Sinking feeling as Adelaide Advertiser chooses wrong week to run Aukus submarines sponsored series
Sponsors for the series included the South Australian government, ASC, Babcock, BAE Systems, Hanwha Defence Australia, KBR and Deloitte. The acres of print coverage about building submarines in the state was to culminate in a summit in Canberra's Parliament House on Monday 16 June.
Apart from defending Australia, the focus of the series was finding skilled workers for 'Australia's biggest-ever project, Aukus nuclear-powered submarines'. On Thursday the 'Tiser ran a double page spread about plans for a $2bn transformation of the Osborne Naval Shipyard into the world's 'most advanced manufacturing centre' for the Aukus program.
The stories were pre-written and spruiked plans for nuclear submarine construction, complete with maps and diagrams and interviews with defence boffins.
Friday's paper went ahead with the eight-page Defending Australia lift-out but its front page acknowledged the roadblock with a big stamp saying 'Under Review' and it reported that the future of our nuclear submarine deal with the US is in doubt.
It was a public relations coup for the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). The three journalists the lobby group took to Israel were so enthused by the experience that they all wrote long features upon return: the three main pieces totalled 10,000 words.
While these sponsored trips are an annual occurrence, attended by journalists across the media industry, this year's comes at a time when the relationship between Australia and Israel is more fraught than ever.
In The Australian, which sent two journalists on the sponsored trip, Paul Kelly's article in the weekend paper came in at just under 5,000 words. He followed that up with an appearance on Sky News Australia with Sharri Markson in which he reflected on his visit.
The editor-at-large was one of a media delegation that visited Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as the sites of Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack.
Among the dignitaries lined up to speak was Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, families of IDF troops fighting in Gaza and survivors of the Nova music festival.
Kelly's colleague, Chris Kenny, wrote a 2,500 word feature and also provided live crosses on Sky News, where he has his own program.
'This is the diabolic dilemma deliberately created by Hamas,' Kenny wrote. 'Every time Israel is criticised for its actions in Gaza, Hamas scores a propaganda win. The deaths of Palestinian civilians are central to the Hamas strategy. That is why Hamas shelters underground in its extensive tunnel network, leaving Gazan civilians above ground and exposed.'
Michael Stutchbury, the outgoing editor-at-large of the Australian Financial Review, filed a news story from Israel and last week reported on the accusations he heard while there of 'betrayal' and 'backstabbing' by the Australian government in a 2,500 word feature.
All three men disclosed the trip was hosted by AIJAC at the end of their articles. AIJAC has not responded to a request for comment.
With a criminal trial involving mushrooms dominating the news cycle it's no surprise the Daily Telegraph devoted its front page to the fungi on Wednesday. Or was it? The exclusive story Magic Mushrooms Found Growing at State Parliament had nothing to do with the Erin Patterson triple murder trial but was a stunt handed on a plate to the tabloid by the Legalise Cannabis party MP, Jeremy Buckingham.
'A crop of illegal drugs sprang up at NSW parliament last week, metres away from unsuspecting NSW police special constables,' state political editor James Doherty wrote. He followed up his remarkable yarn with a video.
'Psychedelic 'magic' mushrooms started growing outside the main entrance to Australia's oldest parliament after a period of heavy rain, right under the noses of state politicians, bureaucrats and law enforcement.'
The point of this story was lost on some of the Tele readers too, with one commenting: 'So a naturally occurring fungi, whose spores are wind blown, are growing in the gardens of the NSW Parliament House. I have probably had these growing in my yard under the right conditions. What will become a news story next? Breaking news, there are sharks in the waters around Mrs Macquarie's Chair.'
Buckingham told Weekly Beast he wanted to publicise what he sees as the excessive penalty for magic mushroom possession and he approached the Tele. He made clear that he spotted the mushrooms growing near the stairs and he did not plant them there.
Should anyone accuse the Tele of handling illegal drugs, Doherty reported that 'following consultations with authorities, the Telegraph handed the samples over to NSW police for appropriate disposal'.
ABC News has named one of its cadetship positions in honour of Antony Green – who has taken on the grand title election analyst emeritus – the managing director, Hugh Marks, announced at an event at Ultimo last week. It will be awarded each year to a cadet specialising in data analysis, statistics, mathematics or AI skills.
