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

I rise to take note of answers, and in particular Senator Ronaldson's answer to Senator Carr. I do get that there is a bit of theatre in the chamber, but when you are asked a question as serious as Senator Ronaldson was asked today I do think it is incumbent on the minister to dispense with the waffle and attempt to answer the question.

The facts of the matter are that it is now August 2015 and that, prior to September 2013, there was a direct promise to build 12 submarines in Adelaide. There was a walking away from that promise. There was the sending of some shipbuilding contracts overseas. And the Prime Minister has been brought, kicking and screaming, to South Australia by all of the Liberal members of parliament, who know equally as well as I do, that you cannot find a South Australian who does not want this industry to prosper in South Australia and to interconnect with the rest of Australia.

We all know that is how manufacturing works, from long experience in the automotive industry. Transmissions are built in one part of Australia and engines are built in another part of Australia. They have been assembled for 50 or 60 years in South Australia and we know how integral manufacturing is to a small economy like South Australia.

We have a government that walks away from the automotive sector, that puts the boot into it, and then walks away from core promises to enhance, build and sustain ships and submarines in South Australia. Then the Prime Minister is brought, kicking and screaming, to the argument. Whether it is to save his own personal position as Prime Minister; the Hon. Christopher Pyne; the Hon. Andrew Southcott; the member for Hindmarsh, Matt Williams; Senator Edwards; Senator Fawcett; Senator Rushton; or anybody else who wants to get preselected in South Australia in the coming federal election, that is what has happened.

The Prime Minister has come very late to the argument. He has made promises which I, fervently, hope are kept, because they are good promises and they are jobs down the line. But they are well down the line—they are 2020. And when you know people who have lost their job in Adelaide, in shipbuilding, in the last few months, that is a long, long way away.

When there is no commitment from this federal government and there are these economic rationalists. I mean, he may as well take his script from Andrew Bolt, who said the other night, 'You can get a ship from Spain for $1 billion. Why did we spend $9 billion building three?' If that is the argument he is going to take in respect of building our future defence capability, if that is the attitude he is going to take to our future defence manufacturing capability, then he should come out and tell the Australian people that is what he is doing. Do not promise to do it, renege on the promise and then come in with another promise for 2020. It is a long way away for a young man or woman who lost their job in the last month. They may not even be in South Australia when those building opportunities come again. They will probably have moved somewhere else in the economy.

If you look around South Australia you will see that we have job losses at Alinta, job losses today at Olympic Dam, job losses in Whyalla and job losses in all the regional centres outside Port Lincoln. We have no investment from this federal government in regional South Australia and we have a terrible track record of investment in the city of Adelaide in the manufacturing sector, where we are going to see additional job losses with Holden closing. I do not think the government even care about the multiplier effects of that on small business and that is exceedingly strange for what is a coalition government that, supposedly, believes in small business. For every job that you lose in manufacturing—for example, if you lose 1,700 at Holden over the next 12 to 15 months—you are going to multiply that effect out in every small business and in every suburb the workers lived in. This government has come very late to the argument. And 2020 is a long time away. If he delivers on the promise—if he gets a chance to deliver on the promise—that will be good, but the destruction and havoc the government has caused to date is reprehensible and does not befit a Prime Minister.