24 Jul 2024
Acknowledgements
Good morning Minister Papalia, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be here for this important event.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Whadjuk Nyoongar people on whose traditional lands we meet today. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
I would like to thank you on behalf of our Navy to AMDA for organising this event. I would also like to acknowledge the Ministers, educational institutions and industry partners who are supporting the event today. Importantly, I would also like to thank the Western Australian Government for their support in hosting the event. Perth is our Indian Ocean capital and Western Australia forms a key part of our Defence enterprise. It is where my son was born. It is where I joined my very first warship in the Navy in 1987. It is where I joined my first submarine in the early 1990s. It is indeed dear to the Hammond family.
I would also like to acknowledge the significant number of Defence Force leaders in the room. I have a lot of my fellow Admirals from the Royal Australian Navy here. I would like to publicly thank you all, those in uniform and those in the public service and industry partners for the incredible hard work that you have put into our enterprise, particularly, over the last couple of years. It feels like we are busy everywhere on everything all at once. But frankly, it’s a pleasure to be a part of this high performing team, so thank you all.
Western Australia & Defence
Western Australia has a long and proud history of supporting national security and protecting our maritime approaches. From coastal defence to Allied submarine basing. Australia has experienced periods of relative peace, periods of war and periods of great uncertainty – at every step of the way our Indian Ocean state has been pivotal to providing the intellectual, technical, tactical and enabling capability that generates our maritime power and protects our national security. As Professor Richard Harding observed maritime power:
“Lay[s] not just in the Navy or the battle fleet, but in the effective integration of [a state’s] administration, political system, army… and maritime economy towards the ends of the state.”
WA’s maritime security is not just a matter for our Navy, but for the wider Australian Defence Force and Defence enterprise, including industry. History tells us this has certainly been the case in the past.
As the Russo-Turkish War waged from 1877, Russian ships were observed in the Indian Ocean region leading to a security scare here in Australia. This led to a major military build up in Western Australia, with new infantry units established in Geraldton, York, Albany, Wellington and Fremantle. This included the addition of cavalry and artillery units, which were focussed towards our coast.
Later, in the inter-war period Rottnest Island was developed into the Rottnest Island Fortress. The fortification of Rottnest Island saw a herculean effort of cooperation across all elements of Western Australian society. Government, industry and the military cooperated to upgrade the lighthouse, develop a railway to transport materiel and supplies, install guns and batteries, establish electric power, and install searchlight emplacements, a powerhouse, a directing station and signals buildings. This was a significant Defence infrastructure project.
Reflecting on these examples of Defence’s fortification of its coastal defences in the colonial and WWII eras is not dissimilar to how we are progressing our capabilities today. To name a few examples: the acquisition of new HIMARS with strike missiles and munitions, hypersonic air launched missiles and the establishment of a long range strike regiment. It is often said that history rarely repeats but it often rhymes.
An often overlooked part of Western Australia’s defence history, is that the state has previously hosted a base that supported a rotational force of foreign submarines. During WWII, Fremantle Submarine Base housed US, British and Dutch submarines. Several submarines were also berthed further south at Albany Submarine Base. It was the biggest submarine base in the Southern Hemisphere.
This was not an insignificant submarine presence. 127 US submarines operated out of Fremantle, carrying out 353 war patrols, the longest of which began in Fremantle, and eighty three days later, ended in Pearl Harbor. US submarines operating from Fremantle accounted for approximately one quarter of all US submarine patrols in the Pacific at the time. All together Allied submarines based in Fremantle accounted for 416 patrols during the war and they played a determinative role in the outcome of what resulted in decades of peace and prosperity and maritime security for our nation. Of note, Australia did not operate submarines during WWII, although we crewed some midget submarines operated by the Royal Navy. But we emerged from WWII with the fourth largest Navy in the world.
To support the submarines bases in WA, government, industry and the military worked together to develop a slipway, create an armament depot for torpedos and mines, establish anti-aircraft gun installations from Fremantle to Cockburn Sound and Garden Island and established a variety of logistics support infrastructure. All under the strictest of secrecy against the backdrop of war.
Fremantle’s Submarine Base in WWII is reminiscent of the work we are doing today to upgrade our infrastructure at HMAS Stirling to support the rotations of US and UK nuclear submarines as part of Submarine Rotational Force-West and future Australian SSNs. I am just going to divert from my speech for a moment to quote from the great Admiral Charlie Lockwood who was COMSUB South West Pacific here in Fremantle in WWII and promoted to Command Submarine Force Pacific and he says in one of his books:
“Throughout the war, there was one request I learned to expect from skippers of submarines who felt they had earned the right to ask a favour for their crews. The request was to end their next patrol in Fremantle, and have their two weeks rest period leave. The beer is excellent, the beaches are better than many of our own and the girls are good to look upon. Hundreds of international marriages grew out of the American ‘invasion’ of Australia during WWII.”