Following Green's retirement after 90 elections, Casey Briggs is now the ABC's chief election and data analyst. Briggs's first Australian election in the new role will be the upcoming Tasmanian poll.
Green has revealed he is donating three decades' worth of his personal comprehensive election guides to the National Library of Australia so they can be preserved in perpetuity.
The self-regulatory watchdog for advertising, Ad Standards, has found an Australian Gas Networks (AGN) advertisement which ran on Ten's MasterChef Australia breached environmental advertising standards and has been taken off air.
The ad said: 'It's not just the innovative dishes that come out of this kitchen that will surprise you, it's also the gas. The MasterChef kitchen is cooking with renewable gas again, and at AGN we're working towards a future where renewable gas could one day be used in your kitchen. With all the control you love'.
In its ruling, Ad Standards said the claim was 'vague and does not make it clear that the plan to fully transition to renewable gas, sourced from hydrogen and biomethane, is not expected to be realised until 2050'.
Last year environmentalists accused the hit reality TV show of greenwashing after Ten announced sponsorship deals with AGN, a subsidiary of Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, which delivers gas to more than 2m homes and businesses.
Environment Victoria, which lodged the complaint, told Weekly Beast: 'We are pleased that Ad Standards have vindicated the call to expose the misinformation and false solutions from the Australian Gas Networks'.
Founder of climate communications charity, Comms Declare, Belinda Noble said AGN had been found to have repeatedly breached ad standards on the subject. 'Australian consumers are still being duped into thinking that fossil gas is a climate solution.'
The ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson told viewers on Thursday's program that Jacob Greber would replace Laura Tingle as political editor.
A former Australian Financial Review economics and US correspondent, Greber only joined the ABC as chief digital political correspondent a year ago, but his story-breaking and analysis skills have impressed.
Greber, who takes up the new role on 7 July, paid tribute to Tingle, now the ABC's global affairs editor as 'an absolute class act and fearless force of nature'.
'I'm humbled and thrilled to pick up where she's left off,' he said.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The crisis leaving the Royal Navy more exposed than ever
As the Royal Navy's newest warship slid into the River Forth last month, there will have been more than a few sighs of relief. Workers have been carefully constructing HMS Venturer, the first of the new Type 31 frigates, at Babcock's Rosyth shipyard in Scotland since 2021. The floating in June was a key milestone – but now the company must finish the rest of the vessel and repeat the entire trick another four times. There is little room for error. The warship is just one of 13 new frigates due to enter service between 2027 and 2035, which are desperately needed to replace the ageing Duke class vessels commissioned for the Navy in the late 1980s. Five of the new frigates will be general-purpose Type 31s – known as the Inspiration class – while the rest will be submarine-hunting frigates known as Type 26 vessels built by BAE Systems in Glasgow. Babcock is sprinting to deliver all of the Type 31s by 2029, a decade after it first signed a contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD). But even at that pace, the ships cannot come fast enough. Shrinking fleet, dangerous times The Navy is grappling with a historically low number of frigates, stretching its operational capacity to the limit at a time when the risk of military conflict is on the rise. Next year, the Navy is only expected to have seven frigates – compared to the official requirement of 13. 'You've got this crunch period between planning to fix the frigate gap and it actually being fixed, because of the timelines for ship construction,' explains Emma Salisbury, a naval expert at the Council on Geostrategy. 'It's a really difficult problem, because there isn't really much you can do. Ships take as long as they take to build and, although there are some things you can do to speed things up a bit, you can't just turn them out in a couple of weeks. 'There is going to be a period where we'll have to do what we can with the fleet we have, while we wait for these new ships to come into service.' The Navy fleet currently includes eight operational Duke-class frigates. Most are capable of being used for anti-submarine warfare, but they are also used for an array of other duties such as shadowing Russian ships through the English Channel and North Sea. By the end of 2025, however, their number will dwindle to just seven following the expected retirement of HMS Lancaster, which was previously stationed in the Gulf. In practice, this will mean very few ships are available at any one time. According to a naval rule of thumb, one in every three or four ships in a fleet will typically be kept at readiness to deploy. 'You can juggle things around, but with 13 frigates you would expect to have four or five available at any one time,' says Sidharth Kaushal, a naval power expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). The dip in fleet numbers means the Navy may only be able to muster two to three frigates at a time for the next two years. 