Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on Senator Carr's motion before the Senate. I applaud Senator Carr for bringing this to the chamber so that we can talk about it. It is a very important issue. It is certainly a very important issue for South Australians. There may be some listening to the broadcast as they drive home. I want to speak about it broadly, for anyone out there who is interested. This is a motion that has been brought onto the floor of the Senate this evening. It makes motherhood statements, really, about the vital contribution of the Australian shipbuilding industry. We all know about that. We all understand that. It is a pity, Senator Cameron, that you are not staying to listen to my contribution; I was going to agree with a number of things—but I will see you next week.

Senator Carr raises a number of issues. He says that he is gravely concerned about the scheduled end of work projects in the three Australian shipyards in 2015, and the severe consequences: the project trough and the retrenchment of workers. This motion is, as my South Australian Senate colleagues have said earlier in this debate, just a political ploy. In the areas of shipbuilding and the defence forces, the budgets go out for many, many years. We know the importance of planning and budgeting for these projects. For many years there has not been good budgeting for these projects; nor has money been made available for these projects.

I know there is a shrill lament coming from the other side of the chamber about what could have been. Opposition senators say, 'You're the government now so stop talking about it.' But to put it in basic terms, when we won the election, we went to the cupboard and the cupboard was bare. The declining revenue for the Australian Defence Force over many years has meant that this valley of death was looming large for the Australian Labor Party, and it now looms large for the coalition.

However, in our DNA we understand that you have to make savings. You have to get rid of duplication and ensure that everything is running efficiently in your government so that you can apply and prioritise funds so that the valley of death does not eventuate. I say to those listening to my contribution tonight that there is a plan. There is a plan to protect jobs in South Australia, where I come from. It is a good plan. Minister Johnston spends a lot of time in South Australia and is absolutely passionate about maintaining the integrity of the Defence budget and ensuring that shipbuilding continues to play a major role in all those shipbuilding centres.

As a South Australian senator I know first-hand how important it is to get right the decisions that governments make in the defence space. South Australia is home to state-of-the-art facilities at Techport in Osborne near Port Adelaide

I recently had the pleasure—and it was a great pleasure indeed—and was so proud to be with the Minister for Defence and my colleagues from all political persuasions in South Australia at the keel-laying ceremony for the HMAS Brisbane at the Techport facility. And I was there with thousands of workers in their high-vis uniforms. I enjoyed a tour of the HMAS Brisbane and enjoyed seeing the photographic historical record of its various incarnations of construction to date. Over $300 million in state owned infrastructure at Techport is deployed to develop a world-class maritime industrial precinct. The facility will support the ASC to deliver the Royal Australian Navy's next-generation $8 billion air warfare destroyers—the AWDs, as we know them here—and it will attract future naval shipbuilding and repair opportunities to the state of South Australia.

I may be somewhat cynical, Senator Heffernan, who joins us here to listen to this contribution, but with a state election in South Australia pending this motion is clearly stating the obvious. Of course we want shipbuilding. Of course we want as much of our Defence building done in Australia as possible. We do not want to outsource it, as the previous government did, and then have cost blow-outs. We want to be able to monitor and nurture all of these trades in all of the shipbuilding facilities that we have around this country.

I was just talking about Techport, Senator Heffernan, down there in Port Adelaide. This state-of-the-art project management, engineering and commercial headquarters of the AWD project houses all of its alliance partners, the Defence Materiel Organisation and, as a shipbuilder, the Hobart-class combat systems engineer. Also down there as a provider to Defence is Raytheon Australia, and that whole precinct has build-capability partners, including the likes of Navantia, even the United States Navy, and Lockheed Martin Corp. There is a very, very big investment in this indeed. So it cannot fail. We must focus on it. It is a high-tech hub where about 400 expert naval architects, project managers, combat systems engineers, logistics teams, planners and procurement specialists are working together to deliver the most powerful and advanced warship Australia has ever operated.

The government is aware of the issues faced by Australia's major shipyards, and the future completion of the AWG and LHD projects will follow. Under the previous government, the Australian defence industry shed more than 10 per cent of its workforce because of budget cuts, and I talked about those earlier. When we were not in government, we raised that with you and it fell on deaf ears. The deferrals, the official procrastination and the tendency to commission foreign suppliers over Australian ones were almost palpable. In fact, the share of GDP spent on defence has fallen to its lowest level since 1938, and that was under your government, the Labor government.

This government is committed, if you will excuse the pun, to steadying the ship in Defence. After six years of chaotic planning and cuts to the Defence budget, this government wants to avoid production troughs by cooperating closely with these companies—the ones I mentioned—big and small. We want to provide the consistency, the continuity and a long-term focus on defence capability—and we heard earlier about that from Senator Fawcett. A new defence white paper has been structured to be more successful than those that were commissioned and jettisoned and then commissioned again by the previous government. Once we release it, it will give us an authoritative guidance to defence and provide a logical and sustainable basis for investment and procurement decisions, as well as a properly funded 10-year defence capability plan.

The naval shipbuilding industry is facing a significant downturn in demand in the very near future. We are aware of that. Approximately 4,000 employees work in naval shipbuilding in Australia, and on current planning the work for these employees will reduce dramatically from early 2015, not 12 months away. So we have to get cracking. Notably, the ASC in Adelaide employs approximately 1,200 workers on the air warfare destroyer construction program, where work is expected to reduce in early 2015, to be complete by mid-2019. BAE Systems in Melbourne employs approximately 1,000 staff on the AWD and landing helicopter decks—or the LHD, as they are known here—programs, where construction is expected to be complete around mid-2015.

Because of the six years of total inaction on the part of the previous government, we are now facing a crisis in naval shipbuilding. I am not getting too many interjections from the other side because they know it to be true. How many contracts for ships to be built were signed under Labor's reign of six years? No? It is a rhetorical question, but, Mr Acting Deputy President—I have to address the chamber through you and not those on the other side directly—it would be a very interesting answer if I were able to address them. But you will have to convey the question for me. The Labor government's solution was to delay projects and push out the costs to a future date, and now it is our problem. By way of example, they twice extended the time lines for construction of the three ships in the AWD project. The net result was that the delivery dates—