Question Time

Defence Shipbuilding

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:02): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier received guarantees from the Prime Minister that South Australia will have continuous naval shipbuilding at Osborne? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: It was reported yesterday in The Australian that the Hunter class frigate project is, and I quote, 'now in doubt', and, a further quote, 'an early draft of the Defence Strategic Review called for the entire project to be axed'.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:02): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. This is a really important and substantial topic to the future of our state more broadly. The short answer to the question is yes, simply because the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence, who also, of course, is the Deputy Prime Minister, have made clear that they are committed to a continuous surface shipbuilding program here in South Australia. In fact, more than that, there is a specific recommendation within the Defence Strategic Review calling for exactly that.

So, yes, to summarise that for the benefit of the Leader of the Opposition, in respect of his question: yes, there is an assurance from the Prime Minister that we will have a continuous surface shipbuilding program here in the nation. Of course that has to be located in Osborne.

The report in yesterday's Australian went more specifically to the future of the Hunter class program, which is something that I have naturally taken an interest in, given that we are now seeing we are on the precipice of steel being cut for the first of the submarines. The prototype development has been very much in train down at BAE now for some months, and the state government—in fact just this afternoon I received an update in respect of the state government's submission that we are making towards the surface shipbuilding review that has to be concluded or be reported back to the commonwealth government by September this year.

As part of that submission, we are making clear that the surface shipbuilding review effort should actively contemplate the extraordinary consequence that we would see if there were any substantial change to the Hunter program in terms of its timing, in terms of our ability to continuously recruit people to the naval shipbuilding workforce that will be required in this state for decades to come.

Recently, I met with BAE Systems, their global CEO, who explained to me firsthand exactly what their recruitment profile is regarding the Hunter class program. A number that isn't in the minds of too many South Australians I don't think, but I think should be, is the fact that they need to recruit somewhere in the order of 2,000 additional people between now and the end of 2026 just for the Hunter program.

Any disruption to that would undermine the effort to be able to recruit people in a way that is going to be necessary, and that's just for the surface shipbuilding program before we start talking about load, for instance, on the back of FCD work on the Future Submarines program, or even the upgrade to the Hobart class submarines that is work that is going to be done between both ASC and BAE here in Osborne—sorry, not Hobart class but the air warfare destroyer, which is the Hobart class.

That work is equally critical, and from memory I think that requires around about 800 people in its own right. All that gets undermined if we see a substantial change to the Hunter class program, which is why we are advocating accordingly, which is why it is very much the state government's view that nothing of consequence in there should be changed and which is why I have a degree of confidence that that would be exactly where the surface shipbuilding review ends up.

Naturally, it is appropriate for the commonwealth to review the program to make sure the Navy's requirements will be met, particularly given the change in scope in terms of naval policy on the back of the nuclear submarine program. Nonetheless, we are confident about Hunter and what it means for the future of our state.