PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Minister, Acting CDF, ladies and gentlemen. The Minister and I have called this news conference to announce the Government's decision that the Australian Army will be equipped with 12 new trooplift helicopters under a $1 billion project approved by the Government. The Government has selected Australian Aerospace to supply the new MRH-90 aircraft to form an additional troop lift helicopter squadron, subject to satisfactory conclusion of negotiations. This will bolster not only our trooplift capacity because of the state of the art technology associated with the new helicopters, but it will also release a squadron of Blackhawks and they will be shifted to Sydney to reinforce the ADF special forces under the arrangements that were announced some 18 months ago. The new helicopters will be located at Townsville. The first will be delivered in 2007 with all 12 aircraft expected to be delivered by 2008.
It's been estimated that the new squadron will increase the Army's trooplift capability by more than one half. And as I noted earlier, it will allow the relocation of a Blackhawk squadron elsewhere. I want to invite Senator Hill to say something further about the project and then I understand, General Leahy, the Chief of the Army, will also provide some further information.
ROBERT HILL:
Thank you, Prime Minister. I wanted to thank all of those involved within Defence in this selection process. It has been a demanding and exhausting process, a very detailed evaluation of the capabilities on offer. And the Government's very much appreciated the efforts of the project team and of the Services and others who contributed. We are confident that the right choice has been made, particular emphasis upon the amphibious capabilities. This is the state-of-the-art helicopter, a European helicopter, fly-by-wire system with a longer range, some 900 kilometre range, able to carry a larger number of troops - up to 20 in patrol order. It has electronic folding blades, it has ditching capabilities, it has particular suitability for the amphibious role and therefore will complement the new amphibious ships that the Government is committed to purchase. And for those of you who follow these things, you'll know that if you go back to the 2000 White Paper, the commitment was in phase two of this project to purchase an extra squadron of helicopters, particularly with an emphasis on the amphibious task.
Australian Aerospace, we've already established a good partnership with them in relation to the production of the Tiger which is being produced, most of them are being assembled in Brisbane. The project's going extraordinarily well and there'll be some areas of overlap between the two projects. We're hoping the new helicopters will also be assembled in Brisbane and in the industry package that is to be negotiated, we'll look for a number of other enhanced... capability enhancements, particularly in relation to the strategic area. For phase four of the project, which was the upgrading or replacement of the existing Black Hawk helicopters we'll continue in accordance with the original timetable, which was that the Government would make a decision on that in the 05-06 period. We did consider the possibility of combining the two phases together but in the end were persuaded that each of these two helicopter types have particular strengths, characteristics that we require at this time. The Army particularly sees the counter terrorism capabilities and the Black Hawk as important and yet the European helicopter was seen as ahead in the amphibious role.
So we believe the best interests of the Defence Force and therefore the country is served at this stage by retaining the fleet of 35 Black Hawks whilst at the same time enhancing the capability of the Army by the purchase of these twelve new larger, in terms of troop carrying capability, helicopters that will really take us into the future. It's a type that's in enormous demand, as those of you who follow these things will also know, I gather there's now about 370 firm orders from nine different countries for this new European helicopter. Ours will be modelled on the German Army's variety, slight variances in them. They are now being delivered, the first being delivered to the German Army and it's going through its full certification process now.
So it very much is state-of-the art helicopter with considerable potential for further development as the years go by. And with that, I think we'll ask General Leahy to briefly tell us how the Army will operate this helicopter.
GENERAL LEAHY:
Thank you Minister. With that comprehensive rundown of the helicopter, I'm not sure there's much more I can say. But I do know that perhaps we should make the Minister an honorary member of the Army Aviation corps.
I'd like to stress that this helicopter acquisition will improve the ADF and Army's overall capability. And I think I should stress the joint capability and the amphibious nature of the ADF. It will enhance our troop capacity, as you've heard, and that would be both in the land but importantly in the maritime environment. And as we plan and develop our capability to operate off our current and our planned troop lift ships the capabilities inherent in this helicopter will mean that we'll be much more developed and much more joint and a much more capable force.
It will also enhance Army's capability as a hardened and networked Army. We'll be able to provide government with a wide range of options for a whole range of contingencies from war fighting, peace operations, nation building and, as you've heard very clearly, in counter terrorism.
