Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to welcome our friends visiting from the parliament of Papua New Guinea. Welcome to this place.

The week before last, the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union organised an event here in Parliament House to draw attention to the importance of the Australian shipbuilding industry and to relaunch the 'Save Australia's Shipbuilding' campaign. At that event a shipbuilder from South Australia spoke about his concern for his own employment future, for the economic and social welfare of his family and the wider community of which they are a part. Most poignantly, he talked about the pride his sons took in the work he did, their interest in being able to follow in his path as a skilled manufacturing worker and of course his fear that this opportunity simply will not exist in the future.

There are many families in my electorate of Fremantle who have the same concern. As I have described in this place before, there is a strong tradition of maritime related manufacturing work in Fremantle, and the Australian Marine Complex in Henderson continues to be the site of some of the most important defence construction and maintenance work in the country. There are more than 200 shipbuilders employed in Collins class submarine maintenance and work on the Anzac air warfare destroyers across both BAE and the Australian Submarine Corporation shipyards. Of course, those jobs depend on clarity and certainty in relation to future contracts. Currently the shipbuilding work depends on the three AWD upgrade projects that have been awarded, but there is no certainty of work beyond 2017.

The danger for Western Australian shipbuilders is that, as the future grows more uncertain, there is a possibility that companies like BAE could be forced to consider relocating jobs out of WA and, ultimately, that shipbuilding jobs could be lost altogether. Just as the shipbuilder from South Australia made it clear that manufacturing is not only about jobs in terms of numbers but also about families, networks of families and, often, linked generations of people who have been drawn to the productive value and satisfaction that is embedded in a craft and trade that has existed for centuries, so too those connections and traditions exist in the community I represent. I know there is more than one father-and-son combination at work in the Australian Marine Complex within my electorate. In fact, I know that in at least one case there is a father whose two sons—a qualified tradesman and an apprentice—share his shipbuilding passion.

As I have said, more than 200 workers are engaged in shipbuilding through the ASC and BAE yards in Henderson, and as members of the AMWU they take pride in their work and their craft. They know that shipbuilding is vital to this country, especially when it comes to defence projects, and they are custodians of a trade that must not be jeopardised and of jobs that must be maintained for the benefit of the wider community and for future generations. As the member for Fremantle I will continue to support them in their campaign to save Australian shipbuilding.