by Peter Yule
Britain and the United States both started down the same path
in the 1980s but later moved to structure their systems around
commercial, off-the-shelf technology.
Looking at the causes of the problems with the submarine
project, McIntosh and Prescott saw deficiencies in the structure
of the contract, notably the difficulty of negotiating changes, the
small contingency and the combination of performance specifica-
tions with some detailed specifications as to how the performance
should be achieved. They also saw a lack of overall direction and
understanding of the aims of the project6 and conflicts of interest
in the ownership structure of ASC, which had led to a situation
like trench warfare with all parties being ‘far more antagonistic,
defensive, uncooperative and at cross-purposes than should be the
case in a project like this’.
McIntosh and Prescott accepted that fixes were already under
way for most of the mechanical problems such as the diesel
engines, noise and propellers, but saw the combat system as more
of a challenge. In their view there was no hope that the combat sys-
tem could ever ‘be transformed to an effective performance level’
and recommended that it be replaced with a ‘proven in-service’
system based on commercial off-the-shelf equipment.
There was one rather strange reaction to the project. While the
media and opponents of the project leapt on the headline state-
ments such as ‘are bedevilled by a myriad of design deficiencies’, a
surprisingly large number of people close to the project, but with
widely differing views, claimed to have authored large parts of
the report or at least to have provided the inspiration for much
of it. Mick Dunne claims that ‘the McIntosh-Prescott review was
almost transcribed directly from a document I did for Chalmers at
the end of 1997’. Similarly, John Dikkenberg says: ‘They basically
came and took our report and 70, 80 per cent of what they wrote
in their thing came directly from our analysis.’ Again, Paul Barratt
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states: ‘In the end the famous report which the government always
refers to as independent is little more than a version of the report
that I had earlier given to the minister – the difference was that
my report was classified “Secret” and could not be released.’ The
willingness of people to claim authorship suggests that the find-
ings of the report were not controversial – most people connected
with the project agree that the report raised nothing new.
Yet the government presented the report as ground-breaking
and the media reacted similarly. John Moore says:
The report came back from McIntosh-Prescott – it was
51 pages and blew the whole thing apart. Barratt said ‘That’s
what we said,’ but this was nonsense. McIntosh-Prescott in
six weeks had identified 257 points where there were
problems with the submarines and presented a way to go
forward.
In contrast to earlier reports, the McIntosh-Prescott report was
simple, clear and public. It also set out a plan for fixing the
problems it identified. The reaction of the press and the public
was, as John Moore and his chief of staff, Brian Loughnane, no
doubt anticipated, one of incredulity at the plight of the submarine
project combined with appreciation of the government’s determi-
nation to define the problems and find solutions. These themes
were clear when John Moore was interviewed by Kerry O’Brien
on ABC television the day the report was released:
Kerry O’Brien: But what does it say that it’s taken this long
to actually bring together all of the things that people have
either known about or expected for so long – diesel
engines, noise, sonar, combat system, as you say. Even the
periscope shakes.
John Moore: Well, there are certainly a number of
complaints there and problems, but I think all of those can
be fixed, and my job is to make sure these submarines are
fully operational and in the sea as quickly as possible,
because they are very important to Australian defence.
Kerry O’Brien: But what does it say about the people who
have been monitoring this, who have been responsible for
this whole submarine program from the outset, that this
extraordinary litany of faults are still there, this far into it?
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John Moore: Well, it says that management can be and
should be improved. It does say that some of the
supervision was probably not up to scratch in the past and
I’m looking forward to some significant improvement.7
The reaction to the report from people connected with the project
varied greatly. In most, but not all, cases the response was pre-
dictable. The navy hierarchy and the upper echelons of defence
were angry and perplexed. They believed they had been giving
the minister essentially the same message as the report since he
took office and could not comprehend that they were now blamed
for not telling him. They did not argue with the report’s findings
because it was their contention that they had been saying the same
things.
