Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In recent weeks the Australian shipbuilding industry has been dealt a devastating blow. The recent announcement that the Abbott government will exclude local shipbuilders and manufacture supply ships offshore is a cruel move by a government blinkered by ideology and blind to its consequences for thousands of Australian shipbuilders. Nowhere is this clearer than in my electorate at the BAE shipyards in Williamstown. For nine months BAE Systems and its 1,000-plus employees had been waiting for action from the Abbott government. For nine months they had warned the government that the shipyards were in dire straits as work neared completion on the air warfare destroyers and the landing helicopter docks. With the completion of the AWDs and LHDs the shipyards face the infamous valley of death, where a lag in defence contracts will lead to a shortage of work, forcing the shipyards to close.

This predicament could have been easily fixed. The Australian Navy requires 48 new vessels to be procured in the next decade. Shipbuilding ought to be a growth industry in Australia with a rosy future if only it can survive the current drought of work. Of particular importance in this respect is the pressing need for Australia to replace the supply ships HMAS Sirius and HMAS Success. It was these ships the previous Labor government announced they would replace at the last election. All the Abbott government had to do was continue with Labor's plans, and the future of the Williamstown shipyards would be secured. Action could have started on saving these jobs nine months ago, but the Abbott government kept the shipbuilders of Williamstown waiting.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

They were kept waiting through March of this year, when defence minister David Johnston told ABC radio that whether Australia could afford to allow the shipbuilding industry to close was 'a very good question' and that 'at some point I'd like to think that, you know, we'll announce something.' They were kept waiting past the 1 April deadline of BAE Systems, the point where BAE had explicitly warned the Abbott government they would need to start making hard decisions about the future of their staff.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

Finally, in June, the Abbott government declared their plans for the shipbuilding industry—and the news was not good. The Abbott government were not going to sign the contracts already prepared by the previous Labor government. But, to make matters worse, the process would be opened for re-tender, and Australian shipbuilders would be excluded from participating! This from a shadow defence minister who declared before the election:

I get really fired up when I find us giving away our manufacturing base in the Defence space to foreign manufacturers, it's just not on.

I hear the Napoleon of the coalition backbench has gone quiet.

Yet upon becoming the defence minister the same man awards government shipbuilding contracts to 'foreign manufacturers' at the first opportunity. When explaining his reasons for this betrayal of Australian industry, defence minister Johnston stated, 'Australia is not in a position to manufacture those vessels'. Why is this the case? According to the defence minister, Australian manufacturing does not have the skills necessary to manufacture ships of this size. But we know on the advice received by Labor before the election that this simply is not true. A local build or, at minimum, a hybrid build could have easily been achieved. But the defence minister also found it necessary to blame the shipbuilders themselves for the decision to send the shipbuilding contracts offshore.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

Just as they did when 2,500 jobs were lost in Altona in my electorate when Toyota announced that it would cease manufacturing as a result of the Abbott government's policy change since the federal election, the Abbott government has a habit of blaming the workers for its own inadequacies. The shipbuilders of Australia should not be blamed for the Abbott government's blind obedience to the extremist ideology to offshore at any cost. If the Abbott government cared about the skills of our defence force, when why did they scrap the Skilling Australia's Defence Industry Program in the 2014 budget? Why did they axe $3.5 million of training opportunities for our defence workers—the very opportunities needed to make our defence workforce internationally competitive? This latest decision from defence minister Johnston is just another example of the extreme and out of touch policies of the Abbott government.

Labor will not stand idly by while the Abbott government builds these ships away from our shores. We will not sit and watch while the capabilities of a strategically important defence manufacturing industry are left to wither through government neglect. We will not sit on our hands while the jobs of thousands of Australians across the country are shipped offshore. And we will not blame the workers for the inaction of our own government. Labor will continue to fight for the futures of our shipbuilders in Williamstown today, in the future and across the nation.

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