South Australia’s premier, Jay Weatherill, has hit back at criticism from prominent businessmen of the federal government’s decision to build French-designed submarines in Adelaide.
A group of businessman, including Dick Smith and John Singleton, took out a full-page advertisement in the Australian on Tuesday describing the decision as “astonishing” and potentially a “fiasco”. They suggested buying off-the-shelf nuclear subs would have been a better option.
But Weatherill called the group “sad old men” and said their ad “looked like it was scribbled on the back of a serviette after a long lunch”.
In their advertisement the businessmen argued that retrofitting what is essentially a French nuclear submarine with a diesel engine was a “very complicated option”, which had never been done before. The design phase would take so long that the decision to make the submarine in Adelaide would be “meaningless”, because the workforce would have “dissipated” by the time it came to be built.
The businessmen said such a conventionally powered sub would come into service at a time when the rest of the world would be operating nuclear-powered fleets. That would be like putting a propeller plane up against a modern jet, the advertisement said.
“We will be condemning our sailors to their graves,” it said.
It also questioned the economics of the decision, saying it would be cheaper to subsidise car industry jobs and buy submarines from overseas.
The other businessmen who put their name to the ad were Gary Johnston, the owner of Jaycar Electronics, Boyd Munro and John Tait. They insisted they were not affiliated with any political party nor represented any military contractor.
