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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-13 Daily Xml
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Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:07): My question is to the Premier again. Has the Premier been asked by the commonwealth or has he discussed with the commonwealth that the white-collar and blue-collar work on the full cycle docking could be split between South Australia and Western Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:08): No, absolutely not. Our position is very, very clear that it would be dangerous for this to be split. Could you imagine a scenario in which the white-collar work, the design and engineering work, was done in South Australia but the fabrication work was done 2,000 kilometres away? We think this would be an absolute disaster.

We know the problems we got into with regard to the air warfare destroyers when blocks were produced in other jurisdictions. We had some blocks being done in Victoria, and I think we had some blocks being done in New South Wales. When they brought them together, there were major problems associated, and this is one of the reasons why the very first of the new air warfare destroyer class had major cost and time overruns.

HMAS Hobart was significantly over the original cost and time frame, and one of the reasons for this was moving the fabrication of these blocks to different places around the country rather than centralising it here in Adelaide. I appreciate there were some issues associated with the ramp-up of that proposal, but we have learned from those problems, and this is one of the big advantages of having the Coalition government in Canberra, sir. As you would be aware, there were no ships whatsoever commissioned under the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government, so for six years nothing actually occurred down there.

When the Coalition came into government, they made two very strategic decisions: one was to increase the defence spend in Australia to 2 per cent of GDP, and the second thing was to recognise that the defence industry was a strategic defence capability for our nation. In doing that, they decided to award long contracts, which would give certainty to industry.

Certainty allows industry to invest in infrastructure and also in personnel, so we move away from this boom-bust cycle that hitherto really plagued the defence industry in Australia. That is why the first in the Hobart class was very significantly over budget and over time, but we don't envisage those problems occurring with the new platforms, the Hunter class and the Attack class. Because we are working in advance, we can provide that certainty.

Back to the question regarding splitting, it seems to me that the only argument that Western Australia has been putting forward is that Western Australia has available labour and somehow they believe that South Australia doesn't have the available labour. This is just complete nonsense. One of the first things we did on coming into government was to get a defence industry workforce plan prepared.

In fact, in our first budget we put $200 million into apprenticeships and traineeships in South Australia so that we would have those skills in place as and when they were required to deliver on these contracts. There are other parts that are beyond the blue collar that we need to keep in South Australia as well, and that's why we worked very diligently with the federal government to negotiate a Designated Area Migration Agreement (DAMA). We have been working in advance on this issue since the day we came to government to make sure that we have the workforce in place.

It is interesting that obviously the Premier of Western Australia has decided that he would like to have some of the action over in Western Australia, but this is a typical boom-bust economy in that state. They might be down on their luck at the moment and looking for work over there, but what happens when they go through another mining boom cycle? They don't have the available skills, the costs go through the roof and the programs blow out. This is one of the critical reasons why this work needs to remain in South Australia.

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