Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board member Ron Finlay has told a Senate estimates committee that the Coalition should have considered an alternative bidder for the $80bn contract to build a new fleet of submarines. Finlay said the NSAB advised the Coalition to consider dropping Naval Group when negotiations stalled in 2018, but the lack of a ‘Plan B’ meant it was effectively locked into using the France-based contractor:
Mr Finlay said the government’s naming of DCNS — which later became Naval Group — as the successful bidder without any alternatives had left it in a difficult position.
“In my experience, many decades of negotiating major contracts, if you do not have an alternative of either going to bidder ‘B’ or cancelling the project, yes, you are captured in a negotiation with few options,” he said. “That does increase the number of issues that can become a block to concluding the negotiations”…