Yes Aidan, I had a vessel being built at NQEA, & the 2 catamarans under warranty while they were building the Patrol boats. I knew some of the management well, & some of the top trades people, who were visiting us sorting out a few niggles with the new cats.

I was well aware of the problems the southern unionists caused, & some of the stupid strikes delayed our work.

I am also aware of the problems my son, managing a department of Garden island naval dockyard is having trying to patch up the ships they built.

Have you ever asked yourself why we would send a slow supply ship, Success, to the gulf if any of the destroyers were actually fit for purpose?

I'm sure there are some good people there, but they are cowered. I know a couple of people who argued against yet another strike at the Gladstone power house construction in the day, were belted into silence by southern unionists. We had a real problem with union thugs in Oz then, & still have today.

Yes I know we should build a big dam at the SA border, & keep Vic, NSW & Qld water where it fell. SA could wither away, like a prune, & cease being such a costly problem. Ultimately we'll have to, but meanwhile we'll just keep bleeding water & money to keep this old settlement mistake, sort of afloat.

Hasbeen, are you sure those "southern unionists" are from SA not Victoria?

Far from being a "settlement mistake", SA always kept itself afloat while its rivals all had to rely on convicts. SA avoided most of the union trouble that other states had, and for a long time had lower wages than they did. That's seldom now an option (the IR system now being overwhelmingly under Federal control) and SA doesn't get much in return for having to contend with interest rates that are inappropriately high.

Our cow try lost much of it's ability to produce quality workmanship and remain competitive, when big brother intervened in the workplace and restricted employers rights to employ the best person for the job, or at least pay them more than the poor producing worker.

I'm sure there is a link between Australia's manufacturing decline and unfair dismissal laws, that when introduced created chaos within many workplaces.

It's not rocket science you know, we can't have top wages and conditions, poor work ethics and poor productivity rates and stay competitive. Something had to give. The sad part is that many manufacturers are still manufacturing, they're just not doing it here.

We should forget the lot and buy 8 Virginia Class nuclear submarines. There is no more isolated country on Earth.

How long will our nuclear phobia continue?

No Aidan, I have no idea which state supplied those trouble maker non workers. I think they float around the country looking for companies with government contracts, funding, or government owned companies. This makes the employer vulnerable, or means a slack no penalty workplace, where they can sleep of last nights binge.

I don't think they are particularly SA origin, but they gravitate to places like ASC, or the car industry, where government handouts were funding ridiculous wages for process workers, worth about $35,000 a year or less.

They have now infested SA & Vic, & would take a huge effort to clean out.

We had an instance of this garbage a while back when the Labor government directed that one of the amphibious ships, Kanimbla I think, go to the floating dry dock in Newcastle, rather than Garden Island, which had all the facilities & experience. This was to please the unions.

The crew, who all lived in Sydney, had to be accommodated in pubs, at huge expense, the dock did not even have welders qualified to do much of the required work, & it almost appeared the union only wanted the work, so they could strike & delay the ship as long as possible.

I could go on, but it does get boring, when I appear to be talking to a wall.

The main problem for ASC is the A. Australia is the owner of ASC but only foreign customers can put real pressure on such a state owned company. Australia can’t put any pressure on ASC for cost overruns or whatever.

ASC’s economic problem was already condensed within one sentence: “With respect to overheads, for every 1.3 production workers ASC had one office worker; Kockums, by comparison, had 3.1 production workers per office worker.”

The only solution for the Collins-class replacement to be within Australia’s financial limits is a foreign company as main contractor. Japanese companies have no experience to license build submarines. A failed license build was the main problem for Collins-class. Kockums did and does build good submarines but a license build is something quite different. That is the reason why Japan is going to build its submarines at home.

To keep the jobs and knowledge in South Australia just DCNS or TKMS offer sufficient experience in license build of submarines. DCNS or TKMS should setup a new company right next to the current ASC submarine wharf so the workers and engineers don’t have to move that much. I don’t think unionized workers would be a big problem for companies from France or Germany with experience to local unions.

$36 billion was an estimation by ASPI for a new submarine fleet build by ASC. This year TKMS offered to build such a submarine fleet for $20 billion. What is within range of ASPI’s estimations: https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/what-price-the-future-submarine-by-andrew-davies/Policy_Analysis99_Submarine_costs_mk2.pdf
Price estimation was $8.8 billion for 12Type 212/214 submarine at 2,000 tonne therefore $20 billion for 12 submarines at 4,000 tonne with some development costs is reasonable. $36 billion is lunatic but I expect an ASC build submarine would even be more expensive because the development risk was not covered by ASPI’s estimation.

ASC’s workers and engineers can build a canoe but it would be expensive and delivered late due to management errors. Get the workers and engineers out of ASC and kill the rest.