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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-10-24 Daily Xml
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DEFENCE INDUSTRY

Ms PORTOLESI (Hartley) (14:33): My question is to the Premier. Can he inform the house of more good news for South Australia on the defence industry front?

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:33): I was very pleased to attend the Land Warfare Conference, which was held at our Convention Centre today, with the Deputy Premier. It was the second major defence conference and exhibition to be held in the last few months. I thank the honourable member for her question. It is a question that I am delighted to answer, because today has brought news that South Australia has again been recognised as the undisputed hub of Australia's high-tech and high skill defence industries. Today's announcement by the Prime Minister that the commonwealth will support the establishment of Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute in Adelaide comes after about three years of intense lobbying by me, the Deputy Premier and others within the state government.

This good news follows many meetings involving the state government and, certainly, my own visits on a couple of occasions to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and here in Adelaide, as well as vigorous negotiations between South Australia and the Defence Materiel Organisation. I also went to Canberra to meet with the Prime Minister and the federal education minister, and also with the defence minister and the foreign minister.

I am pleased to announce today that South Australia will invest up to $4.5 million in the Software Engineering Institute here in South Australia and that the commonwealth has committed a further $20 million to this important project. We are talking about another $25 million of investment in the highest of high technology in terms of software engineering for the defence industry, and I am delighted that it builds upon the investment that we have made in bringing Carnegie Mellon to Adelaide, the first overseas university ever to establish in Australian history. I am sure that members opposite who have criticised Carnegie Mellon will be delighted that our funding of Carnegie Mellon is now being matched by the commonwealth government.

As home to Carnegie Mellon University and critical defence major projects, including the largest defence project in Australia's history in the air warfare destroyers, Adelaide was the logical choice for location of the Software Engineering Institute. In addition, key top class defence firms are investing strongly in their futures here in South Australia, including companies such as Australian Submarine Corporation, BAE Systems, SAAB, Raytheon, Tenix, General Dynamics and many others.

Our campus of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, together with the air warfare destroyers systems centre, currently employing about 300 high-skilled technical and systems people, are just two things that place South Australia in the national vanguard of defence technologies. Again, this has been confirmed by the news that the Software Engineering Institute, which is number one in the United States, is setting up here in Adelaide.

Having won more than $12 billion in defence contracts in the past two to three years, we are favoured with major opportunities, but with those opportunities come challenges and meeting those challenges is what the Software Engineering Institute is all about. In the United States, the Software Engineering Institute operates as part of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with major funding from the US Department of Defence, the Department of Homeland Security, NASA and key defence companies.

In America it employs more than 500 people and has a budget of over $US100 million. It is a world leader in software engineering, helping to reduce technical risk in major defence projects. It is these complex software integration systems that allow modern defence forces to work. With SEI here in Adelaide, we will be placed in the forefront of defence software engineering in the Asia Pacific. Because SEI is held in such high regard in the United States and internationally, its presence in our state will help local firms seeking work in larger offshore markets.

Adelaide today plays host to the Land Warfare Conference. We visited the exhibits this morning and we were simply amazed by the level of participation, with 1,600 delegates and about 600 defence companies taking part. But most of all, it is great to see the Carnegie Mellon decision being endorsed by the federal government and by the federal opposition, and Carnegie Mellon will continue to grow here, adding to our defence push.

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