The trouble with the Rudd era plans is they died in 2010 when Julia took the reins. Labors left wing, even when boosted into power by the right wing power brokers, has little interest in defence.
As unpopular and unsupported as Rudd was, the paper that came out under Rudd was the right paper. While Rudd as a leader may have been a disaster, for what ever reason his WP team didn't underestimate some of the situations that are now very much realities.
Things that seemed positively fanciful in 2010 like 12 large subs, 8+ 7,000t anzac replacements, 20 very large OCV/OPV's are now very much coming to life. There were a few good ideas in that paper that both sides have adopted. I would imagine it gave some of the US liaisons with Australia some interesting talking points.
6/7 years later and those things are happening. Of course, it would have been better if we were just about ready to cut steel on the new frigates and submarines, and had very tangible OPV design selected.
But the paper did give everyone a pretty good heads up and identify needs.
Seems like Forgacs (Civmec) are going all in to get a piece of the shipbuilding pie. I wonder how Austal will take this? I would say this definitely puts the OPV work up for grabs in WA
ASC is going to be pretty busy between subs and frigates. I see this as a good thing as it gets the WA mafia out of tearing apart ASC and derailing those projects, and WA can then focus on ships like the OPVs which no doubt they will lobby for as many as possible.Being and east and west builder will be very interesting.
Big facility. It fits a destroyer and a frigate/opv with all the sub assembly sheds surrounding it. They aren't messing around. If Australia ever wanted to accelerate a ship building program, having a large yard like this dedicate to military builds and maintenance would be a good start.