By Aidan Morrison*
I recently attended the official Defence Industry Briefing in Sydney for not one, but two major ship-building projects: SEA 1180, the Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV); and SEA 5000, the Future Frigate. Those projects, worth nearly $40 billion over the next few decades, underpin the government’s commitment to a ‘continuous build’ shipbuilding industry, and are supposed to provide thousands of skilled local jobs, and support the myriad of small-medium enterprises that make up the supply chain in Australia.
