Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Could I indicate my strong support for this amendment. I commend Senator Conroy for putting up this amendment. It is a responsible mechanism to ensure that there will be an Australian build of our submarines. This amendment, moved by Senator Conroy, is simply assisting the government to fulfil their pre-election promise that 12 of our future submarines will be built in Australia. It is absolutely critical that this amendment be passed, because it sends a very clear signal, a legislative signal, that there must be an Australian build process. This nonsense, this fantasy of going down the path of having our future submarines built anywhere other than in Australia is absolutely reckless, both in economic terms and in strategic terms. We know of the massive multiplier impact of having our ships, our subs, being built here in Australia and. of the huge flow-on effects on our local economy. We know that a submarine project such as this would involve hundreds of Australian firms, in addition to the principal contractors. And we know that the strategic implications of having our submarines built, maintained and sustained here are absolutely critical if, heaven forbid, there is ever a conflict in years to come. We need to have that capacity here.

Senator Conroy is quite right to point out that Dr John White is a person who is trusted by the coalition government and who co-authored the Winter-White report—Don Winter was a former US secretary of the Navy—on naval shipbuilding. That report has been suppressed by the Australian government, despite Senate resolutions.

I just want to flag now, to let my friends in the government know, that I will be pursuing—including, if necessary, to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, based on advice I have received in the last 24 hours—the fact that that report needs to be released. It needs to be made public and I cannot fathom how it could reasonably be taken to be cabinet-in-confidence, given some statements that were made at the time by the government that it was going to be released publicly. I think that calling it a cabinet-in-confidence document is itself an abuse of that exemption under freedom of information laws. But let us wait and see what the Information Commissioner and, indeed, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal may determine. I will fight that all the way, because it is in the public interest for that report to be released.

On 22 July, in Adelaide, the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into the future of Australia's naval shipbuilding industry heard evidence from Dr John White, as Senator Conroy alluded to. Dr White is not only a confidant of the government, trusted by the government to do a report on naval shipbuilding; he was the man who turned around the Anzac frigate project in the 1990s. It was not going well; it was actually turning into a bit of a basket case. John White got in there and managed that project, a world-class shipbuilding project, and delivered those frigates on time and on budget—ships that all Australians can be proud of.

Dr White, in his capacity as chairman of TKMS Australia, said that if you build the submarines here you can maintain them here and sustain them, and the cost to Australian taxpayers will actually be lower overall. It beggars belief that the government is still toying with this concept of a process whereby submarines could be built anywhere other than in Australia.

Can I say that just last month I went to Japan. I want to express my gratitude to Australia's high commissioner in Japan and also to the Japanese Ambassador to Australia for their tremendous assistance in arranging high-level meetings with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, representatives from the Ministry of Defense, representatives from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry where I made it very clear that, from an Australian perspective, particularly from the perspective of my constituents in South Australia and indeed of people around the country, it is absolutely imperative that the submarines be built here. I think that my Japanese hosts got the message loud and clear.

But I am also convinced that the Soryu class submarine, in any iteration, is no doubt a world-class submarine. The Japanese industry and the Japanese government, which I spoke to, indicated that they were ready, willing and able to build submarines here in Australia. That, to me, is a very welcome development. The French and the Germans also build world-class submarines.

This motion—this amendment, rather. It is not a motion; it has much more weight than a motion. I direct these remarks to my crossbench colleagues—for instance Senator Muir, for whom I have enormous regard for his support for Australian industry and Australian manufacturing. To pass this amendment will put some rigour in the process. It will give the government so much less wriggle room to get out of doing what needs to be done, and that is an Australian build of our submarines.

We are already seeing the 'valley of death', where over 1,200 direct jobs have been lost in shipyards in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, with many more job losses predicted. We know what has happened in Williamstown. It was completely unnecessary. If you read between the lines of what BAE Systems are saying to Senate inquiries, they just cannot believe that a First World country with a first-tier Navy would even contemplate building supply ships overseas. The answers of Senator Brandis, representing the defence minister, to the questions I asked of him were sadly unsatisfactory, because it does not make sense that, where we are facing a crisis in our naval shipbuilding industry, we would think of exporting $2 billion worth of jobs overseas and not even allowing Australian industry to have a chance to tender for these two naval supply ships or even to be part of a hybrid build where at least hundreds of millions of dollars of shipbuilding activity could take place here. I find it extraordinary that a country with a first-tier Navy would actually exclude Australian manufacturers and shipbuilders from a tender process and that it has to go to either Spain or South Korea. That is outrageous.

That is why this amendment of Senator Conroy's is so important. It has been amended slightly from when it was first put up. This has been done appropriately by Senator Conroy to take into account the competitive evaluation process. It is an appropriate and worthy amendment. We need to support this, because not to support this amendment could well give the federal government the green light to walk away from an Australian build of our future submarines, and the consequences of that to our naval shipbuilding industry, particularly in Williamstown, in Newcastle and in my home state of South Australia, would be to send a very dangerous message to Australian industry that we are not going to go down this path where investment decisions will be made on the basis of whether we have a local build of our future submarines. So I urge my colleagues—my crossbench colleagues particularly—to support this very worthy amendment.