Labor overruled Defence advice not to publicise problems with Pacific patrol boats, documents show

The Australian government decided to publicly release information about problems with Pacific patrol boats despite a warning from defence officials that this could harm important regional relationships.

Documents obtained under freedom of information laws reveal that three days before the government announced it was working to fix three problems, Defence urged it to take a quiet approach away from the media spotlight.

There is no suggestion that Defence wanted to hide the problem from Pacific governments, only that it favoured fixing the issues without media attention.

But the government disagreed with that view and argued for transparency. The government gave authority for Defence to publish a statement on 1 July about the exhaust fault and two other issues that had emerged in the previous 16 months.

While that first statement was apolitical, ministers promptly used the issue to make partisan political points against the previous government.

It is understood the government judged that the problems were unlikely to remain a secret for long and it would be better to proactively release the information than to leave it to emerge in a less predictable way.