Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

At the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, at full production, there'll be 4,000 to 5,000 people building our future submarines. In combination with those building our future frigates, the Osborne Naval Shipyard will be home to 7,000 highly skilled workers. To enable this, the government is investing in a skills academy, which will be situated at Osborne, and modelled very much on the training academy of BAE, at its facility at Barrow-in-Furness.

In Western Australia, ASC is standing up a workforce of 500 people to sustain submarines as part of the Submarine Rotational Force West, and that is happening right now. There are employees of ASC on their way to Hawaii to gain valuable experience. Indeed, by next year we will see a target of a hundred employees of ASC working and gaining experience at Pearl Harbor. That is in addition to 1,200 people that will be needed at the future Henderson naval precinct to build Navy's future platforms, including our general-purpose frigate. To see that happen, we're working closely with South Metropolitan TAFE, in Perth, to build the necessary skills. This is a future made in Australia to secure Australia, with high-skilled, high-wage jobs.

But to do this requires resources, which is why the government is increasing defence spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP. Those opposite have been repeatedly asked about defence spending and they have stubbornly refused to answer that question, which leaves them where they were at the last election, which is a spend of 2.1 per cent of GDP over the same period. But the issue is that 2.1 per cent will not build our frigates; 2.1 per cent will not manufacture long-range missiles; 2.1 per cent will not deliver us an amphibious army; and 2.1 per cent will not give us AUKUS. Those opposite stand for cuts to defence spending and, with it, they stand for cuts to jobs in South Australia and in Western Australia, the shadow minister's own electorate. But, much worse than that, those opposite now stand for compromising Australia's national security. The Albanese government is committed to increasing defence spending, to deliver our future submarines to keep Australians safe.

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