Address at the opening of Boeing's Adelaide office

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, it’s great to be here at the opening of Boeing Adelaide’s office with Steven Marshall, the leader of the Liberal Party. Here is another example of the Federal Government’s policies around Defence Industry, seeing the rubber hit the road. I’ve opened office after office in the last nine months of new businesses, primes from overseas, Australian businesses investing and establishing office space and laboratories as part of our defence industry expansion. The Federal Government’s spending $195 billion over the next ten years, the largest peacetime build up of our military capability in our history. And Adelaide and all of Australia is benefiting economically because we’re not just going to have a foreign military sale where we put in an order in the United States and then receive the product or service a few years later. We want to see those jobs being created here in Australia. Our number one priority remains capability but our number two priority is making those dollars drive our economy, and it’s working.

Not only are we opening an office today for Boeing in Adelaide, 250 South Australians will get jobs here, but the Australian national accounts in the last quarter of last year showed the defence industry showing up for the first time in living memory as on the drivers of the economy. And it’s no surprise because just the naval shipbuilding part of that alone is twice the size of the National Broadband Network. So, it is a very exciting day for Adelaide, it’s another exciting day because another office opening in this great city, which helps the whole South Australian and also the Australian economy. And I would congratulate Boeing, who are a great corporate citizen, a model for all the other corporates in Australia and primes who are coming here of how to become part of the fabric of our society. They aren’t a fly-in fly-out business, they’ve been here for 90 years and they’ve been working, 3500 of them employed here in Australia, and there’ll be many more to come.

Steve, would you like to say a couple of words?

STEPHEN MARSHALL: Well, I would just like to commend the Federal Government. This is a great day for South Australia to have Boeing opening their office right here in Adelaide, here in South Australia is a fantastic day for our state. And I would like to commend the minister and the Coalition for providing certainty in terms of defence spending in Australia, but most importantly, having a focus on creating a defence industry for South Australia, not just contractors who might respond to a Federal Government contract, but a vision to create a defence industry which will create sustainable, long-term jobs here in Australia and most particularly here in South Australia. So, we’re moving away from this stop start arrangement we’ve had for a very long period of time to a strategic procurement arrangement, a Defence Industry Minister for our nation, and this is great news for South Australia going forward.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Hear, hear.

QUESTION: Do you need to commend the Weatherill Government for getting a deal to get Boeing here?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Look, I think everybody has put their shoulder to the wheel. There’s an enormous opportunity in South Australia and we need to see everybody working together to solve some of the very significant problems that we have here in South Australia. We’ve had the highest unemployment rate in the nation for 27 consecutive months. Now there’s a great opportunity, it’s on our doorstep, and that opportunity is the defence industry opportunity, and we should all be working together – state and federal; Labor, Liberal; right across the spectrum – to get as many jobs here in our state.

QUESTION: Do you think South Australian taxpayers deserve to know how much was paid to lure the company here?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Look, I think that that is an issue which we would, in the Opposition, like a briefing on to make sure that it was a commensurate investment for our state. I’m not sure that it necessarily needs to be made clear to every single person in South Australia because I do appreciate that there are some commercial and confidence arrangements. But I think that historically these things were done via a subcommittee of the Economic and Finance Committee and I think it would be good for this Government to re-establish that, work with the Opposition, because quite frankly, we’re all in this together. We would like to see South Australia achieve much more than it’s achieving at the moment. We’re not achieving our full potential, there’s a lot of upside for South Australia with these defence contracts, and as I said, Labor, Liberal, Federal, State should all be working together to bring jobs here to our state.

QUESTION: Minister Pyne, as one of the two Defence Ministers, are you worried about the rhetoric we’re hearing out of the Korean Peninsula in recent hours?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, everyone should be concerned about the situation on the North Korean peninsula, on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea probably represents the greatest threat at the moment in the world to stability. In some respects, in spite of the extraordinary scenes in the Middle East in the last couple of weeks, and obviously a six-year war in Syria, the outcomes in the Middle East are more predictable in many respects because it’s very unlikely that ISIS or other players there will defeat the allied cause.

In the North Korean situation, it’s much more unpredictable and they have greater capability to hurt Australia, the United States, South Korea, Japan, obviously, and many of our other allies around our region. And they have an unpredictable leadership. Kim Jong Un has been the third generation in Korea, it’s quite likely he believes the rhetoric of the last couple of generations about their very special place in the world, and that makes his decisions less likely for us to predict. That is a significant consequence to Australia, so we welcome the United States taking a firm line with North Korea. And, as Malcolm Turnbull has said, it’s very important that China takes full responsibility for what it can do in the North Korean situation to settle that part of the world and to ensure that North Korea knows that they need to behave as a good international citizen, rather than the way they have been behaving in recent times.

QUESTION: Can I ask, would you support the concept of allowing superannuation to be used for housing deposits?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, look, those kinds of questions will be revealed in the budget. They’re matters for the Expenditure Review Committee and the cabinet, so I wouldn’t be talking about budget matters or those ERC and cabinet discussions before the budget’s released.

QUESTION: Enough of your colleagues are, and there’s very strong views. Do you have a gut feeling one way or the other?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, my colleagues have to make their own decisions about whether they want to talk about things like jobs in the defence industry, the serious concerns about North Korea and the Middle East, ensuring we have jobs and growth in our economy, or whether they want to be political commentators on speculation. I choose not to be a political commentator on speculation.

QUESTION: You don’t have a comment about your concern potentially for the housing market to increase if this was passed?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: As I said, I’m not going to be a commentator on speculation. I think that’s the job of journalists and commentators, it’s not the job of cabinet ministers.

QUESTION: Has Australia been asked to provide any defence assistance to South Korea or the US?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No at this stage, no, and similarly we weren’t asked to take part in the attack on the air base in Syria last week.

QUESTION: Do you think that Pine Gap in Central Australia puts us at a greater risk from North Korea?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Pine Gap is a critical part of the Five Eyes arrangements between Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US. It is a vital piece of the structure that makes us Five Eyes countries have an advantage over anyone who might seek to do us damage. So, it is a 50-year investment by Australia and the United States in having the capabilities that are far in advance of any of our competitor nations in terms of defence and national security. So, I strongly support the presence of Pine Gap and it’s part of our alliance arrangements with the United States. It’s critical for all countries who believe in freedom and liberty and democracy to make sure we can protect ourselves. Part of that is knowing what the enemy might do before they actually do it and Pine Gap provides us with that capability.

QUESTION: Would Australia naval assets be redeployed away from the Korean Peninsula at the moment, can you imagine that happening?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m not aware of any Australian naval assets in North Asian waters at the moment, but that’s probably a question you should put directly to Marise Payne’s office because she’s responsible for operational matters.