Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to welcome the government's decision to implement a continuous build of surface warships in Australia but especially the construction of the Future Frigates in South Australia. I have been lobbying very hard for defence work for my state, as have all South Australian members and senators, so I particularly welcome the bringing forward of the Future Frigate program to 2020, which is three years earlier than was scheduled under Labor. We are also going to be bringing forward the construction of the offshore patrol vessels by two years, with a continuous onshore build, commencing in 2018.

Australia has experience in building the Huon class minehunters, the Anzac class frigates and, more recently, the Air Warfare Destroyers, but what we have had is a boom and bust and not a continuous build. Now having decades of work in a continuous build is a very exciting opportunity for naval shipbuilding and it is an exciting opportunity for South Australia. This investment will be good for economic growth and is a strong vote of confidence in South Australia's shipbuilding capability. In the short term, these two measures will sustain around 1,000 jobs that would have otherwise been lost. Once both programs ramp up, they will guarantee around 2½ thousand Australian shipbuilding jobs for decades. This strategy gives decades of certainty to our shipbuilding workforce and to industry and is very good news for my state. With Navy capability being the centrepiece of the upcoming defence white paper, the outlook is good for South Australia.