One exception to this is the view of Paddy Hodgman, Don
Chalmers’ chief staff officer. He saw a number of the findings, par-
ticularly on the combat system, as ‘fundamentally flawed’, with
the report overall deferring too much to grand political gestures
rather than what was best for the submarines. In his view the
report led to delay and waste. Hodgman is particularly critical of
the recommendation to scrap the combat system as ‘we hadn’t fin-
ished testing the fixes’ suggested by the Americans, so ‘we didn’t
know what we were throwing away’. Similarly, Andrew John-
son believes it would have been cheaper and easier to make the
existing combat system work than to start again. Otherwise, he
thought the McIntosh-Prescott report quite competent, though in
the atmosphere of the late 1990s ‘it was a bit like bayoneting the
wounded’.
The Kockums’ perspective on the report is that it is ‘a mixed
bag of flaws with no analysis as to their seriousness’. Except for
the combat system (which was not their responsibility), the Swedes
felt that the problems with the submarines were ‘small and what
you would expect with any new design’.8
The general view of the report among submariners is that it was
a fair analysis of the situation of the submarine project. While the
report did not say anything new, it acted as a ‘circuit breaker that
was desperately needed to turn the project around’.9 This view
had some support within ASC. Martin Edwards recalls:
[Although] it was obviously being done to achieve an
outcome, I think most people who had spent 10 or 12 years
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of their working liv
es committed to the project would hope
for some positive outcome from the report. They may not
have agreed with every line in it but most people still believed
it would achieve something or at least provide the base to
improve the situation. Most people recognised that there
were political means and ends that were trying to be achieved,
but I think people felt it was done on a pretty fair basis.
The other way to look at it is if it hadn’t been done,
where would we have been? On the same basis and the same
adversarial footing. It gave the opportunity to change.
While the McIntosh-Prescott report avoided laying blame for the
failings it identified in the submarine project, John Moore had no
such compunction. He believed that the Defence Department and
the navy hierarchy had continually tried to hide the truth about the
submarines and they needed to be thoroughly cleaned out. Within
a few months Garry Jones had left, Paul Barratt was sacked and
Don Chalmers became the first navy chief in many years not to
have his first term extended. Further, Moore looked for Chalmers’
replacement to one of the most junior admirals, David Shackleton.
Naval convention was that a senior officer would resign if he was
passed over for promotion by someone junior to him in the list, so
Moore effectively removed most of the navy’s most senior leaders.
Shortly before Don Chalmers’ two-year appointment came to
an end, the minister told him that his term would not be extended.
Chalmers recalls that: ‘I asked him to tell me why and he said there
were three reasons and one of these was, “I recognise what you’ve
done for the submarine, but it was too little, too late and someone
has to wear it”. Those were his words.’
Chris Oxenbould was Chalmers’ deputy and would normally
have been in the best position to succeed him. However, as he
recalls, John Moore told him that he would not be appointed
as ‘it would just be more of the same’. Explaining the rationale
behind his decision, Moore criticised the navy for being the silent
service and not keeping him informed, and said he would have to
dig deep to get new blood to reform the service.
Paul Barratt recalls that Moore had been pressuring him for
some time to sack Garry Jones but Barratt refused as he was happy
with Jones’ performance, and under the Public Service Act the
minister had no right to interfere in departmental appointments at
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that level. However, once Barratt went, Jones soon followed. The
McIntosh-Prescott report recommended upgrading the position
of head of procurement, suggesting that the new head come from
the private sector, and this provided the justification for removing
Jones.
Barratt’s own appointment was terminated at the end of August
1999. He did not go quietly but fought a lengthy court action
alleging wrongful dismissal. The final result of the case was that
the court decided ministers could sack departmental heads for no
reason and did not need to justify their decision.
As Kerry O’Brien noted when interviewing John Moore after
the release of the McIntosh-Prescott report, the minister seemed
very calm in the face of a ‘diabolical’ report on the state of his
department’s largest project. But Moore saw the problems as being
Beazley’s problems, not his own. His task was to sell the solution,
not excuse the problems. The centrepiece of his program to fix
the submarines was to appoint Peter Briggs to head a new team to
‘fast-track’ the work needed to make the submarines operational.
