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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-20 Daily Xml
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Hunter Class Frigate Program

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): Can the Premier guarantee that there will be at least three of those ships built at Osborne?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:27): The commitment from the commonwealth is continuous shipbuilding, so we would anticipate there may be well a lot more than three. I should also make clear that one of the options we know that will be in front of the Navy in contemplating the seventh, eighth and ninth ships will be not just whether or not it's an air warfare destroyer replacement, but also that it may well indeed use the hull, that is the Hunter class hull, as well. We know that BAE have put a platform option on the table to the Navy so that, should they choose, they could potentially have the Hunter class hull, albeit with a different formation in terms of capabilities to be able to accommodate far more vertical launch missile capability than what is provided for in an anti-submarine variant of that particular frigate. These are all the options that are in front of the government.

The other thing I should mention that is important is that, on the television we often see the images of people in hi-vis—women and men with trades in the more traditional form: electricians, welders, gasfitters, boilermakers and so forth—but there's actually a huge white-collar workforce that sits behind the blue-collar workforce, and that is as important to our state's economy as it is to the actual shipbuilding effort itself.

So the announcement today that the design work on the Hobart class replacement starts at the latter part of this decade actually provides security as well to the white-collar workforce, which is just as important. It is also strategically almost essential in the context of this government's ambition to increase the economic complexity of the state on the back of the shipbuilding effort. So we have to also remind ourselves that it's white-collar as much as blue-collar, and today's announcement provides a platform to provide security for those people into the future as well.

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