Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Australia should ‘look carefully’ at cancelling French submarine contract" video.

  1. Well there's one basic piece of idiotic stupidity in the whole CANZUK discussion and that is its absolute stupidity of leaving out India, Malaysia, and other rapidly developing nations with huge economies and populations. It excludes Nigeria, Kenya and other nations with extraordinary resources. Plus it excludes all the small Caribbean nations which are so staggeringly wealth. Those little places are where the rich and powerful do all their banking. So CANZUK takes the failing UK Economy adds to it the reasonable economies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, while ignoring 1/6th of the worlds population, and ignoring the resources of 1/2 of Africa and ignoring the cash supply of the Caribbean. CANZUK as a concept is mindlessly white anglo centric. I wouldn't call it outright racist or white supremacist but it is an incredibly ignorant and arrogant.
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  2. Don't forget that little miss self righteous herself was right in the middle of the F35 contract as Tony Abbotts Chief of Staff. There was no tendering or competitive trial, they just bought a plane that was from day 1 a questionable outcome. It costs way more than it was meant to, it horrendously expensive to operate and there's very serious issues with spare parts. I do think she is quite right about many points on the submarines, but its a bit rich when she was involved in something similar.
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  3.  @rodneyhenchliffe754  I don't disagree too much on that. If you now look at the cost of these French subs its gotten ridiculous. Imagine if you go into a car yard and agree to by a car for $55k and when you go to pick it up they tell wait, your couple of options now make it $90k. Who wouldn't scream at that. If you divide 55 by 12 its 4.6 well an Astute is currently about $3 billion. So we could have 12 Astutes for a bit under $40 Billion. I'm an engineer and these days I'm asking who TF is doing the math because there's something not right with the costs. I have worked on a few multi-billion dollar resource projects and I can tell you BHP, Rio and others don't take very kindly to getting farqed on price. Just look at the French unit price for the nuclear version -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda-class_submarine_(France)#Conventional_variant €1.32 billion is just over $AUD 2 billion So where is the extra cost? 90/12 = 7.5 So where is the extra 5.5 billion. There is something in this project that stinks.
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  4.  @Crissy_the_wonder  That's a different take than has been argued, but thanks for the input. You sound like your a Brit? So far the only clowns I've heard be pro-CANZUK are a few Australians and Canadians. And its all for military reasons???? You make a good point as far as the British see it militarily, which is not at all. My argument is that the Commonwealth is 2.4 billion people and CANZUK is a way of telling 2.2billion of them to FK-off we don't want anything to do with you. How stupid can people be? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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  5.  Brett Mitchell  On the F35 - BULLSHIT. Its not better than the F22 or the Eurofighter or the latest Russian air superiority fighters. I'll grant its a good plane and a better option than an updated F16 or F15, but its not the best by a long way. Its running costs and the maintenance complexity makes it a terrible platform. Why don't you stop drinking the Kool Aid and start trying some facts.
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  6. Your right and its because our leadership is an endless shit fight between competing political factions. And Peta Credlin is part of those endless shit fights. Where was Peta Credlin when Australia bought the F35 without a competitive trial? At the time it was the biggest deal in Australian history and there was NO tendering process and there was NO competitive trial. At the time she was Tony Abbott's Chief of Staff. So its a bit rich of her to criticize others when she was in the middle of that fiasco. She can't complain abut us being reliant on America when she was right there in the middle of making us reliant on America. But she is dead right about the Submarine contract. It stinks and it doesn't matter if we bought Japanese or French. Why the "F" do we need 12 when the most we have been ever able to crew is 4 (out of 6) Colllins-class. The craziest part of it is the cost per boat at over $6.5Billion each. The American Virginia subs are about $4.4B-AUD The British Astute class subs are about $3B-AUD. So why are these French boats so expensive??? I'm an engineer and I'm not a great fan of nuclear power, particular the type of nuclear power that been used, but I also have to accept that for submarines IT'S THE BEST OPTION.
