Originally Posted by
artee
And the Australian Submarine Corporation incurred the famous quote by the Defence Minister at the time - "I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe". It was 8 years ago, but even so...
Defence Minister David Johnston
I believe that was when PM Tony Abott was strongly in favour of having 12 diesel electric submarines built in Japan and comments like that were designed to prepare the public to accept that they wouldn’t be built locally.
I understand that ASC has been restructured by a competent CEO and is now considered to be capable of building the future submarines - provided they can find, & train, sufficient staff. This is a problem affecting most companies in Western countries.