Press Conference

11 Dec 2017 Transcipt

SUBJECTS: Announcement of ASC jobs and scholarships in Osborne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: … today to Osborne. Today is a really good news day for the workers of the ASC, for South Australians everywhere, because the Federal Government is effectively delivering an early Christmas present to the workforce at the Australian Submarine Corporation. I’ve said many times that one of the most significant challenges for the naval shipbuilding enterprise is the skills and workforce component. Obviously, we’ve been working for months to find ways to keep the ASC workforce in place, so that when the Future Frigates begin in earnest in 2020, we’re not reskilling a new workforce, but in fact providing work and providing capability for the existing workforce, and then adding to that.
Over the last month or so, we’ve announced some very significant ways that we’re going to do that. The Offshore Patrol Vessels project, the two offshore patrol vessels that will begin here at Osborne, will create 400 jobs. The rebuilding of the Osborne South shipyard by Lendlease, thanks to the Government’s announcements, is 600 jobs. That’s 1000 jobs that are available to ASC workers, and today we’re announcing that the Government has a package for 200 jobs and scholarships to keep the workforce at the ASC engaged.
Those 200 people will work in the submarine sustainment and maintenance project. They’ll work with the project office of the Submarine Corporation, and there’ll be about 100 scholarships available for workers to be retrained in computer-aided design and other aspects of shipbuilding and submarine-building, to keep 1200 people, effectively, across the workforce engaged in shipbuilding and submarine-building: 600 in the construction of Osborne South shipyard; 400 in the offshore patrol vessels; 200 in the announcement that we’ve made today, which is the package of jobs and scholarships to keep the submarine and the shipbuilding workforce intact.
There are about 1078 workers at ASC right now, so these announcements more than cover the workforce that we need to keep intact. It’s really good news, and what it really shows is that, in spite of all the criticisms from armchair experts across
industry and shipbuilding, the Government has been getting on with the job of putting in place the necessary policies to establish the skills and workforce, the infrastructure, keeping the decision-making process on schedule, whether it’s offshore patrol vessels, submarines and Future Frigates, because the $90 billion naval shipbuilding enterprise is not some mirage in the desert. It is happening right now. We’re completing the air warfare destroyers. We’ve got 21 Pacific patrol vessels being built right now in Henderson, starting to cut steel early in 2017. Offshore Patrol Vessels will cut steel in 2018; Future Frigates in 2020; submarines in 2022; and that workforce that we are keeping in place we will need to increase to over 5000 – closer to 5500 – by the mid-2020s if we’re going to be able to deliver this naval shipbuilding enterprise.
This is great news for the Navy in terms of capability; it’s great news for South Australia, as the centre of large platform shipbuilding and submarine-building; and it’s great news for Australia, as we lead into Christmas, being able to say to all those workers – and skilled workers particularly – that their jobs are intact into the future.
QUESTION: Does this mean that the Valley of Death is no more?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think you could say that we have filled in the Valley of Death. We started doing that with the announcement of the shipyard reconstruction at Osborne South. We followed up with that with the offshore patrol vessels, and working with the Department of Defence, the Turnbull Government has come up with a way of keeping an extra 200 people intact in the workforce, which means they go into Christmas knowing that they and their families have a future in shipbuilding and submarine-building in South Australia, and therefore I think we can say that we have ended the Labor legacy where they built no ships, commissioned no ships in Australia in six years. We’ve commissioned 54, and that’s the huge difference between the Turnbull Government’s actions and Labor, when they were in government, where all they did was talk.
QUESTION: Is there any chances that some of those positions might be available to workforce members who’ve left over the past year, those who’ve lost their jobs before this point in time?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look, it’s quite possible. So, I’ll leave the recruiting to the Australian Submarine Corporation; I won’t, obviously, be making those decisions, but there’ll be opportunities for people who’ve left shipbuilding, if they have, to come back in and make sure we retain those skills. There’ll be opportunities for the people in the automotive industry, for example, to access scholarships about computer-aided design and other aspects of shipbuilding and submarine-building and maintenance, and that will depend on the skills that they bring and what they want to do. And I think we are showing, despite the naysayers who fill the pages of the newspapers with ignorance on a daily basis, we are actually showing that we can get the job done, that we actually care about the outcomes, rather than just the public relations side of things, and it is good news for those people who might have left, being able to come back in.
QUESTION: Do you expect these people to transition back into construction of ships, or do you expect that they will stay in submarine maintenance, or submarine construction?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, there will be a lot of jobs for these people over the next five years. Between now and 2022-23, we’re going to need to find up to 5000 new people. So people who are currently skilled in shipbuilding and submarine building, maintenance and sustainment, they are going to be the leaders, the trainers, the high-echelon people who are helping to train the new people coming into the workforce. So there’ll always be jobs. I mean, what we’ve done here in South Australia, and Australia more generally at Henderson, is we have created a defence industry in shipbuilding and submarine building that people dreamed about five years ago. We’re actually making it happen, because we’ve put the $200 billion extra into naval and defence capabilities over the next 10 years, and we’ve made the decisions that are going to make that happen.
