Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is creating jobs in the defence industry to support our economic recovery as we come out through the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a pleasure to get a question from the member for Stirling. I want to thank him for his service to our nation and also thank him for his passion and interest in Australia's defence industry.

This morning, the Prime Minister and I had the pleasure of travelling to Datapod in Fyshwick together with the Minister for Defence, where we met—and I'm sure the Prime Minister would agree—some very, very impressive systems engineers. This is a great credit to Datapod and a great credit to those young people who've got, they tell me, their 'gem' job—it's the job of their dreams—so congratulations to them. Whilst we were there, we had the pleasure of announcing our government's $1 billion jobs and recovery plan for defence industry. Proudly, that will create around 4,000 new Australian jobs.

This package includes around half a billion dollars of further investment in estate and infrastructure. What's important about this package is that the majority of this work will be done in regional Australia, with a great focus on those areas that have been impacted by the bushfires. A couple of good examples—out at HMAS Albatross at Nowra and also out at RAAF Base East Sale in Gippsland. During the coronavirus, many of the bases' major contractors had issues with getting human resourcing materials across state borders. That enabled the local tradies and the local contractors, those regional contractors, to get opportunities that they ordinarily wouldn't have got. So this half a billion dollars is critically important for those tradies who are still trying to get ahead, who've been impacted by bushfires. This is going to be an incredible injection for those local regions. It's great news for them.

In more good news, the package also includes an increase to a number of defence skilling and innovation grant programs. In particular, there is what we call the SADI grant program, Skilling Australia's Defence Industry, and we've increased that from $4 million a year to $17 million a year. This is important because we need to continue to develop our defence industry skills for Australia. We need to help businesses who want to get into defence industry. We need to give them the skills they need, even just to tender for that work. We need to make sure that those individuals who want to transition from one career or one industry into defence industry get that opportunity, like ex-Qantas or like ex-Virgin technicians who are looking for a long career with maintaining our aircraft. There are great opportunities for them.

As I've said in the House here a number of times, our government has continued to back defence industry, in particular with the payments of invoices. Since March, we've paid 190,000 invoices, valued at $15 billion—$11 billion of that has been paid early. We continue to back Australians. (Time expired)