Defence Industries

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (14:44): My question is the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier inform the house about the contribution of our higher education institutions to defence industry and workforce?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:45): Yes, it is a pleasure to answer this question because, as the Premier has outlined extensively in public and also in this chamber, the task and the opportunity before us are both considerable with the announcement of AUKUS.

We have the great pleasure in contemplating 5,000 ongoing jobs associated with building the submarines and around 4,000 in the construction leading up to that, but we know that we must prepare our workforce to be able to fully participate in that opportunity. To do so requires us to go right through the education system as well as finding people who already have a degree of skill and experience.

The university end of that equation cannot be underestimated. The Premier just mentioned even the consideration of the amalgamation between two of the three universities has to be seen in the context of assisting us in lifting the quality of our education and the amount of research capability that is able to be invested by that institution in order to be able to prepare us to fully realise the opportunities of AUKUS not only in the direct jobs but also in the supply chain, which ought to be considerable.

The universities themselves, though, have of course been very activist in participating already in ways in which they can contribute to preparing young people to be skilled up. Flinders University has already entered into an agreement with the University of Manchester and the University of Rhode Island. Both institutions have been long teaching nuclear engineering degrees. That agreement will be the basis on which they will be able to start exploring ways in which they can offer that kind of qualification and also experience overseas in those universities for students.

The University of South Australia has recently received $450,000 from the state government so that they are able to partner with the Ai Group and also with the defence industry to create a pilot for apprenticeship degrees in software engineering—that is, degrees in software engineering that enable people at the same time to both work and earn in the field. Therefore, in that sense, it is more akin to an apprenticeship but nonetheless achieving a degree. That is in order to accelerate the number of people we have who are qualified in software engineering, which will be a considerable demand. It is not just about welding and spanners, although there will be a lot of that kind of work; it is also in the cyber and IT world.

Adelaide University since, I think, April last year has had the Defence Trailblazer program, which is considerably funded by the federal government. It is a partnership with the University of New South Wales, with industry, with the federal Department of Education. That is about defence R&D and also provides industry with access to highly skilled talent at the PhD level as well as interns and undergraduates. So that is already contributing to our defence skilled workforce and will only do more.

But we know, if we are going to have university students interested in studying in these STEM areas, we are going to have to prepare further down the supply chain of young people and therefore the importance of the work that is being undertaken in the education department here. The minister has already outlined the contribution that technical colleges will make. We have just today announced scholarships for university students wishing to learn teaching—women in STEM so that we can encourage more young girls to take up STEM because they see that they have female teachers.

It is not irrelevant that we are undertaking the royal commission on how we are going to deliver three-year-old preschool, because we need to improve the standard of education all the way through if we are truly to realise the potential of this announcement.