So those people will have jobs in this industry, so will their children and their grandchildren, and now we can say with great confidence that shipbuilding and submarine building is not a job for a project, it is a career for life. That’s why we’re running an information campaign, asking young people to consider science, technology, engineering and maths and skilled trades, because we know there’s going to be thousands of jobs for them. For every job we create directly, there are four jobs created indirectly. So we’re talking between about 20,000 to 25,000 jobs in South Australia alone in shipbuilding, submarine building and maintenance and sustainment.
QUESTION: Minister, we saw this morning the FOI out of CASG; why is it that the Federal Government appears so intent to have ASC shipbuilding not involved in the construction of the Future Frigates?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, that isn’t true. We’ve run a tender for the Future Frigates – it’s a $35 billion project. All nine of the Future Frigates will be built here in Osborne, they’ll all be built using Australian steel. They’ll be designed by either Fincantieri, BAE or Navantia. They will be the prime in the project, and they will use whatever subcontractors that they wish to use, whether it’s Austal or Civmec or ASC, and the workforces involved in those businesses, or indeed any new players. The idea that there will be anybody other than ASC, Austal and Civmec being used is, quite frankly, mad.
What the Department of Defence would’ve been doing would’ve been ensuring that the tender was conducted properly. If the Government had mandated an Australian shipbuilder – either ASC or Austal or Forgacs – then they would’ve been able to write their own price. The idea of a contract negotiation would’ve gone straight out the window. Now, that might be old-fashioned socialism that appeals to certain people, but I actually still believe that competition helps drive down the price. And we’re talking about taxpayers’ dollars.
QUESTION: But if competition does drive down price, wouldn’t you say, particularly when you own this shipbuilder, go ahead and make your strongest case to them, see if you can win that contract?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And they are, and they’ve been discussing with Fincantieri, BAE and Navantia how they might be included, how they might be acting as a subcontractor, what their skills and capabilities are. And what we’ve done with the air warfare destroyer, with the offshore patrol vessels, with all the construction that’s going on down here, with the announcement I’m making today about 200 more jobs for ASC workers, what we’ve done is made sure they keep those capabilities that make them attractive to Fincantieri, BAE and Navantia as a subcontractor on the Future Frigates project.
QUESTION: Can I ask for your reaction on the revelations overnight about Senator Dastyari and the advice that he supposedly gave Tanya Plibersek?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Look, Senator Dastyari is in a world of pain. Clearly, he has had a series of very bad misjudgements on his own part. He should never have asked a Chinese donor to pay his personal bills and assume that that was a normal way to behave. That was not. That was abnormal. He shouldn’t have changed Labor’s policy on the run on the South China Sea following those payments of his personal bills. He shouldn’t have warned anyone in Australia that they may be being surveyed by Australian Government national security agencies, and effectively got in the way between national security agencies and potentially people of interest. I don’t know whether they are or they aren’t people of interest, but that was a very foolish error of judgement.
The best thing that Sam Dastyari could do is resign from the Labor caucus and probably get on with his life in a different career, but that’s a decision for him to make. But it’s not a decision for Bill Shorten to make. Bill Shorten could today sack Sam Dastyari from the Labor caucus and cause him to sit as an independent. That’s entirely within the power of Bill Shorten, and until he acts this issue is going to continue to dog him.
QUESTION: Can I ask a question as well? In light of revelations today about Jason Falinski, should he be referred to the High Court just to clarify his citizenship?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I don’t think there are any revelations about Jason Falinski that cast him under any cloud at all. What we’re seeing is Labor trying to create some sense of equivalence between the Coalition and themselves. Bill Shorten claimed that there were no Labor people under any kind of cloud for months. Quite frankly the fourth estate bought this, and now the fourth estate need to not buy the idea that there’s an equivalence between the Coalition and Labor. We’ve already had referred from the Coalition Matt Canavan, Fiona Nash, Barnaby Joyce, John Alexander’s resigned and caused a by-election.
Bill Shorten, being a shifty union leader, thought he could skate through under the radar and try and protect the people who clearly were UK citizens when nominations closed for the 2016 election. Susan Lamb, Justine Keay, Josh Wilson, David Feeney, have no business being in the Parliament. They should’ve done the right thing and resigned, like John Alexander did, and Bill Shorten should show some leadership and cause them to resign. Again, Bill Shorten is too weak because he’s dominated by the CFMEU on the one hand and the New South Wales right of the Sussex Street Labor on the other.
QUESTION: Minister, Iraq has claimed victory over Islamic State. Should that cause pause for thought and get us to review whether we should continue our bombing missions there?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, we are always reviewing our operations in the Middle East, and of course elsewhere around the world. The operation in Syria and Iraq has been very successful from a military point of view. It has obviously been a catastrophe from a human rights point of view and a humanitarian point of view. There’s a great deal of work to be done to rebuild Iraq and Syria, and we will continue to review our operations there. There are still, apparently, ISIS fighters in the western desert of Iraq who need to be removed, and ISIS has lost, of course, its major population centres and its capital, but I don’t think we in Australia will prematurely leave the Middle East until we’re certain that the mission that we set out to achieve has been achieved.