Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I recently visited two key Defence sites in Western Australia. Australian industry is key to supporting our nation's naval capabilities, sovereign defence and mining infrastructure. Civmec's Henderson facility is the state's largest manufacturing hub, and it's the only integrated steel shipyard—one of just two in Australia, the other being in the government owned Osborne Naval Shipyard in my home state of South Australia. Civmec's facilities include automated welding systems, blast and paint, and an assembly hall capable of hosting four frigates simultaneously. It's the largest ship consolidation hall in the Southern Hemisphere. Labor has committed the Australian taxpayer to investing $12 billion over 20 years to transform Henderson into a world-class shipbuilding and submarine hub.

I'd like to see Australia become the shipbuilding nation for the globe, but capability is not just about facilities; it's about whether the inputs needed to sustain capability are secure, competitive and reliable. Across defence industry, we remain heavily reliant on overseas supply chains for critical components and materials. Those inputs are often moving through long and very complex and increasingly contested global routes.

In a country that exports vast quantities of raw materials, we are sending resources offshore only to buy them back in processed form to support our own defence and manufacturing assets, because it is too expensive to process those materials here, with high power prices and rigid IR settings. Sovereign capability means more than assembling assets locally. It means having full control over the chain of materials, processing, manufacturing and sustainment.