Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

As I said, across Australia the college will generate many opportunities through collaboration with education and training providers. It will take a hub-and-spoke approach in terms of its engagement, identifying the skill needs for successful delivery of the naval shipbuilding projects and then, where necessary, potentially procuring the development of those training packages and programs to fill those needs in the future. It will be complementary to, work with and engage with existing institutions, rather than replacing any of them. The college will seek to identify, attract, train and retrain more than 1,500 people in the first few years of operation, and it will be a truly national endeavour befitting, of course, the national endeavour that is the naval shipbuilding program itself. Over 100 universities and training providers already provide particular skills in terms of naval shipbuilding and operations right around the country, including in engineering, precision welding, electrotechnology and naval architecture, and we want to leverage those existing capabilities as much as we possibly can.