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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-20 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Defence Industries

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:13): When it comes to South Australia's critical defence industries, the opposition provides the government with bipartisanship support to advance those industries but, importantly, bipartisanship does not get the government off the hook when it comes to the pathway to fulfilling that industry's potential in South Australia. Bipartisanship does not neutralise our ability and our desire to hold the government of the day to account for maximising the benefits that the defence industries do and can bring to South Australia, both today and decades into the future.

Bipartisanship, in terms of overall outcome, is something that we hold onto tightly when it comes to our critical defence industries, but bipartisanship will not stop us openly criticising the government and challenging the government to do better both at a federal and a state level when it comes to fighting for South Australian jobs and building the resilience and sustainability of the economics of the defence industry here in South Australia.

Today, we saw the Premier and the Labor spin doctors in overdrive when it comes to defending what has happened to our defence industries in South Australia because they have suffered a significant blow. This has been the worst kept secret in recent weeks, but today we had confirmed that South Australia's Hunter Class Frigate Program is to be cut from nine ships to six ships and the simple fact of this matter is that fewer ships mean fewer jobs for South Australians. There is no way that you can spin that.

This is another broken promise for Labor and another blow to South Australia's economy and do not just take my word for it. Australian Industry and Defence Network Chief Executive, Brent Clark, has said that six Hunter class frigates does not meet the federal government's promise of a continuous naval shipbuilding program here in South Australia. He has also said that this would create another costly workforce valley of death—the exact thing that we are trying to avoid.

The Liberal Party supports decisions in the national interest and, as I said, we provide bipartisan support when it comes to defence industries in South Australia. They are far too big and far too important to our state—our state's economy, our state's workforce and our state's skills base—for us to criticise unnecessarily or undermine. That extends to AUKUS and it extends to the frigates program.

But the problem here is the Premier's failure to deliver on nine frigates for our state, demonstrating a lack of ability to persuade his federal colleagues what is in the best interests of South Australia and a failure to protect jobs from leaving South Australia—work from leaving south Australia—and ending up in Western Australia.

Clearly, Roger Cook, the Premier of Western Australia, has mounted a stronger argument to the federal government and that will see work leave South Australia and end up in the west. It builds on other failures in our defence industries. Last year, it was confirmed that Adelaide's 1,700-strong Defence Force was to be cut by 800 personnel. The forces moving from the Edinburgh base north of Adelaide, mostly from the 7th battalion, a mechanised infantry force, will also see the first armoured regiment reduced as well—another huge economic blow as defence personnel, who would often leave the Army and end up working in the defence industries at Osborne's shipbuilding and submarine building, now leave South Australia and that pipeline for the workforce is cut off.

Today's decision is yet another bad one for South Australia and the common theme is cuts to current programs in exchange for programs decades—decades—down the track. We just cannot believe that these programs, a figment of faint hope in the distance, will ever be delivered. We need ironclad guarantees today.

This builds on a legacy of broken promises from this government—a promise to fix ramping, a promise to be a pro-business government, a promise to deliver universal three-year-old preschool by 2026, a promise to cut energy bills and a promise regarding stage 3 tax cuts. At state and federal level, we have promise after promise broken. This is becoming a pattern, and this is what we have come to expect from federal and state Labor when it comes to South Australia.

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