Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Gallacher for his question. I don't have the benefit of the Hansard of the committee hearing, because, as I understand it, it has yet to be produced. But what I do understand is that Defence officials appearing before the Senate Economics References Committee last Friday outlined that, following the announcement of the ASC-Austal teaming arrangement in June this year, the deputy secretary of the capability acquisition and sustainment group, Mr Gillis, did contact each of the Future Frigate tender participants to assure them that they were able to continue to rely on the tender documents.

Now, I'm not going to canvass the details of the tender, because it is an active tender that is underway. But the provisions of the tender documents and the assurance that Mr Gillis provided to those participants were to say that, while Defence has not mandated a particular workforce, Defence has placed an obligation on industry to maximise Australian industry involvement. All three of the international shipbuilders invited to tender on the Future Frigate program have said that, if they are successful, they will use the existing and experienced shipbuilding workforce in Adelaide as the base from which to grow the workforce they need to deliver on our continuous naval shipbuilding program. Let me remind the chamber that that naval shipbuilding program is intended to create more than 5,200 direct jobs by the mid-2020s, with another 10,000 created across the supply chain. That will be a threefold increase on the workforce we already have. Any suggestion otherwise is nothing but grandstanding and, frankly, from those opposite, blatant hypocrisy, given their appalling, negligent record on naval shipbuilding in this country. (Time expired)