As Moore said: ‘Admiral Briggs is the most senior submariner in
Australia and I have no doubt he will play a very prominent part
in getting all this up and going.’10
C H A P T E R 24
‘That villain Briggs’ and the submarine
‘get-well’ program
In the early 1980s Peter Briggs was one of the driving forces in
drawing up the ambitious requirements for the new submarines,
but from 1985 his postings took him away from the project, and in
the 1990s away from submarines altogether as he held a succession
of senior positions, concluding with appointment as head of the
strategic command division in 1997. In mid-1999 he was among
the contenders to replace Don Chalmers as chief of the navy. When
he was passed over as chief he began planning his retirement,
but put this on hold when he was asked to take charge of the
submarine project with the task of ‘achieving a fully operational
and sustainable submarine capability as quickly as possible’. He
‘came into the job with nothing to lose, a problem to solve and
a nicely defined period to do it in’ and felt that this ‘suited my
personality of quick answers and no prisoners between here and
there’.1
John Moore believed that the project had been strangled by
committees, with nobody accepting responsibility, and he wanted
one person to take charge, with wide powers and reporting directly
to the minister. Consequently Peter Briggs was given power to
cut through red tape, let contracts without going through the
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committee system and direct resources as he thought best. He
wrote his own terms of reference and ‘whatever I wanted I got’.
Briggs quickly assembled his ‘submarine capability team’,
including former submariners Paul Greenfield (directly from the
McIntosh-Prescott report), Mark Merrifield and Richard Walters,
navy supply officer Bob Brown, and Geoff Robinson from the
RAAF, who had served as Briggs’ principal staff officer and was
‘used to the way I worked’. Several consultants worked closely
with the team, notably Peter Horobin (another reappearance!),
public relations expert Stephanie Paul, change facilitator Alan
Ward and lawyers Paul Armarego and Wal Jurkiewicz.
The central aim of Briggs’ team was to ‘fast-track’ work on
Dechaineux and Sheean to ensure they met a ‘minimum opera-
tional capability’ by the end of 2000, and get the program estab-
lished to achieve six fully capable submarines as soon as possible.2
The strategy was driven by the fact that the certification of the last
Oberon, Otama, would expire in December 2000 and the fast-
track plan meant that two submarines would be ready to replace
it. Briggs saw ‘fast track’ as a ‘temporary but necessary strategy
to get some submarine capability as quickly as possible, demon-
strate that the fixes would work and give heart to the people out
in the submarines that something was being done to solve the
problems’.
Using the McIntosh-Prescott report as a starting point, the
capability team prepared a submission to cabinet setting out what
was required to make all six submarines fully operational and how
much it would cost. Although John Moore had set up the capa-
bility team and committed himself to fixing the submarines, there
was no guarantee that cabinet would approve the submission.
Peter Briggs recalls attending a meeting of the national security
committee of cabinet in October 1999 where some ministers were
saying: ‘These are flops, they’re a disaster, let’s scrap them and
hang it all on Beazley’s head.’ Briggs thought they were looking
at the issue from a purely political point of view and there was no
understanding of the issues or resolve to press on with the project.
Nonetheless Moore was able to force the matter through cabinet
and the money was allocated.
John Moore is widely criticised by many involved with
the submarine project, but without his strong support at this
stage the project could easily have been abandoned. He was a
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politician so it would be a surprise if he was not prepared to use
the submarines for political purposes, but he did this by show-
ing that he could fix ‘Labor’s mistakes’. He allocated more than
$1 billion for improvements to the submarines and it is hard to
see why supporters of the project attack him for this.
Peter Briggs believed his first step was to fix the relationships,
‘to get people out of the trenches and back working together’.
He saw the whole project as being at an impasse because the
relationships between ASC, Kockums, the project office and the
navy had broken down, with communication between them being
largely through lawyers. To address this he set up several forums
covering different aspects of the project and including people from
all the organisations involved, with a ‘submarine alliance board’ to
coordinate activities. Early on, two 3-day conferences were held –
one at Mount Macedon in Victoria, where all the main figures
got together and ‘fought it out for three days’, and another at
Glenelg in South Australia for people at the next level down. The
message Briggs gave was: ‘You’re either with me or you’re against
me. Either you do what you have to or I’ll find someone who
will.’3
Public relations were an important part of the capability team’s
work. Since 1993 the public image of the submarine project had
been disastrous and this contributed to the manpower crisis and