said that the price of a dozen new submarines built in Australia would be $18 – 24 billion,
though the Australian Policy Institute puts the price at something more like
$36 billion.
Construction of new submarines is expected in 2016.
It was a pre-election policy for the Coalition to “ensure that work on the replacement of the current submarine fleet will centre around the South Australian shipyards” notes the ABC’s Fact Check.
Image: News Corp Australia