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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-22 Daily Xml
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Defence Shipbuilding

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (14:37): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier advise the house of defence projects at Osborne that contribute to our nation's security?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:37): I am delighted to talk about the activity that is happening in Osborne already, to which will be added of course this very substantial effort of building the submarines in the future.

At present, of course, we have a site that is capable of building, and has built, the Collins submarines and that work has been able to continue through the full cycle docking and the life-of-type extension work which is to come from 2026, and that's responsible for around 1,300 jobs on site in Osborne. We also have the Hunter class frigates. Although first steel is yet to be cut—it is anticipated to occur in May—in fact, the effort that is happening at the moment in what they call prototyping is essentially the building of the equivalent of a ship as they prepare the site and the machinery to be able to produce it as they also start to train up the workers.

I was last year at Govan near Glasgow to meet with BAE to look at their equivalent shipyard where they build essentially the same as the Hunter class frigates there. It was interesting that they talked about the shipyard envy that they experience when they have come over to see Osborne because they are dealing with a very, very old shipyard—decades and decades of building ships, probably over 100 years. There is a lot of heritage that they are having to manage their way around. It's a very tight shipyard and one that is really starting to bulge at the seams. When they see ours, they're extremely envious.

Once the frigates scale up, there will be around 2,800 jobs associated with that and, including those, it is anticipated there will be about 5,000 jobs in the South Australian workforce associated with both the building and also the supply chain involvement. There are anticipated to be nine frigates and that is a $45 billion effort.

There are, of course, now almost complete the two offshore patrol vessels. The second one is being fitted out. The first one has already been delivered. Although the Hobart-class destroyers have now been completed, from about 2024, so from next year, there are combat system upgrades that will involve around 300 jobs.

We can see that just from the current activity in Osborne there is a huge amount of manufacturing that's occurring and there's a lot of training and skilling up of workers occurring. There are some 15,000 people employed in the defence industry generally in South Australia. That includes people directly employed by defence, people employed in manufacture and importantly people who are working in the supply chain. There are about 300 companies involved in defence supply chain activity through the state.

Obviously we expect and will work towards rapidly increasing both the supply chain and the number of workers. Once we add the 4,000 workers involved in construction, ready for the Osborne North to house the building of the submarines, I anticipate that the biggest local issue I will be addressing and discussing with my good friend the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure is the transport implication along Victoria Road as we will have so many people heading to and from work. But that in many ways is a good problem to have, both locally and, of course, absolutely for the state. Subsequent to all of that construction occurring, we are anticipating around 5,000 jobs associated with the building of the submarines, and then more through the supply chain activity.

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