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  7.  @rodneyhenchliffe754  Your first sentence reads like you've been in public service?? Your 2nd paragraph is so spot on it barely needs to be said but should be said OFTEN. Mark Thatcher - Hmmmm. Careful on mentioning him. I had a boss 20+ years ago into car racing and one of his mechanics (a Brit) had worked for Mark Thatcher. Not a person to mention lightly or get into issue with and we'll leave that right there. On the French subs there is something we are not being told. I have been doing projects for 30+ years and for that project to jump that much at this point is simply wrong. Its just wrong. Somebody in this has done something stupid, like really stupid, like so mindlessly stupid it can only have logical explanation. 1 or both parties wants out and I suspect the French want out for some reason. Why else would they jack the price up so far at this stage. Somebody has most likely put a requirement or specification that's simply horrible and they have said fine your subs will cost "yikes" for causing so much grief. And its not the first time the Australian Navy cocked up - Super Seasprite, Collins class, HMAS Perth 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/hmas-perth-stuck-in-dry-dock-highlights-adf-challenges/11183870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaman_SH-2G_Super_Seasprite#Australia
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  8.  @rodneyhenchliffe754  There's no doubt on that and I certainly don't need an asshole like Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin or some second rate bullshit artist or any other clown telling me what I know better than they do. I work in electrical control systems and a while back worked with an American electrician whose background was in the US Navy as a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT OPERATOR. One day he explained his training and how they operated nuclear power plants in the USN. So I have first hand information on how the Americans operate nuclear powered vessels. He also made the case of WHY Australia needed nuclear subs and its so compelling that its not worth arguing. WHAT is worth arguing is how we do it. In 1980 at my High School speech night the old-boy who gave the main address was one of Australia's leading nuclear scientists. He made the case way back then that one day Australia would need nuclear power. I am a great fan of solar and wind but I also know they are NOT a 100% solution and we must have a secondary system to stabilize the grid. Of all the options available nuclear is the cleanest with respect to the climate. BUT I also do not want Australia using unsafe technology. Pressure Water Reactors (PWRs) are inherently unsafe and that was demonstrated beyond all doubt at Fukushima. I have actually worked in Australia's nuclear industry (on the mining side) and been through the full ANSTO nuclear induction. I started in aerospace but work in industrial control and safety systems. I have been certified with the 2nd highest rating any engineer can get in the world for functional safety and I know what's safe and what's not. Pressure water reactors are a inherently UN-SAFE while molten salt reactors (MSRs) are inherently safe because of how they basically function and operate. Better still MSRs almost entirely consume their fuel which means they produce far less waste - kilos instead of tons. Even better still Thorium MSRs do not produce plutonium as a by product and that shit is nasty. There is absolutely no point in anybody arguing for using the existing PWR nuclear power technology. No one with a brain should want it. The Australian public will never buy it especially after Fukushima. There is absolutely no point in arguing it - its idiotic. BUT if its explained properly what MSRs are and how they work and the residue that's left over and that they are inherently safe then hopefully enough people will allow us to have nuclear power and nuclear powered subs. BUT most importantly absolute pieces of arrogant crap like Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and all the other Murdoch hacks can just STFU.
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  9.  @justinboyan573  NO because they are regional like the EU is regional and the NAFTA was regional. Regional things are very different because of shared borders, shared security, shared natural disasters,.... CANZUK is 1950s throwback. We already have the British Commonwealth which has a staggering population and staggering resource wealth. If you are going to do something why would you throw that away. People don't realise that the British Commonwealth has almost 1/3 of the worlds population at 2.4 billion ->https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations One of the things the Chinese laugh at with the Americans. China has reached the point where its own internal markets dwarf America. There's 1.4 billion Chinese and 328 million Americans who buys more Apple iPhones? If the British Commonwealth became a trading block it starts with an extra billion over China, massive resources and a broad mix of labor and skills. To want something where you exclude 2.2 Billion people is so farqing stupid. I'm Australian of Anglo Saxon descent and when you strip below the surface CANZUK is a throw back to white British colonialism and that shit doesn't work for anyone except the most ignorant of people. I was working in Canada 3 years ago and they wont buy into it. I know plenty of Kiwis and they wont buy into it. I know plenty of Seth Ifricans they wouldn't believe anybody could be that stupid.
