Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, , 5:26:43 to 5:32:34
Officials address the remediation needs of the Captain Cook Graving Dock at Garden Island. They discuss the lack of alternative large-scale docks in Australia and the potential use of regional partners or in-water maintenance technologies during remediation periods.
Topics: Infrastructure, International law
Speakers: Speaker 15, David Hanley, James Paterson, Unknown Speaker
>> Um, it's a a product of interest, we call it, Senator. So, um, it has some, uh, remediation work that needs to occur to it. It's currently serviceable. you will know that we have a landing helicopter dock sitting in there today. HMAS CRA um or Adelaide, can't quite recall. >> Adelaide, my apologies. HM Adelaide. Um when uh at an ideal opportunity, we will continue to do remediation work. Um Talis is the contractor that we use to support us in making sure that the dock stays serviceable.
>> When is that remediation work scheduled?
We're waiting for the right opportunity to schedule it in based on availability. Senator because we're not the only it's defense use but it's also other commercial use
>> commercial use as well. Correct. So so basically you need a gap in the pipeline of work to be able to do it >> because right now what is our alternative to Captain Cook if it were not available
>> right? And so what we're trying to do is stage the remediation in chunks.
>> That wasn't rhetorical. That's actually a question. What is our alternative?
>> Our alternative for captical graving
dog. >> Yes.
>> We don't have anything that of that size and scale today. Yeah. >> And so it's very important that when we we maintain the availability of the captain graving dock.
>> But I mean if remediation has to occur at some point it will be unavailable.
>> Correct senator? And we work closely with uh with Navy um on making sure that in contingency arrangements depending on the size of the ship senator like if it's a smaller size ship clearly that can go elsewhere but if it's a large ship like a landing helicopter dock >> then yes we would work with Navy on >> prioritizing that work >> over the remediation
>> but once the remediation starts it has to be finished presumably. Yeah,
Senator. And it's like any other project like we can do it in a staged way that ensures that it's not down for considerable periods of time like matters of years. >> We can do it in months. And so we're working through that now with uh our contractor to work out how we deliver that.
>> Yeah. But we can't always anticipate the demand for facilities like these. I don't think the LHDs are expected to be uh where they are for as long as they have been. Um, so let's say we go into remediation at Captain Cook and then we discover that we do need to do work on one of the larger ships that can't be done elsewhere. What would those contingencies be? What are those backups?
>> Senator, um, sorry interrupt, Mr. Hanley, that's probably um, straying into my accountabilities. Vice Admiral Buckley, Chief of Navy. Um, as we plan to sequence the remediation work on that dock, first thing, as Mr. Hanley said is we will clearly do that at a time when we're not not going to be undertaking scheduled dockings. And to be clear, we're only talking about um those larger ships in the fleet. So the landing helicopter docks, the auxiliary oilers and so on. Um for frig, destroyers, um conventional submarines, there are other
options available.
>> Uh so yeah, the uh auxiliary oilers, so supply and store. So those four larger ships LHDs and the um the AOS so supply is one such example. So we would sequence that work in accordance with that. Um clearly there there is as Mr. Hanley said there is no other dock of that size in Australia. So we would make arrangements with partners in the region just as other partners could make arrangements with us. So there are other facilities with allies and partners um that we would seek to make um in advance of that such that we could do that and they could also include commercial arrangements for example sometimes we dock our ships uh even now in Singapore for example Singapore, Japan, Republic of Korea, United States you can you can think of the sorts of partners that we would have to make arrangements with in the event that we had a contingent dock. Uh the other thing that is worth noting is we've significantly advanced our capability with our partners on doing inwater maintenance. Uh one such example I'm thinking of is about 18 months to two years ago. We had to do some work uh on one of the auxiliary oilers. That work would have normally been done in a dock but we use some new technology cooperation with the United States Navy to be able to do that work in situ in the water using some of those technologies. So the amounts of times that you have to dock a ship or a submarine are reducing in the context of the sort of work you can do in the
>> Um obviously this is a worst case scenario but um if there's conflict in the Indoacific over which we have no control uh we're not going to be sending our heavy ships to uh facilities in the region uh to be maintained. You know how how many options would we have in that that instance if Cook is under remediation?
>> Yeah. Well, clearly in a con in a conflict scenario that is going to change the shape of optionality. Um, and you know, we need to look at that. There are less options in the southern hemisphere than there are in the rest of the world. Um, but by way of example, it's still early in the development, but the New Zealanders are building quite a large dock. Uh, I think it's called the Northland dock, which we'd investigate. Um, but there are other ways of doing that. You can actually bring docks to the country as opposed to the other way. large very floating docks can actually be sailed or towed into location. So you don't need to necessarily send the ship
>> probably not going to be moving a slowmoving target though across the Indo Pacific in a conflict period. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I actually just one related question there and then I should say the call for for it to be shared. Um what's the current state of the docks at Williams at Williamtown Williamstown shipyard in Victoria?