James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to take the opportunity to update the Chamber on an opportunity I was given last week to be given a tour of the Osborne south shipyards in Adelaide, which has been built by Australian Naval Infrastructure, the Commonwealth agency that's charged with delivering the infrastructure we need to build the future Attack class submarines and the future Hunter class frigates. The south component of Osborne yard is for the frigates. It was my great pleasure to be taken through buildings 20, 21 and 22, which are the three substantive buildings onsite. There they will be receiving the steel, building the blocks and then assembling the hull and the major components of the frigate before putting it out onto the dry dock and then into the water.

This project is on track. It's very exciting. They should be prototyping their first couple of blocks later this year, using Australian steel of course, manufactured by Australians for the Australian Navy, giving the navy a great capability and also developing sovereign ship-building capacity for this country, something Labor were never committed to. They made no decisions about ship-building and they didn't commission a single capital ship in their two terms in government. Thankfully, we have reversed all that. It's a very exciting future for the people of Adelaide and particularly the workers that are getting the jobs at the naval shipyards in Osborne in Adelaide and of course all the various supply chain companies that will be located right around the country supporting our navy and their capability into the future.