Patrick Durrant | Sydney

Senior technical and engineering public servants working within the Naval Technical Bureau and CASG have gone on strike over concerns that valuable expertise is being lost and insufficient Commonwealth oversight on complex projects could endanger lives.

About 40 naval engineers, architects and other technicians working in ongoing roles within the APS have stopped work for one week on programs including the Sea 1000 Future Submarines, Sea 1180 Offshore Patrol Vessels and Sea 5000 Future Frigates. Personnel associated with sustainment programs have also joined the strike action.

"Our concern is will we only see change as a result of a coronial inquest?"

The union representing the technical personnel, Professionals Australia, told ADM there were next to no ongoing Defence employees in the technical area for the Sea 1000 program.

“They’re basically relying on contractors,” union official and spokesperson David Smith said.

Professionals Australia is concerned that Defence is becoming over-reliant on contractors who are not only proving costly but may also be failing to provide the appropriate level of scrutiny normally required by the Commonwealth.

“We’re beholden to a couple of sets of contractors – in dealing with issues concerning notional headcounts of employees, the Department is just depending too much on contractors to fill the gaps,” Smith said.

“The issue we have is that we are losing the retention of corporate knowledge – the cost of that knowledge is also substantial, as it’s in the realm of two to three times as expensive to do it via contractors.”

He provided an example of a chief engineer contractor working on one of the major shipbuilding programs being paid $500,000 a year. By comparison this role performed by APS in an ongoing basis would cost Defence about $130,000-$140,000 a year.

“Defence might end up paying another $20,000 to keep that APS employee in the job but the sum would never approach that being paid to contractors,” Smith said.

He alluded to conflict between parties working on projects saying they ultimately have different drivers.
“If your main driver is to make a profit, or just meet the bare bones of your contract, you will not be applying the level of scrutiny the Commonwealth should have.”

Smith said the Rizzo Review in the aftermath of the Kanimbla/Manoora scare determined that Naval Engineering had to be effectively rebuilt.
“Unfortunately, by the time the recommendations were handed down there was a new government which has basically stipulated that APS engineers couldn’t be recruited – they’ve made the situation substantially worse right at the time when drastic steps are needed to improve it.”

Smith said for the previous enterprise agreement there was a whole body of work that was done around engineering and technical officers, as their dwindling numbers within Defence had been identified as a real concern.

As the recent round of bargaining commenced, there was an understanding from Professionals Australia there was going to be particular work done to address the attraction, retention and professional development issues in those areas.

“It’s basically been wiped out,” Smith told ADM. “We’ve ended up with an agreement where these emerging issues can’t be addressed while at the same time conditions in a more general sense are going backwards.”

The primary outcome for the union is for the Commonwealth to invest in engineering expertise in-house – to ensure it has sufficient engineers across the relevant disciplines for the mass of significant acquisition and sustainment programs across Defence.

“There should be a 5-10 year workforce plan but we can’t see any evidence of it so far.”

The biggest fear the union has is that an accident should occur. “We’re stacking the odds in favour of a significant incident occurring. With HMAS Kanimbla (which almost ran aground after loss of main power while transiting through Sydney Harbour) we were lucky it wasn’t worse,” Smith said.

“Our concern is will we only see change as a result of a coronial inquest?”

Note: Defence has been contacted by ADM for a statement in response to the story.