Nick Champion (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2007, when I was elected here, there were a number of problems with the Collins class submarine. They centred around politics, because the Howard government had decided to blackguard that very good submarine for political purposes, but they also related to the sustainment programs related to the Collins class and to crewing. The crewing of the Collins class was mainly subject to the strength of the Western Australian economy at the time, and so that obviously has got better over time, but not without a lot of work.

In 2011, the Coles report, which was the base for fixing the sustainment problems, was the subject of a number of news reports. One by David Wroe in the Sydney Morning Herald was 'Our sub fleet world's worst: report'. That report on 12 December 2012 said:

… the Coles report, released this morning, concluded that "the availability performance of the Collins Class has been slightly over half that achieved by comparable international programs".

We weren't going to allow that situation to occur, because it gave us a gap in our defences. There were a number of measures we put in place, which were continued by the current governments of Mr Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. What we learnt was that sustainment was absolutely critical. That's why it's so disturbing to hear that the Morrison government has been considering—since, it would seem, before Christmas—and we've been waiting on this decision about whether or not the Collins class sustainment will be lifted up and shifted to Western Australia.

This is a crazy proposal. Anybody who knows anything about shipbuilding knows that when you've got white-collar managers and blue-collar workers, whether they be electricians, welders, highly technical riggers or the like—you can't just get those people off the street. Even if you could get them off the street and assemble them, you can't get them to work together just like that. You can't get them to work together overnight. These are sophisticated, industrial organisations. They can't simply be shifted willy-nilly across the country. Of course, there was a report by ASC itself which said:

"The greatest risk to the enterprise in considering the potential transition … to WA is the loss of skill, knowledge and capability that ensures the [Collins class submarines] are safe and capable of performing the operational requirements,"

That's from ASC. What does that tell you? It tells you that, if this harebrained scheme of the current defence minister is allowed to proceed, our Collins class submarines will not be safe and won't be in the water—that is, we might get a submarine gap. At a critical time—I don't need to tell the House—in the history of our region, we might have this hole in our defences because someone decided that it would be a good idea to shift a bunch of jobs to Western Australia.

I'm not against Western Australians, I'm not against the Western Australian shipbuilding industry—I think they do a terrific job at what they do—and I'm not saying that they shouldn't have a future, but surely destroying what we do well now is not in the interests of the country. Surely, taking those 700 workers—and most of them won't go to Western Australia; most of them will attempt to stay in South Australia. We've already had 1,000 shipbuilding jobs go in that state. The unions—the CEPU, the AWU and the AMWU—have seen this close hand. Why would we, on top of that ridiculous de-skilling of the South Australian shipbuilding industry, add to their woes by putting out these other 700 workers?

If the government wants to send work to Western Australia, let them build two new LHDs, because God knows we will need them. Let them build other ships—corvettes with long-range antiship missiles—because that would be useful for our defence. The idea that we should take what we do very, very well now—a problem that has been fixed—and then suddenly, for pretty pedestrian political purposes, shift it across the country or split the jobs between white-collar and blue-collar is madness. It should not be entertained by any right-thinking government.