Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am absolutely delighted to get a question from the member for Mayo about innovation and industry, because he, like me, is very excited about what the budget holds for industry policy and innovation policy into the future. Because, like the member for Mayo, right across the country this budget is the most exciting time to be in industry and in innovation.

Through our Defence Industry Policy Statement, committed to in this budget, we will be creating thousands and thousands of jobs right across Australia, in Cairns, Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Perth and Adelaide. They will all benefit from the extraordinary investment that we are putting into naval shipbuilding around this country. There are 21 pacific patrol vessels, 12 offshore patrol vessels, nine future frigates and 12 submarines and at least $90 billion of investment in naval shipbuilding around Australia, and all are driving high-tech, advanced manufacturing jobs. In that way, there are our defence industry commitments. As the minister for industry, I am particularly excited about the opportunities that this gives for advanced manufacturing and high-tech.

In this way, we are driving our innovation agenda, because the fourth pillar of the National Innovation and Science Agenda is the government as an exemplar. The Prime Minister and I, when we launched it last December, talked about using our procurement dollar—in that case, in ICT, but also in Defence—to drive innovation right across our economy; not to spend that money overseas but to try and use every lever that the government has at its disposal to drive innovation and high-tech jobs across the economy. That is what we have done in last night's budget.

It is not just in naval shipbuilding but right across Defence procurement. Whether it is the upgrade of Defence facilities and some of the barracks around Australia, the Woomera Defence rocket range, the Joint Strike Fighter program, the Poseidon program, support for our intelligence agencies or our radar and sonar capabilities, this is going to have a real impact in real firms, which you would have thought Labor would support rather than mock. There are firms like Leavitt Engineering, in the member for Wakefield's electorate, who are working on the Joint Strike Fighter program, the Collins-class submarines and Defence global supply chains; Nova Systems Consulting, in the member for Adelaide's electorate, who are working on the Air Warfare Destroyer and the LHD; and APC Technology, in the member for Port Adelaide's electorate. This is an area where, as South Australians, we can drive our Defence dollar to create jobs and growth.