Question Time

Submarine Program

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:04): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier assure the workers of ASC that they will retain their jobs at Osborne delivering the maintenance work as part of the full cycle docking program of the Collins class?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:04): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. He hasn't asked many questions regarding this subject. In fact, he has not been doing much on this issue whatsoever, but it is a good opportunity—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —to provide an update to the house on the work that has been done.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Lee!

Mr Duluk interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Waite!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: It is a good opportunity to provide an update to the house on exactly and precisely what has been done. As you would be aware, the federal government has been undertaking a review to determine where its overall maintenance for the submarines will occur into the future. A decision was made many years ago, of course, to move mid cycle docking and intermediate docking to Western Australia. Full cycle docking stayed here in South Australia, and that was done because we had the skills in place to make sure that that was done effectively.

For many years, the performance of, or the availability of, the Collins class submarine was not at a level which the Royal Australian Navy required. The ASC worked extraordinarily hard to make sure that not only did the team at Osborne meet the Royal Australian Navy's availability requirements but also that they massively exceeded the Royal Australian Navy's requirement, and this is one of the reasons why we genuinely believe that we must keep the full cycle docking here in South Australia.

Of course, there is an argument that this is maintenance work and so it should move to Western Australia. South Australia is the home of the construction. Western Australia is going to be the home of maintenance, but our argument is very clear: this is not maintenance work. Full cycle docking is essentially the rebuilding of the submarine. It requires very specialist skills, and they only exist here in South Australia.

In fact, South Australia is the only place in the world with a significant core of people with detailed expertise and knowledge about the Collins class submarine. They reside here in South Australia. We have specialist design, engineering and construction work. The Western Australians are arguing that this should be somehow separated out: that design and engineering work should be done in South Australia; construction work or fabrication work should be done in Western Australia. This would be absolutely disastrous.

Imagine separating those two critical functions 2,000 kilometres apart. This would not work. We have worked hard every day that we have been in government to build the case to make sure that the full cycle docking jobs remain here in South Australia. A big part of that has been to negotiate with the commonwealth regarding the availability of the land that it needs on the Lefevre Peninsula to ensure that we can do all the new construction work for the Future Frigates, the construction work for the Attack class and, of course, the continuation of the full cycle docking. We have given that assurance to the commonwealth.

The other major area of concern has been around the availability of skills, and that's why on coming to government we set about immediately developing a maritime ship construction and maintenance skills plan. Even before that was completed, in our very first budget we put $200 million on the table for new apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia.

We completed last year our skills plan. We are working to implement that skills plan. We are fully aware that the Western Australian government has its bid—bid—on the table to win the work. We presented the commonwealth government with the update plan that we have had in place for a long period of time. This is the home of the Collins class submarine. We have done an excellent job in this state making sure that the Collins is available for the Royal Australian Navy, and I expect that will continue well into the future.

The SPEAKER: The members for Waite, Lee and Wright are called to order. The leader.