Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Defence (Senator Johnston) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) and Senator Conroy today relating to the manufacture of the next fleet of Australian submarines.

This matter really is not being given the respect it deserves in this chamber. I think that anybody who has visited South Australia or lived in, worked in or read about South Australia would realise how important this issue is, how widely held and deeply felt this issue is. There are plenty of Liberal supporters in South Australia—not a majority, I might add; not enough to get into government, but there are plenty of them there—and they view this decision by this minister and this government with clear disdain. This is not a decision which anyone in South Australia will support this government on. People may have a view of the budget, a view of the fiscal world, but they are very, very clear on the need to retain a manufacturing base in South Australia—retaining high quality, high skill, high-value jobs in South Australia.

Let us put on the record some of the comments of a couple of those very solid Liberal contributors. Let us take the member for Hindmarsh, Mr Matt Williams. He has written to his Prime Minister exhorting him to make a different decision, imploring him to make a decision in the seat of Hindmarsh. Let us take our own good Senator Fawcett, who put out a press release as late as last week saying that he fully supports the design build—well, let us read it. Let us go straight to the source:

I am a strong advocate for building the next submarines in Australia.

My views in summary are:

That is not from the Labor side; that is from the Liberal side. Let us have a look at what the former leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia, the now Minister For Defence Industries as well as a number of other portfolios, who says very, very clearly what the situation is. Mr Martin Hamilton-Smith takes complete umbrage at this decision, saying:

'It beggars belief that any federal government would seriously consider spending up to $250 billion of Australian taxpayers' money on buying naval ships from overseas …

Mr Hamilton-Smith said there were 27,000 defence jobs in this state, including 3000 in ship building, and 'industry activity worth hundreds of billions of dollars over 30 years that hinge on this decision due in the coming year'.

Those are just a few comments, not from our side of the chamber, not from our side of politics—although I must say that Martin-Hamilton Smith is a very valued member of the Labor government in South Australia, which manages to convince the electorate and, I might say, the general population of the value of manufacturing to our state.

This crew opposite chased the automotive industry out of town. They chased Holden out of town. They basically said, 'Put you dollars down or get out.' Now they are making a similar sort of mistake on the long-term viability of manufacturing in South Australia, and it is absolutely criminal. It is a very, very bad, short-sighted view to have taken. Even the current leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia, the honourable Steve Marshall—he is not quite 'the Hon.' yet; he never made it, but he may one day—is out there castigating this decision, the mishandling of this. He is out there castigating this decision—the mishandling of this. What did Senator Johnston say? He said: 'We will be doing it. We will be building 12 submarines in Adelaide.' And then he said: 'We will be picking up, if we win the next election, the cudgels for this project as fast as we possibly can.' What did we see in question time today? (Time expired)