It is a note of caution to anyone involved in the submarine program. So, to the critics and sceptics who doubt our ability to achieve the monumental shifts described in the Defence Strategic Review, the National Defence Strategy and the Integrated Investment Program – I submit that evidence exists to the contrary. If we look to history, it shows that Australian
people, the Australian military and Australian industry have done it before and we will do it again. Are there challenges? Of course. I believe we are being transparent about them. However, conferences like this provide an opportunity to discuss them.
Importance of the Indian Ocean Region
I note the theme of this conference is Where AUKUS meets the Quad and what better place to host a conference with this theme than right here in Perth. We are just a short trip down the Swan River to the waters of the Indian Ocean. Australia has the geographic fortune of straddling two of the most significant oceans, in one of the most significant regions, at a strategically significant time, particularly for coastal states.
Consider this. The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest ocean, covering an area of 70.5 million square kilometres. It stretches from Africa’s eastern coast to Australia’s western coast and its waves lap the shores of thirty-eight coastal states. That collective impact equates to 2.9 billion people, or over 35% of the world’s population.
Accordingly, the Indian Ocean is critical to the security, or should I say seacurity, and stability of the region. The shipping lanes and trade routes of the Indian Ocean account for over one-third of the world’s bulk cargo traffic and two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments. Simply, the Indian Ocean is a sea of strategic significance, and for many, a sea of survival. The cargo that sails across its waters enables global access to food, precious metals, and energy resources that sustain modern life.
And if that were not enough, geography spells it out to us, literally. When looking at a map of the Indian Ocean, the natural landscape forms a shape like a giant letter ‘M’, as if nature itself was reminding us that maritime matters. Work with me on this. True maritime power harnesses all elements of national power, across the three services and all five domains, as well as academia, industry and every level of Government.
The Maritime Domain
But, it is true that seemingly, every contest, competition, crisis or climatic issue often occurs on or emanates from the sea. As Ian Urbina wrote in his book, The Outlaw Ocean
“For all its breathtaking beauty, the ocean is also a dystopian place…The rule of law – often so solid on land, bolstered and clarified by centuries of careful wordsmithing, hard fought jurisdictional lines and robust enforcement regimes - is fluid at sea, if it’s to be found at all.”
This has certainly become a common theme of late. This decline in global security as challenges to the rules based global order that has sustained our prosperity since WWII is at risk. But, what does this mean in the maritime context? In my view what happens on the sea plays a pivotal role in determining global security, as our dependence on the sea has only risen over time. We are indeed more interconnected and interdependent as a result of maritime trade than ever before. Now, it is the sea that sustains our modern, globalised lifestyles.
Accordingly, seacurity or insaecurity – as the case may be, either strengthens or challenges the Rules Based Global Order. Therefore, when inseacurity rises it should interest us all, regardless of what service, department or sector we work in. Or where we live.
So What?
So what for Australia specifically? We are committed to inoculating ourselves against inseacurity. As a three ocean, island trading nation, we have acknowledged that the challenging strategic environment is greater than any single service, industry or department can address and it will require the very best of our human capital. Part of acknowledging these realities means we recognise that we must have a Defence Force of sufficient strength to protect the wider maritime system upon which we ultimately depend.
Australia has operated with integrity and been incredibly transparent about the fundamental changes to our Defence Force. And I would submit that we are the most transparent Navy in the world when it comes to the future composition and capability of our submarine force. We have also acknowledged that the world, with the maritime domain as the bridge across it, has become so intertwined and complex that partnership is the only road to success. Partnership between military and industry, local government and academic institutions. Between militaries and our services. And partnership between nations that value seacurity and want to safeguard the prosperity which sustains us.
To my fellow Chiefs and heads of maritime delegations in the room, I’d like to leave you with a short story, taken from Aesop’s Fables. It’s about a father who had a family of sons and each son was very different. These sons often disagreed with one another and nothing the father did could stop it. One day they had a particularly bad argument about a course of action and the father had an idea. He asked one son to bring him a bundle of sticks, then handing the bundle to each of his sons in turn, he asked them to try and break the bundle. Each son tried very hard, then failed. The father then untied the bundle and gave the sticks to his sons to break one by one, which they did easily. The father than addressed his sons and said, “Do you not see that if you are divided among yourselves you will be no stronger than a single stick in the bundle? But together you are invincible. Unity is strength.”
And in that context, multilateralism and our cooperation, interoperability, interchangeability, integration and collective efforts at sea matter more than at any other time in our maritime careers.
Closing Remarks
I thank you all for your partnership. As peers I thank you all for your efforts as leaders of maritime forces in the Indo Pacific. And again I thank AMDA and the Western Australian Government for inviting me and giving me an opportunity to speak today. Thank you.