Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government securing well-paid jobs in South Australia through historic investments in Defence? What indecision and uncertainty has this industry previously faced?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and acknowledge his advocacy on behalf of Australia's defence industry and his home state of South Australia.

Later this month, life-of-type extension work will begin on our Collins class submarines, which, in the journey of the most capable submarine that our nation has ever operated, is a very significant moment. But we get to this moment via a litany of Defence failures on the part of the Liberals when they were in government. Back in 2021, on the very day that the Morrison government announced a change of plans for our future submarine capability, the Liberals also announced a life-of-type extension of the Collins class, which would have seen it become interoperable with the Attack class submarines, which they had just cancelled. That is to say that the Collins class sustainment planning team literally did not get the AUKUS memo. This was breathtaking incompetence on the part of the former government.

When we came to government, we knew that this plan was in trouble. We commissioned Gloria Valdez to have a look at it. She found that it was horribly misguided. We also knew that it was chronically underfunded. The Liberals had set aside just $6 billion to do the entire job. By contrast, in the budget and the defence strategy that we announced a month ago, we have put aside $11 billion to do the life-of-type extension of Collins over just the next 10 years, and the work goes beyond that. The plan will make Collins a pathway to operating our future nuclear-powered submarine, and in the meantime it will see an increased availability of the Collins class in the here and now. The Collins LOTE will underpin around 1,400 jobs at the Osborne Naval Shipyard, in Adelaide. Along with the work to construct our future submarines and our future frigates, this will see 10,000 well-paid, secure jobs at Osborne, making it easily the largest industrial facility in the country.

This has been a difficult set of decisions because we have had to clean up a monumental Liberal mess, but the result is that the Collins class submarine will continue to be a potent capability and to serve all Australians for decades to come.