Here's another little example of the research that Colebatch didn't do,

"...Again these ships [Liberty Ships] were so well built that they lasted for decades, and it is only for reasons other than any structural unsoundness that they are not still in service."
Colebatch, H.G.P. "Australia's Secret War", 2013. p.194, para.2.

Colebatch uses this statement of apparent fact as part of his argument that Australian shipbuilders were not up to scratch.

Various mentions of the Liberty ships' faults can be found on Google.

"The failure of many of the World War II Liberty ships[1] is a well-known and dramatic example of the brittle fracture of steel that was thought to be ductile.[2] Some of the early ships experienced structural damage when cracks developed in their decks and hulls. Three of them catastrophically split in half when cracks formed, grew to critical lengths, and then rapidly propagated completely around the ships’ girths. Figure shown below is one of the ships that fractured the day after it was launched."
http://metallurgyandmaterials.wordpress.com/2015/12/25/liberty-ship-failures/

How did our author, that paragon of meticulous research, miss this small detail?

Issy, that is interesting, I would have thought it was common knowledge that the US built Liberty ships were built for a purpose, and that was not to last, but to be useful supply ships in the short term. They were never going to win any awards for brilliant design and durability.
Many of the construction workers such as welders, some women and men, who had never welded in their lives got a crash course in the trade, and were quickly put to work.

Many Australian industrialists made a motza out of the war. Businesses that were little more than tin sheds in 1939, had by 1945 become highly profitable concerns. This on the backs of Australia's fighting men and women. One of the less than honest methods was to exploit the governments 'Cost Plus' system. In simple terms the system of exploration involved downgrading production to a minimum level, with maximum labour when the government inspectors were there to determine what the government would fix as a reasonable price based on the cost of production plus 15% profit margin. Then things changed when the inspectors had gone, maximum production with minimum labour. Fairly simple system, but it produced a healthy profit for many business owners, well above the 15% allowable. Such practices were detrimental to the war effort, but good for the bottom line.

We could also discuss the exploitation of the 'protected occupation' system. Many a boy from Vaucluse found a safe home in daddies business employed in a so called protected occupation, never seeing war service. 172 occupations were listed as "reserved" in 1939.

War can bring out some of the best qualities in man, it can also bring out some of the worse.