The only one who kept the deal with Japan alive was Tony Abbott because of his personal friendship with Japanese PM.<p>Mitsubishi Heavy Industries doesn't have an experience to build submarines overseas and there were significant risks leaving someone to "learn on the job".<p>USA has been (correctly) pressuring Australia to select vendor on its merit and not to take into account geopolitics. Geopolitically, Japan is a lot more important to Australia than France. This is the reason Japanese believed for so long they had the deal in the bag.<p>With Abbott losing his job, it became easier for France or Germany to hop in. Especially when new prime minister had agenda of damaging previous PM. I think Abbott must feel terrible about Japan not getting the contract but it only shows deals like these should be done at arm's length. Abbott even wrote personal letter to Japanese PM to apologize.
Interestingly enough, France used to make the same naïve mistakes the Japanese did : follow too closely the bid "rules", not lobbying enough, not taking political landscape into consideration, not attending to "social events", etc.<p>Having worked in the areospace industry, I've seen France lose some "in the bag" public markets by letting other countries lobby and spin bid's technical specifications to their advantage.<p>It seemed they learned the lesson, at least for this bid.
Here's one commentator's take on the matter, from the Australian Financial Review:<p><i>Can there possibly be an upside to [Prime Minister] Malcolm Turnbull's decision to squander billions of taxpayers' dollars building 12 French submarines in [the state of] South Australia?<p>It's hard to think of one.<p>Of course, there are potentially critical South Australian seats at stake in the coming election and Turnbull no doubt believes it's worth every penny to ensure that the Australian people are not deprived of his greatness.<p>But surely there were cheaper ways to buy off the South Australians.<p>With a 30 to 40 per cent local cost premium as a starting point and the history of the Collins class submarine to go by, the federal government could have hired all the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) workers to do nothing and the taxpayer would have been billions of dollars better off – because at least they wouldn't have been making grossly overpriced submarines.</i><p><a href="http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/alan-mitchell/turnbulls-submarines-buying-the-south-australian-vote-20160428-gohksu" rel="nofollow">http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/alan-mitchell/turnbull...</a>
General Douglas MacArthur once said: "The history of failure in war, or in any other human endeavor, can be summed up in two words: 'too late.'" This quote fits perfectly with the story.
Everyone is positioning this as though Abbott was selling out Australia to advantage his Japanese buddies.<p>In reality, the current administration is selling out Australians as a whole, to advantage specific workers in South Australia. Those workers are building the submarines in a MUCH less productive fashion. Some estimates are that the submarines will cost %40 more than if built in Japan. And this is a huge contract, worth tens of Billions of dollars. It is not unfounded to say that this contract is the equivalent of a charity payment of $15B or more to specific (small) groups of Australian shipbuilders.<p>Such a move only makes sense in two contexts:
1) a ruling party needs to win political support from a faction controlled by the benefitted labor group; or
2) the country decides as a policy that it makes sense to develop an indigenous industrial capability in the sector (or to prevent the loss of the capability if it exists).<p>The first concern is lame. The second one is also not compelling when you think of the opportunity cost of those Billions. The same Billions could be used to develop a domestic drone capability, or any of a hundred other technology infrastructures. Or, if we just think about the money as a bribe, you could bribe far more citizens with other forms of direct payments, which would cut out the private contractors who are the ones who will benefit disproportionately now.<p>This is not about France vs. Japan. It's about economic logic vs handout politics.
It is not too hard to understand. If you are inexperienced fighting with the big boys you will lose. As an Australian I hope we get something useful out of the tens of billions we are about to spend.
There are also technical reasons for the DCNS winning the bid: the Germans have no experience in building subs of this size, able to cross oceans (they build small coastal subs to cruise Baltic sea); the Japanese have no experience of anaerobic diesel-electric propulsion.
If you want to be strong in Asia you should work with the country in the region, i.e. Japan. France is a powerful country in this regard, but also not a very reliable one (cancelled Israel and Russia deals, for example).<p>I am sure there is more to it than just one businessman being smarter than the other one. Or AU leadership being strategically smart.<p>I believe it is a "divide and conquer" type of thing, one of "the great games" at play.
I'm confused, we're supposed to support an arms deal, while the word is having a hell of a time keeping it all together? Are we not past this boys and testosterone thing? It's not the 12th century.<p>Lets grow up kids. Just get to Mars already.