Opening of the Lockheed Martin

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Doorstop - Opening of the Lockheed Martin Australia submarine combat system laboratory

Friday 27 November 2015

SUBJECT: Opening of the Lockheed Martin Australia submarine combat system laboratory

Christopher Pyne: Thank you very much Raydon to you, representing Lockheed Martin, to representatives of many of the collaborative businesses that are here, but particularly Saab and Thales, and some of the smaller and medium enterprises. To my parliamentary colleague Linda Reynolds, I’m very delighted that she caught the red eye this morning to come across to be part of this opener, and my ministerial colleague Martin Hamilton-Smith.

Ladies and gentlemen it is a great pleasure to be here to open- officially open the Lockheed Martin Australia submarine combat system laboratory. It’s a great example of many of the huge positives in innovation and industry here in Australia, because of the collaboration as, Raydon pointed out, that’s just one good example. One of the things about the defence industry is that it has learned over many decades that working together, bringing in the expertise of different businesses, companies, the Department of Defence, DSTG as it is now, and so on, we can do so much more. And it’s also a great example of what South Australia can do, and what can be good for South Australia in the years ahead. And as the Minister for Innovation particularly, I’m excited to be here, because the future in manufacturing is advanced manufacturing and innovative manufacturing. So this laboratory’s a really good example of what can be done here in Adelaide, which has been something of a secret for many people for a long time. But given the focus and emphasis that we’re all placing on the naval ship building industry – whether it’s the frigates, the offshore patrol vessels, and the submarines – we’ve taken as South Australians to talking a lot about what we can do here in this state around advanced manufacturing and the high-tech industries.

I’m very enthusiastic about two things that are coming up in the next couple of months. One is the National Innovation and Science Agenda, which will be released in December; and the second is the Defence Industry Policy Statement, which will be released probably in February is the current plan. Both will be really important to sending a message to the Australian public and business community around the future for advanced manufacturing, high-tech industries, creativity, innovation, research commercialisation across our economy.

The Prime Minister, as you’d now be well aware, is enthusiastic about innovation being at the centre of our economy. This is very good news for the defence industry. I’ve been all over Australia for the last 20 years as a Member of Parliament, but quite clearly, in this particular portfolio, advanced manufacturing is so much the future of where we’re going to have jobs and investment, foreign investment, and growth in our economy. And the Prime Minister wants to put innovation at the centre of that, which is good news for us. He wants to make sure that in the defence industry policy statement and the National Innovation and Science Agenda we explain to the Australian public what government can do around using our procurement dollar, for example, to encourage advanced manufacturing and high-tech industries; and that will be quite apparent, particularly in the Defence Industry Policy Statement.

Both of these two policy areas are so large, that rather than putting them together we decided to separate them. The National Innovation and Science Agenda will cover the whole of government, but the defence part will be kept as a separate announcement for later. Because both are so large, we didn’t want the sun to block out- one to block out the sun for the other. We wanted people to be able to focus on the real enthusiastic agenda that we have for the future around advanced manufacturing and high-tech industries.

So the National Innovation and Science Agenda will cover the commercialisation of research, and I know there are representatives here from some of Adelaide and Australia’s best university- Melbourne University represented here as well as Adelaide University. It will cover the raising of capital and the culture around risk taking, enabling risk in Australia, encouraging people to see taking risk as a positive, and that failure is not a disaster. We’ll be covering talents and skills: so how to bring people back from overseas who’ve been overseas improving their skills; how to encourage those who are here to stay here, who have come to study whether they are doing doctorates, masters by research, and so forth; having more flexible visas and pathways to permanent residency for people that we think can be entrepreneurial, but also a science, technology, engineering and maths focus in our schools; and we’ll have government as an exemplar - so not only procurement as government, but also how we act as governments ourselves in terms of the Digital Transformation Office and how we interact with our clients.

There are over 20 measures in the National Innovation and Science Agenda, and therefore it will be a very big statement, a big event. It will be a strong domestic policy ballast for the Government going into the end of the year, and I think most people- that everybody will be very pleased with it. And so Lockheed Martin Australia and its partners here of course will be very much part of our future in higher-tech industries and advanced manufacturing, working in the defence sector in particular. So I do welcome their presence here in Adelaide, they are part of a very happy part of the South Australian economy, the defence industry, which can be a great driving force for our economy in this state. And as I have four children aged seven to 15, that’s what I want to see, because I want them to stay here and get jobs in this kind of sector into the future. I’m sure everyone in this room wants to do the same.

So thank you very much for the opportunity to be here, and I’m very pleased to declare open the submarine combat systems laboratory.

Thank you.

[ends]