James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very passionate about a future made in Australia, which is in the terms of the motion before us. But, regrettably, I am in a great state of fear about one of the most exciting future industry opportunities in this country, and that is continuous naval shipbuilding centred in my home city of Adelaide. We've heard very frightening rumours in our media about the Hunter Class Frigate Program being potentially on the chopping block. The High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Stephen Smith—who also undertook the Defence Strategic Review—apparently claimed at an event in London that the program should be scaled back dramatically and possibly even acquired out of Glasgow shipyards instead of Adelaide shipyards. There will be no future made in Australia if this government isn't committed to continuous naval shipbuilding in Australia.

The opportunity has been there for the defence minister, the Prime Minister and others to rule out ridiculous speculation of purchasing significant naval capital vessels from other shipyards outside Australia. The silence has been absolutely deafening, and it is very concerning that it seems clear the government is considering dramatic changes to the naval shipbuilding program here in Australia, centred in my home city of Adelaide. It would be very easy to rule out any of these wild rumours and claims, but the fact that they're not being ruled out unfortunately seems to confirm that they are under active consideration.

Naval shipbuilding is one of the most complex industry sectors. It is absolutely at the forefront of future technology. The skills acquired in the naval shipbuilding sector, and in the defence sector more broadly, are extremely interchangeable with other exciting future industries—space and cyber. Space has been gutted. This government has ripped money out of investing in space, with satellites cancelled et cetera. The space sector is completely reeling because, under the previous government, we established the Australian Space Agency—which, of course, is headquartered in my home city of Adelaide—and we had an enormous program around investing in space and space technology but the new government has ripped all of that away. So 'a future made in Australia', while we're ripping money out of the space sector and putting a huge question mark over continuous shipbuilding in this country, is an oxymoron.

The most concerning to me is the AUKUS submarine program. I am a huge supporter of acquiring nuclear propulsion technology for the Navy, but it's vitally important that we're building those submarines and that we have that sovereign capability in Australia. What seems clear now is that the government will not commit to any form of minimum content—local industry content—in submarines, and there are claims and brags coming out of the UK that they expect to build these nuclear submarines all up in Barrow-in-Furness for the Royal Australian Navy. We already know the government has conceded that the first few submarines will probably be purchased from the United States.

Then, for the future AUKUS submarine as it's developed, we know that this government is spending billions of dollars to upgrade shipyards in the United States and the United Kingdom and putting billions of dollars into these programs to help them build submarines. If it were to transpire that the Australian taxpayer was paying the English to develop a capability to build submarines for us in lieu of our own workforce doing it here in Australia, that would be absolutely scandalous.

We're here to debate a motion about future industry and a future made in Australia, but I fear that the most significant, complex production in the history of this country—a nuclear submarine—is at risk if this government doesn't make very clear the minimum content and what's going to happen in Australia. It's at risk of possibly drifting through to being produced somewhere else.

That would be absolutely scandalous.

I take this opportunity to invite the government to commit to what they promised at the last election when it comes to continuous shipbuilding in Australia. We should be building frigates out at Osborne, with the Hunter program through BAE, and we should be building offshore patrol vessels at Henderson in Western Australia. There's a question mark over that now, and there are suggestions that we will possibly be acquiring vessels out of Spain, from Navantia. Walking away from those commitments is absolutely disgraceful, and we want to see some guarantees in this debate that those jobs are going to be right here in Australia so that we will have a future made in Australia.

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