Major re-engineering projects at our ship repair facilities on both coasts, carried out with the full cooperation of the unions, have succeeded in reducing costs significantly and have introduced sound business management principles in the shipyards. Our Alternate Service Delivery programme will submit a broad range of non-core activities to market testing. Our goal is to identify the most cost-effective way of delivering the services required to support our Armed Forces. In many cases, our in-house units will compete with the private sector, an approach which was successfully implemented in the UK and Australia and which will give a fair chance to our employees to maintain their job in the public service if they can provide the service at a competitive price. It must also be remembered that the Department of National Defence is only part-way through a massive effort to downsize, restructure and renew.
Results take time to materialize.
We still have work to do but we have made good progress on a number of fronts and we continue to do so. We are confident that we can meet the challenge. Indeed, we are determined to do so, and so are the many thousands of dedicated and highly professional members of our Defence Team, both military and civilian.