Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend Senator Xenophon for his articulate contribution with respect to the economic and technological benefits—and other benefits—to South Australia. But I do have to take issue with Senator Edwards's contribution. Basically I have said here before that he is bereft of knowledge outside of the wine industry, and I think I am getting further and better particulars and evidence about that every time he contributes.

This is so far off the planet from Senator Edwards. Jobs—and union jobs—highly paid, highly skilled jobs involve employers. They involve businesses; they involve technology; they involve technology parks; they involve very successful enterprises. And I would have thought they would be the natural constituency of someone purporting to be a Liberal.

His contribution repeatedly ignores the value of the defence industry to South Australia. To throw in the odd interjection of 'Where's the money?' or 'The NBN!' is not serving South Australia's interests well. That is what he is elected to do. He is elected as a senator for South Australia to serve South Australia's interests. That includes the interests of all South Australians. He may be more partial to employers; I do not have a problem with that, because employers employ workers; they provide opportunity for advancement.

There is another former Liberal in South Australia; he was the leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia and is now the Minister for Investment and Trade, the Minister for Defence Industries and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs—Mr Martin Hamilton-Smith. He has an outstanding Liberal pedigree, but he could not stomach the position of the other side and he joined the South Australian government. Have a listen to some of the things that he said:

It beggars belief that any federal government would seriously consider spending up to $250 billion of Australian tax payers' money on buying naval ships from overseas to create jobs and enterprise in someone else's land ahead of ours.

He has obviously caused a lump in all of the spend on defence shipbuilding and submarines over the life of those things. That is the important thing that Senator Xenophon is homing in on. This is a spend over decades—a spend over thirty years—and it is a spend that we have had a high level of investment in. With the Collins class, we have finally got it right. And the Minister for Defence has confirmed that; the problems with the Collins class are gone.

What has really distorted this debate is that it is viewed in a prism of economic terms, in the view of one budget or two budgets. What we should be looking at is economic benefit and economic cost over 30 years. We should be looking at our capability to build submarines in this country and to guarantee we can sustain it during conflict and peace. 'During conflict and peace' is a very important point. The technology that is fitted to submarines or aircraft or air warfare destroyers often comes from another provider—the United States is the most obvious example. They have stringent requirements on those add-ons, if you like, that make the capabilities efficient. We need to be cognisant of that.

I do not think anybody is seriously suggesting the we simply go out and buy a submarine off the shelf and hope we can get the mileage right and the range right and the capabilities right. The most obvious people to buy submarines off if you are just going to do that is the Chinese; they have 60 of them. If you are just going to go to a discount warehouse and say, 'Who has the cheapest submarines and warships?', and buy them, you ought to come out and tell the South Australian electorate that.

They ought not to stand up and say, as has repeatedly been said in this chamber: 'We will deliver the submarines from right here in ASC in South Australia. The coalition today is committed to building 12 new submarines here in Adelaide.' That is on the public record repeatedly. It is built on the investment of previous Liberal governments and Labor governments. Sure, it has not been a great, 100 per cent, resounding success, but tell me anywhere in the world where this capability has been developed without problems, where designs have translated to a build of a specced-out vessel that performs absolutely as it should.

A lot of these things, the capabilities that we require, are not what the warship or the submarine were originally designed for. I cannot go anywhere in Adelaide without being asked: 'What are we doing about the submarines?' You will meet people who say: 'Economically we probably can't afford them today in this light'—if they think the budget is in a bad state—'Nevertheless, we should do it, because it's the right thing for this country. It's the right thing for those kids who are seeking apprenticeships. It's right for the small and medium enterprises who are seeking to sustain their 25 to 30 workers. It's the right thing for those transport companies that deliver the wherewithal that keeps those businesses going. It's the right thing for those smoko vans that sell their wares around the place. It's the right thing for the service stations where workers come and go and fuel up from.' If we are to take Holden out and if we are to diminish our manufacturing capacity any more in South Australia, we are really going to face huge challenges, not small challenges.

We have a really good defence industry; up to 27,000 people are sustained by it. It is not a static industry; it is an industry that trains people. The industry gets apprentices in—and they may well do their apprenticeship and go and work in the mines or in some other section of the economy. Take that all away, and what is South Australia going to be left with?

Well, Senator Edwards will be all right because he will be still growing his grapes. What are we to be left with? Where is the opportunity for people who go to TAFE, who get an education as an electrician or a fitter and turner? What will we be left with? Very little. This is a fundamental decision which should be viewed over the long term.

David Johnston stood there and said we will do it. The Prime Minister is backing away from it. We, the South Australian senators in this chamber, should be as one on this issue. Every Liberal and every Labor senator should be standing up for this capability to be maintained, improved and sustained in South Australia. What hinges on this decision are 27,000 Defence jobs in this state, about 3,000 jobs in shipbuilding and industry activity worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the 30- to 40-year horizon. And it is a really widely held, deeply felt issue in the whole of South Australia.

I have heard cynics say that the Liberal Party thinks it is at risk in one seat in South Australia. I will make a bold prediction here: if they go down this path and they shut down this section of manufacturing on top of Holden, they are at risk in more than one seat. It is such a widely held and deeply felt issue that they will be closing down the manufacturing in our state, which was probably created by Playford. Playford was the one—people can go back a bit further than me and argue there was Labor involvement in that—who thought that manufacturing and South Australia were a good fit. And for a very long period of time we have had automotive manufacturing and it has been a very good fit.

I have been involved in trouble-free deals with the automotive industry, guaranteeing supply for the export of cars with no industrial disputation. The unions in South Australia have always worked collegially and collectively on all of these manufacturing projects not to have disputation but to have no disputation in order to secure the jobs, to secure the investment and to sustain a place where kids can go and learn a trade, have a good life, earn decent money and get a highly skilled well-paid job. It will be an awful day if this Liberal coalition government takes that opportunity away from hundreds of thousands of South Australians.