'It's pretty consequential. And it certainly poses a challenge to the Nato-first approach laid out in the strategic defence review,' Kaushal adds. This makes the delivery of new ships to the Navy even more important. But even assuming there are no unexpected setbacks, HMS Venturer is not set to enter service for another two years, while the first Type 26 – the HMS Glasgow – is not expected until late 2028. It means naval chiefs will be grappling with a shortfall for the rest of this decade at least – and through a period when military leaders and experts fear the risk of a major conflict is highest. Last year, Gen Sir Roland Walker, head of the Army, warned that Britain needed to be war-ready as soon as 2027 amid rising tensions with Russia and China. Ministers have pledged to increase defence spending to 2.7pc of GDP by then, rising to 3.5pc by 2035 under a pledge made by the Nato alliance. But money remains tight. 'With older ships, there's going to be some that can be extended,' adds Salisbury. 'But you have to look at the cost-benefit analysis, because it's not like we're in the business of restoring classic cars – it has to be worth it for military capability, especially at a time of constrained resources.' That makes it imperative that the BAE and Babcock programmes suffer no further slippages. But with the shipbuilding industry facing a shortage of skilled workers after years of low demand, the companies and their suppliers face an uphill battle. 'Peace dividend' Britain is not alone in suffering from this ailment. In the US, shipbuilding has also slowed to around six ships per year, compared to as many as 20 per year during the 1980s, according to the Congressional Research Service. By comparison, China – which now boasts the world's biggest navy – brought at least 28 ships into service, compared to the US Navy's four. The decline is a consequence of the 'peace dividend' reaped by many Western governments following the end of the Cold War, when spending was diverted from defence budgets to more vote-winning concerns such as healthcare. Few orders for new ships were placed. 'The current paucity of the Navy's surface fleet is a reflection of the peace dividend,' Salisbury says. 'It's going to take time, given the timescales involved, to get back up to strength.' Despite this pressing backdrop, construction of the Type 26 and Type 31 frigates is running late – although it is hard to scrutinise how late because the Ministry of Defence does not specify when each ship is due to enter service. Still, both programmes are rated 'amber' by the Government's Infrastructure Projects Authority, meaning there are 'significant issues' that risk further setbacks without 'focused management attention', according to transparency documents. Delays after delays Many of the problems can be traced back to historical government flip-flopping, the industry's starved condition and the pandemic. The genesis of the Type 26, for example, stretches back to the late 1990s. Military chiefs changed the specifications repeatedly before settling on a final design in 2017 that envisaged the ships being used mainly for anti-submarine warfare. HMS Glasgow – the first Type 26 – was originally meant to enter service in 2023 under the programme's original plans. But this first slipped to 2027 and then 2028 as work was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and various other supply chain issues, including the late delivery of a gearbox. Similarly, the Government originally envisaged the first Type 31 debuting in 2023 – four years earlier than the current expectation. Babcock has committed to delivering five warships in 10 years but work at Rosyth was also slightly delayed by Covid. The company insists it remains on schedule and will deliver the frigates by 2029. Sir Nick Hine, chief executive of Babcock's marine division and the Navy's former Second Sea Lord, says the speed the company is working at is 'unheard of'. 'The answer is, it's going much faster than any other shipbuilding programme in the UK or anywhere in the world actually, in terms of complex warships,' he told the UK Defence Journal last month. 'Would I like to go faster? Yes, of course, because the Navy needs the ships.' Building for the future Both BAE and Babcock are attempting to tackle skills shortages by taking on hundreds of apprentices, with BAE launching a shipbuilding training academy of its own in Glasgow as well. BAE has also brought in robot welding machines at Govan to help speed up the production of panels for the Type 26 ships. But ultimately, to ramp up capacity further the companies need certainty about the future shipbuilding pipeline. 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'Through the Strategic Defence Review we are creating a new hybrid navy by building world-class submarines and cutting-edge warships, alongside transforming our aircraft carriers and introducing new autonomous vessels to patrol the North Atlantic and beyond,' says a Ministry of Defence spokesman. 'There will be no capability gap as we introduce 13 new frigates into the Royal Navy's fleet, which will provide a global warship presence for decades to come, helping deter aggression and maintain UK security.' But before ministers can boast about Britain's impressive future fleet, the Navy will have to reckon with a few more years of pain.
