18 March 2011

Transcript of SkyNews interview by Aus Minister for Defence about Bay class & C-17 buy.

The following is a transcript of part of an interview given by Stephen Smith (Minister for Defence) to SkyNews Australia.

Full transcript can be found on the AUS DoD website.
KIERAN GILBERT:    Okay, just finally, on the issue of acquisitions, I understand that the government is making a formal bid for a Bay Class vessel to fill the capability gap in the navy, and also, another acquisition for the air force.
STEPHEN SMITH:     Yeah, well, two separate things. Firstly, today, London time, we will formally enter a bid for the purchase of a large, heavy amphibious lift vessel, a Bay Class from the United Kingdom. I've spoken about this publicly before. But we'll put our formal bid in today to purchase the vessel.
And separately, this week, the government's also formally decided that we should acquire another C-17 large aircraft, and we'll do that as quickly as we can. And this has been - this has arisen in part because of the great utility we've got out of our current C-17 fleet in disaster relief, both in Christchurch, the earthquake recently, but now as literally as we speak, also in Japan, so far as the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunamis concerned there.
So we're - we are very keen to pick up the Bay Class to cover that amphibious lift capability, and the C-17s have been a very useful asset for us, and getting another one will really help us in terms of our flexibility.
So, very pleased with both of those initiatives occurring this week in terms of acquisitions.