We are looking very clearly in the future and our amphibious capability and we see that the joint capabilities developed will enhance our ability to operate in the littoral environment. You've heard some of the characteristics of the helicopter and if I could just stress again the enhancements to our overall troop with capacity will improve it by about 50 per cent. This helicopter can carry 18 fully equipped troops, each troop will have a crashworthy seat. It's got a very flexible equipment payload capacity because it has a rear ramp. It will be equipped with electronic warfare self protection. It can be then, with its singular capabilities, be very fully integrated into our combined arms team. We see that it will operate seamlessly with the Armed Reconnaissance helicopter, the Abrams tank and with our infantry, with our armour and our artillery. The helicopter has a digital cockpit configuration, it has moving maps and it has digital data link, again adding to its capacities as a combined arms team member. It will improve our air mobile capacity in the 3rd brigade and this helicopter will be located in Townsville.
The Prime Minister's already spoken about the fact that we can now further consider the relocation of the counter terrorism squadron of Black Hawks, A squadron, to the Sydney area. There they'll be able to fully train with and develop operational procedures with 4 RAR (Commando) and a Tactical Assault Group (East). This will improve our capacity for the domestic act of the war against terror.
I see that this is a very positive announcement for Army and the ADF. I'm very happy to be here and I guess we'll be able now to answer your questions.
JOURNALIST:
Geoff Barker, Australian Financial Review. General, how will this acquisition help towards achieving the Army's ambition of, you know, rationalising its helicopter forces and having less different types of helicopters in service?
GENERAL LEAHY:
To introduce this helicopter we'll be withdrawing as part of the plan the current Iroquois. So we'll be looking at the same numbers of fleets and, as the Minister has outlined, there's further consideration as part of phase four of Air 9000 to see where we might go and that will be quite properly done in due course.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, Ian McPhedran from News Limited. We don't see you at many of these defence contract announcements. Is it... your presence here got something to do with the election?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh, I think I've been at these before. I don't come to all of them, but I happen to be in Canberra and I happen to participate as Chairman of the National Security Committee of Cabinet in the final decision. So that's the reason I'm here. You can make other observations if you want to, but this is not the first it I've come to Russell in relation to announcements, it's not the first time I've been associated with acquisition announcements either. Not always. But I keep a very keen interest in them, as the Minister knows.
JOURNALIST:
Mark Forbes from The Age. Minister, did the Cabinet submission that went out on this recommend the MRH-90 or the Sikorsky?
ROBERT HILL:
We don't obviously detail... provide details of Cabinet submissions or Cabinet debate. This is a decision of government and it's on the advice and with the support of the Defence Force, as you've heard from General Leahy, or if you want to hear it from others, the Acting Chief of the Defence Force can speak and so forth.
JOURNALIST:
Minister, Lincoln Wright from the Sunday Herald Sun. Were you offended by comments last night by the President Bush's former terrorism adviser that Australia's contribution to Iraq is insignificant?
PRIME MINISTER:
Is that directed at me?
JOURNALIST:
Oh, either one.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I saw his...a large part of his interview last night. I thought he made an interesting comparison between the stances of opposing political parties to incumbent administration. I don't want to go any further than that. I'd rather not develop that theme that might be seen as political, here. I'd be happy to talk about it somewhere else, not here because of the venue. It'd be appropriate if you asked me and I'm very happy to talk outside but I'd rather not answer ultra political questions on this podium if you don't mind with the leadership of the Defence Force present - I don't think that's appropriate.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, Michelle Grattan of The Age. You might want to move this one too, but...
PRIME MINISTER:
Sounds as though... if you're asking it Michelle, I think I'm almost certainly going to...
JOURNALIST:
It's not very hard at all.
PRIME MINISTER:
No.
JOURNALIST:
You were around when approval was given for the Ranger uranium mine... much talk in those days of safeguards. Could you give us a comment on the latest developments on that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I would have been around, yes, I think that came out of the Fox Inquiry, did it? Is that right?
JOURNALIST:
Indeed.
PRIME MINISTER:
And well, we agree on that and I think the... it followed a very lengthy process. I think the only comment I make is that given the material that has come to light, the proper procedure has been followed and the right steps have been taken.
JOURNALIST:
General Leahy, I understand that the flyers, the aviators themselves favour the other option in this contract and were a bit concerned about the manning issue and about the manning issue generally of being (inaudible) comment on that on the shortages of air crew?
GENERAL LEAHY:
Oh, well, the first thing is - there are no shortages of air crew, we're well served by our air crew at the moment. I wouldn't characterise that the flyers preferred one option over the other. What I would say is that all competitors in this acquisition have been very competitive, it's been a very close run thing and we've seen from Army, from the project team, I think an enormously difficult task done very professionally and very well. We've got differing points of view. I think the point is that we've got a good helicopter, we've got a good result and we can really do something with this capability.
