Grievance Debate

Defence State

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:05): South Australia has a great and robust reputation as the defence state. It is a state known internationally for its contribution to the defence world, not just in an Australian context but also in an international context. Our state makes a significant contribution to the defence effort of our nation. It has done for many decades, and hopefully it will for many, many decades—generations—to come.

Our state relies not only on the presence of the defence industries in South Australia in terms of the construction of frigates and submarines, and the maintenance of those machines as well, but also the presence of defence personnel in our state, largely based around Edinburgh in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. It is key to providing economic stimulus to our state and to ensuring that we play our role in our nation's equipping of defence capability in terms of our soldiers and the personnel who wrap around them. Also, those personnel often provide a civil pipeline of workers to our defence construction industries when they leave the armed forces.

There is suddenly a very significant risk to South Australia's defence personnel. The first decision to be handed down or to be made public from the federal government's Defence Strategic Review to affect South Australia is bad news for South Australia. We have discovered, via an announcement from the federal government, that Adelaide's 1,700-strong defence forces based out of Edinburgh will be reduced over the coming couple of years to only 800.

This is significant. Such a reduction will no doubt lead to a significant economic impact, particularly to the northern suburbs but further afield and also, worryingly, hinder that pipeline of capable defence personnel who might move to work on civil defence projects providing that skills pathway to working on AUKUS. The opposition is extremely concerned about the impact of this reduction of 800 staff in South Australia, and we want to make sure that the Labor state government is standing up for our defence industries in this state.

We have significant concerns that, because we have a federal Labor government and a state Labor government, the state government is not taking the fight up to their mates in Canberra. When I ask the Premier questions about defence in this place, I do so with a tone of bipartisanship. I give him the opportunity to talk about how we can work together and to put information on the public record as to how our defence industries in this state and our relationship with the military in this state are progressing.

We do not throw barbs. We have demonstrated a significant bipartisanship. That bipartisanship is largely around the end goal, whether it is to maximise the benefits from the AUKUS deal and the arrival of nuclear-powered submarine building in our state, whether it is around the construction of frigates or whether it is the life-of-type extension for the Collins class submarines—we continually extend the arm of bipartisanship.

We want to see South Australia do well here, but it does not mean that we will not challenge the government along the way on how they are going about this. We know that there is a massive lift required in terms of skills around making sure we can meet the demands and the needs of AUKUS, but also we need to continually hold the federal government to account to make sure that South Australia gets the most out of this deal.

Any walking away of our numbers of defence personnel and an almost unbelievable idea that they will return in the never-never at the end of the decade, worries us greatly, because it could see South Australia miss out on so many opportunities in the future. We are the defence state, but we must fight continually to retain that title.