Buying Local in Secret City
From Secret City (ABC Australia)
Categories:
Run time: 1:10
Clip Description: The Australian defense minister has to choose between submarines built at home and cheaper Japanese boats of comparable quality. She takes the expensive domestic option, and says plainly that she knows what it costs.
Comparative Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This is a cabinet minister in a Westminster system making a procurement decision, which makes it useful for executives and parliamentary government as well as for political economy. She is not a president: she sits in the legislature, she holds her post because her party commands a majority there, and she will answer for this decision at question time under collective cabinet responsibility. The clip also shows the standard political economy of protection — concentrated domestic benefits against diffuse costs — being chosen with open eyes rather than out of ignorance.
Possible Uses in Classroom: Good early in a unit on executives, because it gives students a concrete parliamentary minister to reason about before the formal comparison of presidential and parliamentary systems arrives. It also pairs with the House of the Dragon trade clip: both show a decision-maker who knows the restriction costs more and takes it anyway.
Discussion Questions
- The minister knows the Japanese boats are cheaper and just as capable, and orders the Australian ones anyway. That is not a mistake; it is a choice about which costs are visible and to whom. Who would have noticed if she had bought the cheaper option, who notices the extra money, and what does the asymmetry tell you about why defense procurement is domestic almost everywhere?
- She is a cabinet minister in a parliamentary system, so she sits in the legislature, keeps her post only while her party commands a majority there, and answers for this decision under collective cabinet responsibility. Work out how each of those three features shapes what she can be held to account for — and how a presidential system’s defense secretary, appointed and confirmed but never elected, would differ.
- Governments defend domestic arms industries on grounds that go beyond jobs: sovereign capability, supply security in wartime, and the risk of depending on a supplier who may one day decline to supply. Are those arguments different in kind from ordinary protectionism, or the same argument in a uniform? Take a position, and say what evidence would settle it.
Assignment
Australia’s submarine program is unusually well documented, and its recent history is a natural experiment in exactly the question this scene raises: the Attack-class contract with France was canceled in 2021 in favor of the AUKUS arrangement with the United States and the United Kingdom. Reconstruct the decision in about three pages from public sources — the Australian National Audit Office has published reports on the program, parliamentary Hansard is online and free, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute publishes cost analysis. First, establish what each option was expected to cost, and when. Second, identify the arguments actually made in parliament for the domestic build, and sort them into economic, strategic and electoral. Third, and this is where the work is, ask which of those arguments would have been sufficient on its own. A defense procurement decision is over-determined by design — everyone involved can point to a reason that is not the real one — so say what it would take to know which reason was doing the work, and whether the public record can supply it.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons, uploaded by Amel Ben Abdesslem.
For AP Students
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 2: Political Institutions
Topics: 2.1 and 2.2, on parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems; 2.3 Executive Systems
Also reaches: Unit 5: 5.2 Political Responses to Global Market Forces
Skill: Country Comparison
Big idea: Power and Authority
Course countries: United Kingdom, Mexico, Russia
A minister chooses the more expensive domestic supplier over the cheaper foreign one. She sits in the cabinet, holds a seat in the legislature, and can be removed by it, and that combination is the whole difference between a parliamentary executive and a presidential one. The clip lets students watch accountability run through the legislature rather than around it, which is easier to see in a procurement argument than in a diagram.
Discussion questions
- In a parliamentary system the executive is drawn from the legislature and can be removed by it. Name two consequences of that arrangement for a minister making an unpopular spending decision.
- Mexico elects a president directly, who then appoints a cabinet. Russia has both a president and a prime minister. Pick one and explain who would make this decision there and who could be held responsible for it.
- Governments protect domestic industry for jobs, for security, and for votes. Are those three reasons equally good? Rank them and defend your first choice in two sentences.
Short activity
The one-paragraph comparison (15 minutes). Students write a single paragraph comparing how a defense purchase like this one would be decided in the United Kingdom and in Mexico. The paragraph must name the institution that decides in each country, name who can remove that decision-maker from office, and close with one sentence on which of the two systems makes the decision easier to reverse. That is the structure the comparative analysis question asks for: a stated similarity or difference, then an explanation grounded in each country rather than in general terms.