John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What we see today is what we see every day in this place—the blame game unfolding before us and two sides attempting to outdo each other on who is less responsible for the damage being done to our nation and, in particular today, to our shipbuilding industry. I am not speaking in favour of this motion; however, the government should not take that to mean that I support the lack of clear vision they seem to have for our shipbuilding industry. The fact of the matter is that this motion attempts to chastise the government for not building these vessels in Australia in order to protect our industry from the valley of death. However, my understanding is that building two supply vessels will only go a little of the way to saving the shipbuilding industry in this country. As much as I believe that we must build the future submarines in Australia, the way this government is going it will not be them who even makes the decision. Submarines are still years away.

What we need to be talking about today are other potential options—bringing forward the Future Frigate project, replacing the Armidales with steel-hulled boats built in our shipyards. We need to be talking about how our shipbuilding industry can be competitive on a world scale so we can also export. A strong shipbuilding industry does not simply rely on a strong skills base. We need to make sure that energy is affordable as well and that infrastructure at the yards has been upgraded and modernised to meet the requirements of the new multibillion dollar projects that are before us.

So, as much as I think today's motion is a cheap shot across the bow, I believe that this government must take all meaningful steps to help our shipbuilding industry to grow so that, when the time comes for the building phase of the submarine project, Australia will seem the most likely sensible option. What we need are long-term strategic decisions to be made and commitments with a 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-year vision—vision that was displayed by Ben Chifley with the Snowy Mountains project. We need to think of the abilities and skills that have been built up at the naval dockyards at Williamstown over generations and at the Australian Submarine Corporation in Adelaide. We need to be thinking about upgrading the slipways. Infrastructure such as this takes years to build and to design. It is not just about skills, as in the tradesmen; it is about the benefits to real people, communities and the nation. (Time expired)