SENATE

Wednesday, 1 March 2017 Senate Page 31
experience in other parts of government is that it can take 12 months just to understand what the problem is, let
alone successfully implement it. When you say it is closed out, can you provide us with some assurance that it has
actually been actioned and the implemented result is achieving what was intended?
Vice Admiral Barrett: It is being actioned. One of the aspects of that in the ICT was identifying those
particular methods by which we will maintain configuration, management, control et cetera throughout each of
the fleets. That identification of the system we will use has been made. That in and of itself sits within the
department's view of where we are going with future ICT reform. But at this moment we are using programs that
have been around for some time—AMS, for instance. Part of the major issue was to assure ourselves that we had
populated AMS with the correct data to the full amount both in breadth and depth. That is still an ongoing issue. It
was always going to be something that was going to take time. The issue for me, though, is that I was not seeking
to measure success by saying that we had 100 per cent in breadth and depth. I wanted to be assured that, as a
result of doing that work, I could assure seaworthiness of the platforms. So it was very much outcome focused. I
am convinced that we are able to demonstrate seaworthiness outcomes even though we are still going through
some of those measures within the ICT roles. But there are measures in place to continue to populate those
particular IT requirements.
Senator FAWCETT: I completely concur—outcome is good. I will come in a minute to some questions
around sea-ready days across the various fleet units. Just on recommendation 14, for example—monitor and audit
technical compliance—I am just after an indication, now that you have that system in place, of whether the results
of that are what you expected. You obviously have had experience with the airworthiness system previously as
you compare what DGTA finds with their audits. Are you finding that Navy is moving toward or reaching some
of the benchmarks of Airforce?
Vice Admiral Barrett: We are in the way that the system works in place. We set out not specifically to copy
the airworthiness regime because there are differences. There were compromises that had to be made given that
the management of technical integrity in the surface fleet is somewhat different from a fleet of aircraft. But part of
the assurance regime included things like seaworthiness boards, raising of corrective action and the management
of those corrective action reports et cetera. All of those things are in place. I am comfortable that we have taken
all of the right steps. What I am seeing is again outcome based—I am seeing people making appropriate riskbased
decisions given the knowledge that they now have. That does not mean that all of our ships have to be
seaworthy all of the time on every occasion. But we have a better understanding of the technical integrity due to
those systemic measures that we have put in place. There are a large number of corrective actions that need to be
made. There are stresses on the system in place in terms of seaworthiness boards and all of the actions that come
out of that. But what I see and what I have absolute confidence in and what I tell the Chief of the Defence Force is
that I have an assurance that we are managing within all of the appropriate tolerances to be able to deliver the
outcome. There is a benefit to doing all of this. That benefit that I see is that we have had a dramatic increase, I
would say, in availability of in particular submarines, which is Coles related, but also with our other platforms at
the moment. As we speak, we have about between 10 and 12 ships off the Western Australian coast performing
an exercise as a task group. We have not seen that for a long time. Availability has improved and I put it down to
improved engineering management.
Senator FAWCETT: That is probably a very good segue. Can you give me a quick summary of what you
have closed out with Coles? My understanding on availability is that late last year you actually had five of the six
Collins class submarines available or deployed.
Vice Adm. Barrett: If I can strip away all of the things that Coles sought to do, it was to demonstrate that we
need to take a fresh look at how we conducted submarine operations at all levels as an enterprise. That is, it was
not just Navy, it was not just CASG or DMO at the time and it was not just industry; it was actually an enterprise
to look at all of it. He did three reports. The first one was I will not say damning, but it clearly pointed to things
that we were not doing. The evidence was obvious—we were not getting submarines to sea at the levels we
needed. His second report a year later, which was about two years ago now, indicated that there were
improvements and we had taken on board the basics. Some of those basics were pretty simple at the end of the
day. He reminded us that we own six submarines. He said that from that you should be able to provide four
submarines to the fleet commander, from which he can deploy two from there. So the other two would be for
training et cetera. He gave us until the middle of 2016 to demonstrate that we could achieve those sorts of
measures as a benchmark. That was for availability. Following through on his measures, closing together on what
was needed from an enterprise, we managed to do that—we met those targets last year in June. Indeed, it is
correct that at the end of last year we had five submarines in the water, but the fleet commander had the four that
were needed and we had two that had been deployed. Indeed, over the last 18 months we have met those
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