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  10.  @cousinjack2841  Yeah fine, but somethings of note from all you pro-CANZUKers. You keep saying I am wrong but never explaining where or how. You never argue any points, maybe because you have none. You keep claiming it will work but never explaining how and that's maybe because you have NO CLUE on how it could work. Why don't you get out from under your little rock and actually say something other than a cheap gutless insults. You clowns want to exclude 2.2 billion people from an economy because they aren't up to some standard that you haven't explained. Do you know that for the past 20+ years those are 2.2 billion people who are experiencing real growth. Australia's, New Zealand's, and Canada's growth is all linked to the growth of China. The next major population to grow is India and you idiots want to exclude 1.3 billion of them. After India there's the other 900million in the commonwealth and you want to exclude them as well. You CLOWNS are so IGNORANT and PATHETIC its embarrassing.
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  11.  Jack Jones  In what am I a snowflake? All you have done like the rest of your kind is open your mouth and said nothing. Your the one melting down because you can't deal with FACTS. This is the problem with far right wankers, and the clowns from the equally idiotic far left neither of you can handle FACTS. The biggest problem the rest of us have is trying to figure out if you're ignorant, stupid or both. CANZUK is trying to go backwards to a bullshit fantasy that never existed in the first place. You idiots think telling over 2.2 billion people to FK-off is somehow smart. How come NONE OF YOU can explain how CANZUK is a good thing?
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  12. @Bob Saunders That would be one of the smarter things to consider. It doesn't take anybody long to check the unit costs (they are all on Wikipedia). Here's the unit costs (from Wikipedia) converted to Australian $ British Astute -$3.48B (from $2.65 US 2015 est.) French Barracuda - $2.04B (from 2014 est.) US Virginia Class - $3.68B (basicUS Virginia Class - $4.47B (w/- VPM vertical payload module) Australia's new Attack class were to cost ~$4.6B each when the project was first costed at $55B they are now expected to cost $7.5B with the project now at $90B. The smartest thing we could do is simply by 12 Barracudas (that's even if we actually need 12 anyway) and save about $65 Billion. That would leave a lot of money for Hospitals, Schools, Power Stations - you know the stuff we actually need.
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  13. @Bob Saunders The whole ToT issue is mute. No matter what we buy for our military it comes with the technology and we have to know how to maintain it. Its that same for almost any technology that we import. Nobody imports black boxes. You might import something where the supplier also set sup shop to support and that happens - look at mining industry and the number of foreign companies who set up shops in Perth. I started with a degree in aerospace but have worked in automation & control systems for 30+ years. Honeywell's (massive American company) main center for mineral technology is in Perth. It started there to support the Aluminum industry and has just grown. Yokogawa (massive Japanese competitor of Honeywell) has its mineral technology center in Chile, because they went there to support the copper mining. So it wont matter if we got SSNs from the UK, France, America or even Russia. They'll set up a support base here. As to the NUMBER - 12 subs, that came from a 2009 white paper. Its still available for public download and the justification for 12 is in 2 paragraphs and all it amounts to is that some moron simply said "lets double the fleet." Its right there on page 64 parts 8.39 and 8.40. You'd think the justification for $90 Billion and the largest single expenditure in our history would be more than 1/2 a page in a 144 page document. https://www.defence.gov.au/whitepaper/2009/
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  14.  @garynew9637  In what way? You'd be right if you consdier Africa a political basket case but its resources are staggering in raw materials, arable land and people. I was in China 3 years ago for a short business trip and one morning I was discussing the issue of job loses from Australia to China with the interpreter. She told me a couple of interesting things including that China rarely had to offer cheap labor as western companies came looking for it. BUT the odd thing she said was that the Chinese were worried that the same western companies were now looking for even cheaper labor IN AFRICA. She told me it had many Chinese workers scared for their jobs and she described in EXACTLY the same terms Australian workers describe losing their jobs to China. That's one of the big fallacies of CANZUK it totally ignores what many multi-national companies ALREADY VALUE. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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