BEN HARVEY: ‘Isolated’ Perth hemmed in by global powers in an increasingly fractious world

Primary school geography teachers have a lot to answer for.

So much of our view of the world is shaped by the traditional maps we looked at in classroom textbooks.

The north-south orientation of the earth (which is completely arbitrary because our planet is round and exists in a universe which is ever-expanding in all directions) subtly prejudices us.

Look at the “traditional” world and you’d be forgiven for thinking Perth is ground zero of a geopolitical dead zone.

Desert to the east and nothing but ocean in the west all the way to Madagascar, which several cartoon movies suggest isn’t going to be a military threat any time soon.

If, however, you rotate the map by about 30 degrees clockwise you’ll see the west coast of Australia for what it really is — at least in a security sense. It’s a front line facing three of the most populous nations in Indonesia, China and India.

The 3.2 billion people in those countries are separated from us by an ocean that’s home to our most important trade routes and hosts the subsea telecommunications cables that keep us connected to the world.

View the world 30 degrees differently and you understand why Canberra is about to drop an eye-popping amount on a naval shipbuilding hub south of Perth.

Australia is an island, so the Royal Australian Navy was always going to get outsized attention during the re-armament program.

As well as $360 billion worth of nuclear-powered submarines, the navy is spending $20b on 11 new general-purpose frigates.

Three of those will be built at the Nagasaki shipyards by Mitsubishi (yes, our national security is in the hands of the company that brought us the Lancer) and the final eight are to be constructed at Henderson.

The seaside industrial zone, which is about a half-hour drive south of the capital, is ready neither for the frigate build nor the AUKUS maintenance schedule — programs which are meant to start within five years.

The Feds are throwing money at the problem. Lots of money.

Anthony Albanese has already committed $12b to the rebuild. Just one dry dock is going to cost between $4b and $5b (and we might need four of them) and the final price tag will be at least $50b.

Except it won’t, because this is a government project, so it’ll end up being twice that.

Policymakers have two uncomfortable questions to answer: who is going to pay for it and who is going to build it.

There aren’t too many options on the finance front. Canberra has spent all our money on important things like climate conferences nobody goes to and rugby league teams in Papua New Guinea nobody will watch, so the public kitty is lean.

To that end, Defence Minister Richard Marles has suggested superannuation funds get into the defence sector. He wants the likes of AustralianSuper to consider paying for the build in return for an annual rental payment from the Federal Government.

His logic is sound — super funds want long-term, stable investments and this contract would be at least 30 years in duration and guaranteed by the Commonwealth.

How kindly fund members will look on a massive investment in the international war machine remains to be seen. Super trustees are already copping a backlash for holding positions in BHP and Woodside — how are they going to justify a stake in a nuclear defence facility?

Well might we compare the pair (the pair being angry activist investors and a precarious social licence).

Once someone works out who is going to pay for it, we need to build the infrastructure.

The new docks at Henderson will consume three times the amount of concrete Perth’s residential builders use in a year and we’ll need about 10,000 tradies for the job.

The workforce doesn’t exist for this job.

Usually, we’d recruit from overseas but the Federal crackdown on migration means that’s harder to do.

Plan B is poaching from other States but that is going to be expensive. Perth will be in a bidding war with Adelaide (which needs workers for the AUKUS build at the Osborne shipyards) and Brisbane (which is getting ready for the 2032 Olympics).

To give the construction industry some breathing space the WA Government is considering deferring WA’s new port, which is billed as the State’s biggest infrastructure project.

WA’s peak civil construction industry body reckons that’s a bad idea.

Civil Contractors Federation WA chief executive Andy Graham says building Westport (which is the imaginative name given to the new harbour planned just south of Henderson) and the new military shipyards concurrently has its benefits.

“Like all major civil infrastructure projects, Westport and Henderson will involve multiple components and workforces — earthworks, utilities, concreting, piling, roads, rail and others,” Graham argues.

“The trick will be staging the projects to avoid delivery of the same component at the same time.

“Obviously, it wouldn’t make sense for, say, major concreting works on the projects to clash, but those scheduling issues can be addressed through collaboration — and that’s the sort of collaboration we are already involved in through joint State/Federal working groups.”

Graham reckons the State can’t afford to defer Westport given the uncertain time frame for future Defence works.

MPs who want Westport put on ice are worried the mega-project will mean housing starts will stall.

Graham believes that’s poppycock because “the housing and civil sectors don’t compete for the same workers”.

“I’m sure home builders would be more worried about their workers being lured away by the resources sector than by civil contractors,” he says.

The real problem for politicians isn’t the mining and energy industries outbidding suburban builders; it’s the defence sector outbidding resources companies.

Because if iron ore stays in the ground, who will pay for this geopolitical circus?