Job Creation

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Innovation and Skills. Can the minister update the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is creating more jobs and growing skills across the defence industry?

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (14:34): I certainly can. I thank the member for Morphett for his question. Very interested in the defence sector is the member for Morphett. Being an engineer himself, he understands the importance of the skills that we need in South Australia so that we can have a thriving defence sector. The Marshall government is working closely with the defence industry. It's working with business and it's working with training providers to ensure that we have the skilled workforce that we need so we can deliver on the federal government's demands to build defence products here in South in Australia—the submarines and the frigates.

We have signed a memorandum of understanding between the state government and the Naval Shipbuilding College to share skills, workforce data and mapping so that we can work together to ensure that we know where the skills gaps are. We have established eight industry skills councils, and one of those industry skills councils is the defence, aerospace, IT and cybersecurity skills council, specifically for the defence industry. We do know that there are many crossover skills from many other industries, but this skills council has been developed specifically for the defence sector.

In our first year of office, the state government purchased 12 Soldamatic welding simulators. They are placed at the Advanced Welder Training Centre at Regency Park TAFE. That was opened by the Minister for Education and myself on 26 March last year. It is delivering a cert III in engineering fabrication, the first cert III in that field that has been endorsed by the Naval Shipbuilding College in Australia. We are on top and in front of the game here in South Australia to make sure that we can deliver the skills that the defence sector needs to do that work here in South Australia.

There are over $2 million of approvals in the Skilling South Australia funding relevant to defence industry jobs. The Ai Group's 4.0 Higher Apprenticeship Program is a diploma in advanced technology where you learn about mechanical engineering, robotics and cloud computing. If you wish to move on to an engineering degree after you have spent three years doing an apprenticeship, you can do that, obviously, but you will save one year of full-time study because of the diploma work you did through that new pathway—a brand-new pathway developed by this government—into the defence sector.

DXC Technology, a defence supplier, has developed an associate IT professional pathway into its diploma traineeship in IT, a new pathway through vocational education into an area that was otherwise only available to those with a bachelor's degree. We are making significant changes and making defence sector careers more accessible by working with industry to develop vocational pathways. New training pathways include apprenticeships, traineeships, higher apprenticeships, diploma-level vocational pathways, new cybersecurity traineeships in certificate IV and working with universities to develop new courses required by industry.

This is a brand-new development in vocational education in South Australia where off-the-job training is not just restricted to registered training organisations but also delivered by universities. So, as you can see, we are lifting the types of skills and the types of education you can gain through a vocational education pathway. We are securing jobs for the future and we started that early, unlike what we are seeing in Western Australia: a faux discovery, if you like, of skills training where they have gone backwards over the last several years in apprentices and trainees. We have seen nation-leading growth here in South Australia.