David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the Republic of Korea and the United States of America which took place from 13 to 24 September 2006. I seek leave to move a motion to take note of the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I will speak briefly to this report because I know that there are other speakers on this matter. The Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is exploring a reference relating to Australia’s capability with respect to naval shipbuilding. Pursuant to that reference we wrote to the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson, the Minister for Defence, and asked him if the committee might go to see Hyundai and Daewoo in South Korea and then some other naval shipbuilding operations in mainland United States. Thankfully, the minister was very supportive of the committee’s inquiry and assisted us by writing to the Prime Minister endorsing the proposal, and the Prime Minister authorised and further endorsed the proposal. I want to say thank you to Dr Nelson, firstly, and of course to my Prime Minister, importantly, for assisting us to get to the places that are set out in the report. So I thank my Prime Minister and my Minister for Defence for their assistance in facilitating this delegation, which really is more accurately described as a working trip in support of a reference.

I want to thank Senator Mark Bishop and Senator Steve Hutchins, the two members of my committee who accompanied me, for all of their assistance and hard work. This was a very difficult trip to many places—which I will set out in a moment—in the course of nine days. I also want to thank the officials who came with us. Ms Lisa Fenn, from the secretariat, was a tireless worker who greatly assisted the committee in our endeavours; indeed, our report would not have been the success that I believe it is without her hard work. And I thank Mr Martin Quinn, counsellor with the Australian Embassy in Seoul in the Republic of Korea; Mr Jim Gledhill, Defence Materiel Attache in Washington, who was of enormous assistance to the committee; and Lieutenant Commander Peter Mingay, a specialist marine engineer on exchange assignment in San Diego with the United States Navy, who assisted the committee with matters of technical information relating to engine systems, power systems et cetera.

The trip left Sydney on a Wednesday. We got to Seoul on Thursday morning at about 7.30. We got to Pusan at about 9.30, got in a helicopter and went to Daewoo. We had a look at their operation, which is large heavy ship building, and saw some submarines and other vehicles and vessels that they have been constructing for both South-East Asian countries and for their own government. We went to Hyundai on the following day and to Poongsan, a munitions factory that provides munitions for our five-inch guns on our Anzac frigates. On Friday we left for Los Angeles and on Saturday we arrived at New Orleans in Louisiana. On Monday we went to Northrop Grumman at Pascagoula to see Arleigh Burkes and LHDs being manufactured. We had an outstanding tour of that facility and learnt many things. On the following Tuesday I must say that as a Western Australian I was very proud to visit Austal’s premises in Alabama to see the construction of a very large, fast ferry for Hawaii and the new littoral combat ship which Austal has secured a contract to construct in Alabama. Austal is doing quite amazing things in the United States; from the things that we saw, I think they are going to go from strength to strength. I want to thank all of the staff at Austal for their assistance and for their support of the committee’s work in assisting us to understand exactly what they are doing.

We went to Lockheed Martin and were privileged to meet the CEO and chairman of the board, Mr Bob Stevens—the famous Bob Stevens in charge of one of the largest defence contractors in the world, at Lockheed Martin. Of course, Lockheed provide to us the Aegis system that is going on board our air warfare destroyers. That was at Moorestown in Pennsylvania. Then on the Thursday we went up to Raytheon at Tewksbury in Massachusetts to see the defence systems integration facility there. This was a most outstanding visit. The logistics and work being carried out by Raytheon in preparing and understanding systems to be integrated in defence platforms had to be seen to be believed. On the last day, the Friday, having been away for just over a week, we went to the General Dynamics operation at Bath in Maine to see where the Arleigh Burkes are manufactured. The Arleigh Burkes are the US Navy’s principal vessel as a platform for the Aegis phased array radar system, which will be the centrepiece of the new air warfare destroyers.

Having said all of that, I do not want to go on other than to say, again, thank you to the Minister for Defence for supporting the committee in the way that he did. The overall report is due to be tabled next week. It is a very large report, as one would expect, with the committee having travelled and done the work that we have done. I reiterate my thanks to all those people who assisted us. It was an outstanding trip and I think the committee benefited greatly from understanding what the world’s leaders in ship manufacture and construction are doing.