AUKUS Submarines

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (14:36): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier advise the house about his recent trip to the United Kingdom and the AUKUS agreement?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Chaffey can leave the chamber under 137A—he had sufficient warning—for the remainder of question time. The member for Badcoe can join him. And there was an interjection earlier, I think from the member for Newland, which I did hear, but the Premier obscured you and so good graces mean that you must remain.

The honourable members for Chaffey and Badcoe having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:36): Can I thank the member for Newland for her question because I know the member for Newland is particularly passionate about young people within her electorate. The member for Newland can see the extraordinary amount of opportunity that exists amongst future generations of Newland constituents to have not just a better job but a job that is highly skilled in nature that brings a greater security and greater prosperity, but also a job that has an extraordinary amount of purpose associated with it.

If there was one prevailing emotional response that I experienced in respect of the AUKUS announcement was around seeing young people in the BAE academy in Barrow where there were literally hundreds upon hundreds of young people being trained with extraordinary skills to build nuclear submarines in Barrow, but the sense of purpose and pride they took in that study they were undertaking, and then vis-a-vis the work that they were committing their careers towards—it was genuine. You can't fabricate this stuff. You get a sense from young people about what it is they care about and what they are passionate and enthusiastic about, and this came through overwhelmingly throughout the visit to that academy.

But the one lesson that was being asked upon us to learn throughout their experience in the UK was that we must take a long-term view in terms of investing in education, training and skills to develop the workforce that is required to build the nuclear submarines—a truly national endeavour.

They have been on a journey in Barrow themselves. They saw throughout the course of the late nineties and the early-2000s underinvestment in naval shipbuilding in the UK that saw not quite their own valley of death but their equivalent of it and a hollowing out of the workforce and the skills that were required. And the consequence of that, for the better part of the last 20 years, has been an ongoing and sustained effort to turn that ship back around, so to speak, to try to rebuild that capability, which has had an extraordinary degree of expense associated with it.

So, at every level of government and industry and the Navy, it was being implored upon us first and foremost as Australians to make sure that the investment in naval shipbuilding is sustained and ongoing and produces a long pipeline of demand. That is something that I think is now acknowledged by the current federal government. Also, in the recent years of the former federal government, we now have a federal bipartisan position, which is to be applauded, that we need long-term sustainable investment in naval shipbuilding demand that will underpin the training that is required for the workforce of tomorrow.

The responsibility invested in us in this state government and our successors is to make sure that we take that long-term investment and translate it into investment in education, training and skills to put young people on a pathway to enjoy those jobs of tomorrow. We have a plan to do that. Everything from three-year-old preschool to what we are doing in technical colleges to what we are doing in TAFE and what we plan to achieve in terms of university amalgamation in no small way is orientated towards this endeavour, this most ambitious of enterprises.

We need a lot more young people—particularly young women, I might say—engaging in STEM-related subjects, becoming the engineers and the degree-qualified tradespeople of tomorrow so that we can honour our pledge of building nuclear submarines here in Adelaide and, most importantly for the member for Newland, her pledge to ensure that another generation of prosperity is enjoyed here in the state of South Australia.