Aust, frigate rumours untrue

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 8

Aust, frigate rumours untrue

By

DAVE WILSON

Australian news media reports claiming the German Meko ship has been selected as the Anzac frigate design have been dismissed by sources close to the project evaluation group in Canberra.

A Melbourne newspaper printed the claim yesterday, and a New Zealand anti-frigate group made similar claims late last week.

A defence source involved in the ship selection project in Canberra said the claims were pure conjecture. “We’re not worried about the contents of the article published in Australia, but we are concerned that people are claiming things that have not yet been decided.” The source said the timetable for the frigate selection process

included a type recommendation being referred to the Australian and New Zealand Cabinets in either the first or second weeks of August. “Even the respective Cabinets don’t yet know the detail of the recommendations. There is a firm timetable for the procedure to be followed, and that timetable has not changed.”

Australia and New Zealand are expected to formally decide the frigate issue by August 20. The joint project evaluation team concluded its work at the end of June and the project has been navigating its way through defence committees in Australia, preparatory to a referral to the Cabinet. Cable Price Downer, the New Zealand partner of the Amecon consortium which is tendering to build the Meko design, supported

the Canberra remarks, saying reports that the German ship had won the tender were, at this stage, unsubstantiated. The Royal New Zealand Navy has poured cold water on a late bid by a Danish shipbuilder to sell its new fisheries patrol design as a cheaper alternative to the Anzac frigates. The ISB6 design, estimated to cost around $ll6 million each compared with the $3OO million each for the Anzac ships, was described by a naval spokesman yesterday as an ice patrol ship — not the surface combatant the Government had directed the Navy to investigate under the Anzac plan. Lieutenant Lawrence Tye said it was not a question of whether the Danish proposal gave New Zealand a cheaper ship, but whether the design conformed

with the many baseline characteristics required by the Government for any replacement of the Leander-class frigates. The two ships now under contention for the Anzac contract were the result of close evaluation of 23 designs world-wide, he said.

Lieutenant Tye said New Zealand’s role in the Anzac project had been timed so the first two ships would become available in the mid 19905, when the Lean-der-class frigates Waikato and Southland reached the end of their economic lives.

Scrapping the work done to date on selecting a replacement, and starting again from square one, could add three or four years to the replacement period, and compromise .the scheduled replacement of Waikato and Southland.