JOURNALIST:
Minister, the... I think you've said that you hoped the MRH-90 would be assembled in Brisbane, have you any undertakings yet from Australian Aerospace as to assembly and what sort of employment there would be associated with the acquisition?
ROBERT HILL:
There's been a lot of work done on possible industry package. We're looking at over $300 million worth of package. But the detail will be part of the contract negotiation that is now to take place, because we are not just looking at a traditional offset type of arrangement. We now search for opportunities to support our industry, investing into the global supply chain. We think that that's the way of the future and there are a number of specialty niches in Australia and systems integration at the high-tech area, where our industry is poised to make real gains if it can get into further major contract opportunities. So that will be part of the negotiation that we're still to have. So there's been discussion on the various areas. I mentioned the assembly in Brisbane because a workforce has already been trained and established there in relation to assembling the Tiger helicopter. My advice is that they are doing extraordinarily well and it's also enabled us to get the work of assembling the smaller, commercial helicopter which has been sold into our region. So it seems to me that having invested in that capability, it's a good idea to build it further so that we can become a real helicopter centre of excellence in this region.
QUESTION:
Minister, you mentioned it was the amphibious capabilities of this helicopter that basically won it the bid. Clearly, now, it is likely with Air 9000 that this helicopter will replace all those in the existing fleet of the Navy. In the long-term, are estimates of the total worth of these deals really closer to $5 billion than $1 billion?
HILL:
I don't know about that. You've also got to... depends if you're also including whole-of-life support contracts... but it is true,the Sea Hawk I would expect to continue for a considerable period of time but the Sea King is coming up for review in the not too distant future. So that project will obviously be looked at in the light of the decision that we've taken in this regard. We still see value in integration wherever possible, but it's... a commonality of systems can be almost as important as commonality of types and we're getting commonality of systems here between the Tiger and this helicopter and there may be further opportunities as we go through these next acquisition projects.
QUESTION:
Minister, some analysts have critiqued that the Government relies too much on the military [inaudible] counter-terrorism response and it's only located two main areas. What do you think about the argument of [inaudible]...people talk about police force playing a greater role?
HILL:
Well, the police forces do play a very significant role and have been significantly enhanced by this Government. Furthermore, the coordination between the various agencies, whether it's Customs, police or military and others, State and Commonwealth, has also been significantly enhanced in the last couple of years. But on the... there will always be a role that Defence can play that the others can't play in the same way and what we've done in that regard is double the counter-terrorist capability of the ADF. We've built up the counter-terrorism capability in Sydney as well as on the west coast of Australia. We've put in place the body to address issues associated with chemical, biological or radiological weapons. We've significantly enhanced security around strategic assets. We're spending a great deal more money on intelligence, which is the critically important start of effectively defeating terrorist threats. So really we've upgraded across each of the areas of responsibility but also got them working much more closely together.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's the key, that you have to have a whole of governments, I mean all the governments have got to work together on counter-terrorism. There's no way the Australian Federal Police can do their policing role without the cooperation of the State police because the State police have got a vast preponderance of numbers on the ground, but there's a clear role for each and there's a clear role for the military in certain circumstances. And I would have thought that the coordination arrangements that we've established, particularly the group that's chaired by Andrew Metcalf, the Deputy Secretary of my Department, has worked quite effectively and the operations that we carried out a few months ago seem to bear that out. I think the balances are right.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, Gemma Daley from Bloomberg. I'm just wondering if you think the election campaign makes any difference to the extent Australia is a terrorist target?
PRIME MINISTER:
Do I? Well, I, like every other Australian, hope and pray that nothing happens. And I believe Australia is a potential terrorist target and has been for some time. I don't want to really go beyond that because it's a difficult and sensitive issue and I don't want to be seen to be promoting a particular view. It's too challenging an issue to be careless about. I think the risk of a terrorist attack in Australia is obviously greater than it used to be. I don't think it is as great as it is in other countries. But I can't rule it out. And I don't really want to express a view myself as to whether it is lessened or heightened, or it's heightened by the onset of an election campaign. I'm not going to express a view on that, except to reassure the Australian public that every available step is being taken to protect the public and to reassure them that whilst no government can guarantee that an attack won't occur, we don't have any information which would justify a change in the alerts and we don't have any information that would justify my making any further cautionary or alarmist statements and I certainly don't intend to do so. I mean, we all hope nothing happens. We're working very hard to prevent it happening and I don't think it helps the country for me to say more than that.
[Ends]