Mon Dec 1

Marles confirms Australia is monitoring Chinese ships, announces defence delivery shakeup

Written by: Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Defence Minister Richard Marles has confirmed Australia is monitoring a flotilla of Chinese Navy ships currently in the Philippine Sea but with its destination unknown.

Marles volunteered the information while announcing a shakeup that will establish a new Defence Delivery Agency designed to improve military acquisition and sustainment operations.

The agency will be headed by a national armaments director, who will advise the government on strategies for acquisitions and the delivery of projects after they have been approved. The government says it is the biggest reform in defence organisation in half a century.

Marles, who is acting prime minister while Anthony Albanese is on his honeymoon this week, went out of his way to say the Chinese ships were being tracked, after a report ^[1] about them in the Australian Financial Review last week.

He told a news conference the government did not yet have a sense of where the task group was going. “But we continue to monitor it as we monitor all movements until we know that the task groups are not coming to Australia.”

Earlier this year, the government was caught out when Chinese ships conducted a live-fire exercise ^[2] in the Tasman Sea. A Virgin pilot sounded the alarm.

According to some sources, the Defence Department had alerted the government to that flotilla, but the government had decided not to say anything publicly, only to be thrown onto the back foot ^[3] when the issue blew up. The flotilla later sailed around Australia.

Marles said on Monday:

We’re not about to give a running commentary on the movements of all Chinese Navy vessels, but in light of the report that was made on Thursday, we thought that it was important to make these statements and to make them in the proper context. So that Australians can be assured that we are monitoring our areas of interest and we are monitoring the movements of the Chinese Navy.

The change to acquisition advice and oversight is a reflection of discontent over a long period with the Defence Department. Defence projects have been notoriously behind time and over budget.

Marles said the new agency would be independent. It will report directly to the ministers of defence and defence industry.

It will begin operations on July 1 when three existing groups will be merged – the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordinance Group, and the Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment Group. The new independent entity will then become the Defence Delivery Agency on July 1 2027.

Marles said the establishment of the new agency “will see a much bigger bang for buck for the defence spend. And that is at the heart of the decision that we have made. It puts a focus on delivery and will ensure that it is much more sharp in the way in which it is undertaken.

"It will mean advice comes to government much earlier in the process about the challenges that are facing any particular program, any particular project, so that we can ensure those projects are delivered on time and on budget.”

Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor said the announcement was a matter of moving bureaucrats around. There was no increase in funds, he said.