Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In South Australia at the moment we are facing pretty difficult times. This motion was put up by the member for Makin, and my electorate of Grey, which has virtually all the resource projects in South Australia situated in it, is feeling quite the brunt of this at the moment. We have just had an announcement this week of further retrenchments at Roxby Downs, at the BHP operation there at Olympic Dam. We have had the recent announcement and approaching closure of the Alinta Port Augusta power stations, which has been brought about, it must be said, by government policies from both sides of politics. It is the inevitable outcome of preferencing in subsidising renewable energy. Many of us will applaud that outcome, but there is a very real cost on the ground. Arrium operation in Whyalla has already put off over 600 workers at Southern Iron, and they are undergoing a review at the moment.

There are quite a few storm clouds around at the moment, and we are dealing with some displacement and high unemployment levels, so it is right that we should focus on how we can maximise our input and the employment prospects and opportunity for our citizens. I do not think this debate is a particularly partisan one, and I do not really want to go down that path, but I could not let the member for Makin's comments about Rossi Boots go past. I concur with the member for Hindmarsh's view on it. My recollection of it was that, in fact, the Rossi Boots contract was all but let by the time we came to government. So the whole process had gone through during the previous government. The recommendations were made. Defence had dealt with it. Everything but the announcement had been done. It was far too late, in fact, for us to intervene in any way, and I was, like the member for Hindmarsh, very disappointed. I think the member for Makin was probably of the same view.

However, there are some positive things happening as well, and the member for Hindmarsh has already touched on the announcement made the week before last week on the frigates and the commitment to the naval shipbuilding industry that we will have a continuous build here in Australia. This will have a lot of ramifications for our workforce and for our skill levels going forward. In fact, recently I spent some time in France and in Germany. I went to Cherbourg in France and to Kiel in Germany to inspect their submarine building facilities and met with representatives of those companies both here in Australia and in their home countries. Here in Parliament House I also met very recently with Mitsubishi, the Japanese submarine builders. I have hopes of visiting their yards in Japan as well.

The point I want to make about the competitive evaluation process that the government has chosen is that all three of those manufacturers are of the mind that the best outcome will be either a significant or a complete build in Australia. This will maximise Australian content in a very real way. They understand that there is pressure on them to perform at that level. I have quoted a number of times that the Germans in particular have said they are prepared to build the submarines completely in Australia. They are prepared to do it on a fixed price and they are prepared to have an audit from the German navy. They are not controlled by the German government and they are not owned by the German government, but the German government has put this up as an option to guarantee that we get the same value for money as the German navy. I have said a number of times that this will be difficult to walk past, but I expect the other two bids to come in roughly similar and the competitive evaluation process will bring those options to the fore. I am very confident of that.

In closing, I would like to point out that the federal government is spending over $85 million on the Cultana expansion. From my point of view, when I talk about local procurement I am talking about local procurement off my patch. This is, as I pointed out before, the eye of the storm in the employment program in South Australia at the moment. I have had a number of meetings with Defence, I have spoken to the relevant parliamentary secretary and I have hosted forums in Whyalla and Port Augusta to try to maximise this outcome. I will keep banging on doors to make sure that we get the maximum for my constituents.

See this speech in context