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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-21 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Defence Shipbuilding

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (15:21): I appreciate the opportunity to address an incredibly significant series of announcements made last week by the Prime Minister of Australia in conjunction with Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden.

We should be under no illusion that last week was significant in terms of what was announced in a geopolitical context. On this side of the house, Labor has always been committed, as I am, to the alliance we have with the United States of America. We very sincerely hope that alliance continues to strengthen in decades to come as we face a degree of uncertainty within our region at home. However, in the South Australian context it is also worth contemplating what was announced regarding future industry in our state.

It is worth remembering that the history of naval shipbuilding in South Australia is intrinsically linked to the South Australian parliamentary Labor Party. It was, of course, the Hon. John Bannon who was able to secure the Collins class submarines in South Australia, which was the beginning of an extraordinary series of projects that have contributed not just to our state's prosperity but also to our sovereign capability as a country, to be able to set our own course when it comes to shipbuilding and strategic defence policy.

On the back of the Collins class submarine development, we saw the Rann Labor government invest $300 million in the Common User Facility at Techport, which allowed us to have the ambition of being able to procure new contracts and new shipbuilding projects to our state, as evidenced by our success in getting the air warfare destroyer program built here in Adelaide despite fierce competition from other jurisdictions around the nation. On this side of the house, we are proud of our record of delivering for the South Australian economy in procuring new projects, new shipbuilding projects.

Of course, we do not have to cast our minds back very far to recall that, when it comes to the Future Submarines project, it was the federal Coalition government whose first plan to deliver that program was to build the submarines in Japan. It is only because of the leadership shown by the South Australian parliamentary Labor Party under then Premier Jay Weatherill that we were able to use all our political might, all our force, to work collectively, despite utter silence from the member for Dunstan, to put the political pressure on and persuade the federal government to change its position—which they ultimately did, to their credit.

They changed their position and they set us on a course of having Naval, or the then DCNS, French shipbuilders building a new program in the Barracuda class submarine. That is what we had as of a week ago: a $90 billion contract that was going to deliver 12 new, conventionally powered submarines for our nation. We were told by those opposite, and by the federal defence minister the Hon. Christopher Pyne, that this was a deal that was going to set South Australia up for future generations of prosperity and growth and that it would be the best thing that has ever happened to our state's economy.

We took them for their word, only to find out that none of it was true. The government has now backed away from plan B and now moved onto plan C. Plan C may indeed be in the national interest in the long term. It may indeed be a good deal for our country and our federation. But what we are being told in terms of our sovereign capability—all the jobs, all the economic power that program was going to be—is, 'Trust us. We are serious this time.'

We do not have a contract. We do not know how many people are going to be employed to build the submarine. We do not know who is going to build the submarine. We do not even know what type of submarine we are going to build. We do not know when it is going to be built, and we do not know what technology is actually going to be transferred to South Australia. We do not even know what it is that we are actually going to be building.

We know more about what we are not building than what we are. We know it is going to be a nuclear-powered submarine, but we are not going to have the nuclear industry here in South Australia, which begs the question: how can we trust the commonwealth that this project is actually going to be delivered? The only people in this state parliament who are going to ensure that the commonwealth actually keep their word this time, unlike last time or the time before that, is if we have a Labor government putting pressure on Scott Morrison to ensure he actually does what he says he is going to do this time.

We will continue to advocate that. We know that the current Premier always goes silent when it comes to putting pressure on the commonwealth—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr MALINAUSKAS: —whether it be the Murray, whether it be the GST, but we will not let this opportunity slip the state by and we will continue to advocate for the long-term interests of the people of South Australia.

Time expired.

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