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Albanese avoids committing to military role as US presses Australia over potential Taiwan war
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Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The one question about Australia's plans for China that Trump wants answered - as Anthony Albanese touches down in Shanghai
Anthony Albanese 's trip to China could be derailed by the Trump administration, who have issued a demand to know how he would respond to an invasion of Taiwan. Prime Minister Albanese and fiancé Jodie Haydon touched down in the Chinese financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday, ahead of a week-long visit that includes a meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader President Xi Jinping. While the Australian leader is set to discuss lighter topics, like trade and tourism campaigns, US President Donald Trump 's team on Saturday demanded answers on whether Australia would back America in a war against China. The US has been largely ambiguous about what its response would be to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which China has long claimed territorial rights over. Nevertheless, a report by the Financial Times on Saturday claimed US defence undersecretary Elbridge Colby had questioned Japan and Australia over its positions. The outlet cited five sources who all recalled the topic of the countries' response to a conflict in the Indo-Pacific being raised during meetings. Colby responded to the report on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, Australian time. 'As the department has made abundantly and consistently clear, we at Department of Defence are focused on implementing the President's 'America First', common sense agenda of restoring deterrence and achieving peace through strength,' he said. The senior defence official claimed the America First approach was already working. 'This has been a hallmark of President Trump's strategy - in Asia as in Europe where it has already been tremendously successful.' He also suggested several American allies were seeing the 'urgent need to step up' and 'are doing so'. 'President Trump has shown the approach and the formula - and we will not be deterred from advancing his agenda,' he said. In response to questions about Australia's hypothetical response to conflict in the Indo-Pacific, Albanese said 'we have our AUKUS arrangements in place'. 'We'll continue to work through all of these issues,' he said. 'Our alliance with the United States is a very important one for Australia so we'll continue to engage constructively in a coherent, stable, orderly way. 'That's the way I conduct this government.' As for his position on Taiwan, Albanese simply said Australia supports the 'status quo'. 'I think it's important that we have a consistent position, which Australia has had for a long period of time,' he said. 'We support the status quo when it comes to Taiwan. We don't support any unilateral action there. We have a clear position and we have been consistent about that.' Reports on Thursday claimed the US believed Australia should voice its direct support of the US by stating it would use American-made nuclear submarines should a conflict with China arise. However, the production of those submarines was called into question earlier this year by Colby himself, who is leading a review into the AUKUS pact under which the submarine deal was made. Albanese also addressed pressure to make a public statement on Sunday, noting tactical conversations between it and Australia would remain 'private'. 'You don't take private comments to a media conference. By definition, that's in private,' he said. 'We engage in a mature way. That's the way that we deal with our relationships.' Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy on Sunday was more blunt in telling the US it would not dictate Australia's military decisions. 'The sole power to commit Australia to war, or to allow our territory to be used for conflict, is the elected government of the day,' he told the ABC. 'That is our position. Sovereignty will always be prioritised and that will continue to be our position.' Albanese's upcoming sit-down with Xi will be the second time he's met with the Chinese leader, following his excursion to China in November 2023. He is yet to meet with Trump after the president left Canada's G7 summit early in June citing urgent developments in the Middle East. Albanese has faced criticism for meeting with Xi before the leader of one of Australia's biggest allies. However, it's not the first time an Australian leader has met with Xi before the US president. Tony Abbott pulled the same move by meeting with Xi in the weeks after taking office in 2013, before he met with Barack Obama. Tensions between Australia and China have grown since the Asian superpower began ramping up efforts to grow influence over the Indo-Pacific since the 2010s. That included the creation of armed artificial islands in the South China Sea. The Chinese Communist Party's intent to shift from a diplomatic player to a strategist became clear in 2019 with Kiribati and the Solomon Islands both switching its policies regarding Taiwan to side with China. Since then the Chinese People's Liberation Army has extended its presence in international waters, including an excursion down Australia's east coast by three Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy ships.
