Nick Champion (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister recently came to South Australia and failed to guarantee the Collins class sustainment jobs would remain in South Australia and not be shifted, at great cost, to Western Australia. This is a political problem of the government's own making. It's now caught in a vice of indecision, unable to guarantee submarine sustainment jobs in South Australia or to promise them to Western Australia, as some in their ranks would have them do. There is also, according to both the ABC and the Financial Review, a very real delay in the design stage of the Hunter class frigate. The government should just come clean about what is the worst-kept secret in Defence—that there is a delay of somewhere between 12 and 24 months in the Hunter frigate shipbuilding schedule. If this delay is accepted, we will probably get a better frigate. If the design stage is rushed, we will probably get a worse one. The design stage of any shipbuilding schedule is critical to productivity in the shipyard and performance at sea. Denial of this problem will only cause a second 'valley of death' in South Australia in 2022. If we combine a shift in submarine sustainment jobs with the delay of the frigates, it will be a very severe valley of death indeed. In the first valley of death, we lost 1,000 jobs. This one could be just as bad.

If a delay is accepted and if the government accepts that it cannot move submarine sustainment jobs, then basically a solution can be found—a solution that will protect jobs, capacity, expertise and productivity in Australia's shipbuilding industry, both in South Australia and in Western Australia. The government does have very real options to retain shipbuilding jobs in both states—to protect shipbuilding jobs in South Australia and to expand them in WA. It can order an extra six offshore patrol boats to fill the gap in the Hunter class frigate schedule, taking it from a total of 12 to a total of 18. These offshore patrol boats could be used in a manner as outlined in this ASPI report. Armed with a Naval Strike Missile and with mine-laying capabilities and UAV capabilities, they would expand our maritime capacity at a time of great instability. So I think there's a solution here for the Morrison government. They don't have to hack into submarine sustainment jobs in South Australia. They don't have to disappoint Western Australia. They can protect and expand jobs in both states by ordering additional offshore patrol vessels. (Time expired)