Doorstop at AMC

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, thank you very much for coming. It’s great to be here in Tasmania to talk about Australia’s tremendous investment in Defence industry from now and into the future for many decades, which will benefit the economy in Tasmania and the economy in the whole country. I’ve been hosted here this morning by Senator Stephen Parry, one of the Tasmanian Liberal Senate team, and we’ve been here at the Australian Maritime College and opening the industry workshop on how industry and business in this part of Tasmania can engage with the big investment in defence industry.

$195 billion of building up our military capability over the next ten years is one of the largest build ups of military capability in the world right now, and it is the largest build up in Australia’s peace time history, and the difference between this build up and others over the last several decades has been that the Turnbull Government is determined that the vast majority of that expenditure is spent here in Australia creating jobs, technologies, innovation and exports that feed into jobs and growth right across the economy. They go from Launceston to Burnie to meet with the Elphinstone group, of course, who’ve been one of the most significant manufacturers in north west Tasmania, and then to Hobart, to meet with the Premier Will Hodgman, and talk to him about how Tasmania can maximise its involvement in the defence industry spend.

So, I love being back in Tasmania. South Australians and Tasmanians have an affinity going back to federation and it’s good to be back here to promote what you can do in terms of defence industry and how you can create jobs in your economy.

QUESTION: On the local radio this morning you said Tasmania needs to coordinate itself better to get contracts. How does the state do that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, what I said was that the defence industry in Tasmania is very diffuse. It’s made up largely of small and medium enterprises, spread right across the state, and has a few iconic institutions and large businesses, like Taylor Marine, Elphinstone, the Defence Science and Technology Group at Scottsdale, of course, which is the old DSTO, and here of course in Launceston, the Australian Maritime College. And what it needs, and I think what the State Government is trying to do in Will Hodgman’s Government, is coordinate that capability into something that can be sold as an entire package for large projects and for smaller projects. South Australia has bee a model in this respect, with the Defence Teaming Centre, bringing together all of the small and medium enterprises there, and the Defence SA, which has been a South Australian Government initiative to drive and promote South Australia as a defence hub. So, I think that us something I want to discuss with Will, how we can do that more and better, because I think the opportunities are immense.

QUESTION: Why are you investing in another maritime college in South Australia?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The naval shipbuilding college in Adelaide is designed to create skilled labour, skilled workers, in things like fitting and turning, naval welding, electrical contractors. These are not bachelor degree-level positions. And the AMC, of course, is a different institution. So, the AMC and the naval shipbuilding college will not be competing with each other. They will complement each other, and this is a great boon for the Australian Maritime College because it will mean more students here studying those graduate level degrees and postgraduate study in the higher levels of the skills that’ll be required. And they, of course, are a research institution. The naval shipbuilding college at Adelaide will not be a research institution. The AMC has international collaborations, which makes it one of the best maritime colleges in the world. The naval shipbuilding college won’t have any of those international collaborations. We are trying to create 5000 workers for Osborne in Adelaide to do future frigates and submarines and offshore patrol vessels between now and the mid 2020s. It’s a huge task. The AMC can certainly help with those higher level courses. But the courses that’ll be offered by the naval shipbuilding college, using institutions already in place like TAFEs and others, will not be competing with the AMC. So this is actually good news for the Australian Maritime College.

QUESTION: There’s many in the community who are concerned about the future of the Maritime College when this new college is up and running.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, they have absolutely no reason to be concerned. In fact, they should be absolutely delighted because the Government is spending $90 billion on naval shipbuilding in Australia over the next several decades. That can only be good news for the Australian Maritime College because it is the preeminent institution that offers graduate and post graduate courses for those people who want to be involved in the maritime industry. So in fact, they have absolutely no reason to be concerned, they should be in fact celebrating that that $90b investment can only mean that the future of the AMC is completely secure.

QUESTION: Couldn’t that $25m being spent here though?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well no, because the ships have been built in Osborne. So if they try to teach someone how to weld a ship or if you’re trying to teach somebody how to be a fitter and turner on a frigate, you really need to be able to walk across from the college across the car park to the frigate and work with your hands on the actual project. So no, it couldn’t possibly had been done here.

QUESTION: How long does the State Government have to get everything coordinated? When are the contracts being let? Are you disappointed that they are a little bit behind the eight ball by the sound of it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, not at all. I don’t think they are. They’re not behind the eight ball at all. The Hodgman Government has a defence industry strategy and it has been talking to me since my appointment right back in July last year. These contracts and tenders, for whether it’s frigates or the Offshore Patrol Vessels, the very many different vehicle phases of combat reconnaissance vehicles and armoured vehicles and trailers and so on, these are stretching out for years into the future. We are at the beginning of a national endeavour to build the defence industry that would create jobs and growth and wealth in our community for decades. So no one is behind the eight ball. We are laying the foundations for this right now and quite successfully. So in 14 months, we have pooled together tenders for 12 Offshore Patrol Vessels, the Pacific Patrol vessels and the future frigates and decided the down-select for submarines to DCNS. We’ve awarded the combat system integration contract to Lockheed Martin for the submarines. We have had the new infrastructure design for Osborne and soon for Henderson and that work will start in July this year. So we’ve opened the Centre for Defence Industry Capability, we’ve established the Next Generation Technology Fund, the Defence Innovation Hub. We have been a hive of activity and this is what was very exciting and it means that Tasmania will get as much of its share as it has the capability to deliver. And that’s one of the critical things that I have to do as Defence Industry Minister is convey to business that if they want to be involved in this great national endeavour, we will help them to build their capability so that they can supply the quality and the reliability of the platforms that we need in defence because our number one priority of course is still the national security of the nation.

QUESTION: This on education minister. Catholic schools in the ACT warn they might have to close as a result of the new school funding announcement. Do you think that’s fair?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think it’s very unlikely.

QUESTION: What do you say to parents who might have to cope with the higher school fees?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well what we announced yesterday is a very significant and fair reform. The model that Labor introduced of school funding was not the Gonski model, which is why I described it a con back then because while David Gonski did an excellent job with the report, the Gonski report, which will now be, have replicated with Gonski 2, Labor didn’t implement that model. They had 27 different agreements across the nation. If you signed up early, you got less money. So South Australia, my state, got the worst deal from the Labor Government because they signed up soon because Jay Weatherill wanted to give Julia Gillard a win. States that held out got more money because Julia Gillard was more desperate for them to be part of the model. So they had 27 different agreements across the country. What Simon Birmingham and Malcolm Turnbull announced yesterday is a huge increase in spending on education, a massive increase, a fair share across independent Catholic and government schools that much more accurately reflects David Gonski’s report, and that’s why David Gonski has signed up to do Gonski 2 because he can see that we are keeping faith with having a needs-based funding model which is fair to everyone. There are 9,500 schools in Australia, over 9,000 would be much better off, 24 high wealth schools will have a negative growth into the future, 24 out of 9,500, and 300 will see their growth not rise as fast as they had forecast based on money that Labor never had. That was in one of the greatest cons of all time. So I’m a Catholic, my children attend Catholic schools and non-Catholic schools, I went to a Catholic school, the Catholic school system will see its funding increased, I think it’s 3.7%, somebody can check that figure since I’m not the Minister for Education anymore but I think 3.7% across Australia and I think that is a very fair outcome for all faiths and all government systems. No independent or Catholic school is being treated differently because of their religion. They’re all being treated exactly the same way and that’s what you’d expect in a secular country.

QUESTION: If these were to increase though, would they not push more students into the public school sector and put more pressure on those resources?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, see you can only see this as a glass half empty proposition, and really you should be examining how terrific it is for school children to be seeing a massive increase in their spending over the next four and 10 years, and a government that’s focused on making the states deliver outcomes for students in literacy and numeracy and science and technology, that have been failing our young people for two decades. We’ve increased our spending by 50 per cent on schools in the last 10 years before the government was elected- before the Abbott Government was elected, which is the last figure I have, because that’s when I was the Minister. And yet our results have gone back – not just relatively to other countries – but in real terms. And how you could’ve achieved that in Australia over that period of time is quite monumentally a failure of the education system and this will help fix that. So we should be congratulated for doing such a good job by students, and giving them a chance to be able to have great jobs, not just here, but all around the world.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Last question guys.

QUESTION: You mentioned the $195 million being spent on …

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: [Interrupts] Billion.

QUESTION: Billion, sorry, being spent on the Defence build-up. How much of that is going to be spent here in Tasmania?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well look, that’s an absolutely impossible question to answer and you probably know that. But the $195 billion is over 10 years. It depends on which businesses win contracts, which company’s win tenders and where those might be based, which arrangements they might have with suppliers and subcontractors. There will be a maximum Australian industry content. A local build is regarded as about 60 per cent. So I imagine it’ll be upward of that. The Collins class submarine is already 82 per cent so there will be tremendous benefits for everybody around the country. But I can’t put a percentage to a decimal point on how much Tasmania will receive. They will receive whatever they are capable of supplying which is why we have to build up defence industry in Tasmania so they can win those contracts.

QUESTION: Mr Pyne, you’ve had plenty of experience dealing with university and university funding, can you get …

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I remember it all too well.

QUESTION: Yes. Can the Government get this latest manifestation through the Senate?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look, that’s really probably a better question for Simon Birmingham who’s done a tremendous job in both university reform and in school funding. And he has been- he says that he’s been working with the crossbenchers already explaining the higher education funding reforms and how that will affect universities and students and he seems to have opened a reasonable dialogue with them. The media this morning indicates that the crossbenchers have said that they’re very open to some of these reforms if not all of them, so I’m confident that we will get a good package through the Senate. We’ve been doing that since the Turnbull Government was re-elected – whether it’s the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the Registered Organisations Commission, child care reform, social security savings measures and the company tax cut. I think journalists should stop writing stories about how hard it is to get anything through the Senate because the Turnbull Government is getting things through the Senate quite successfully. Because we also take the view that 80 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing. But I’m confident that Simon has done the work and will do the work to get a higher education package through the Senate.