FIVEaa Mornings with Leon Byner - 10/08/2020

10 August 2020

LEON BYNER, HOST: My view is that in South Australia, the biggest issue by far is jobs. And down at the Australian Submarine Corporation we’re not really sure what the hell is going on.
 
Labor, federally, has called on South Australian Liberals to ensure that the Morrison Government includes a legal requirement for Australian industry content in the Future Submarines build contract.
 
Now this has been tremendously controversial because there's all sorts of 'best endeavours' stuff but there's nothing in writing that guarantees how much content and will be Australian, how much work will be Australian.
 
Let's talk with Senator Penny Wong. Penny thanks for joining us today.
 


 

SENATOR PENNY WONG, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Morning Leon.
 


 

BYNER: It seems incredible that, even now, we still have no answer as to whether or not this whole thing or part of its going to move to WA or stay here and to what extent.
 


 

WONG: Look, you're spot on in your intro Leon, the most important issue these days is South Australian jobs.
 
And you're also spot on that the Morrison Government has failed to ensure that there is a legal requirement for jobs and know how on the submarine project here in South Australia.
 
They keep talking in terms how 'we're going to maximise it, we're going to maximise it'.
 
We were told it would be 90% local content. We were then told it would be 60% local content. Now they're saying it's 60% of the contract value which includes hotels stays, locally provided French lessons and travel agencies.
 
Now this is the largest buy – contract - the country has ever engaged in, the submarine build.
 
We should be leveraging it, not just for jobs, but strategic capability - that is; engineering know how, high tech capability here in South Australia.
 
And instead of a legal requirement to ensure that we get that, we get more words, more promises, more announcements but no delivery from Scott Morrison and his Ministers and it's very disappointing for South Australia.
 


 

BYNER: Penny, what's the delay? We were expecting an answer well before now. Why has this virtually fallen off the agenda? It appears to have.
 


 

WONG: Well, that's a very good question and one that Scott Morrison, and the Liberal Defence Minister Linda Reynolds should answer.
 
And it's one of the reasons the South Australian Labor team is wanting to press for this so strongly at this point because we've got a build contract to be signed. It is the last chance this Government has to make sure we actually get the sort of local content, jobs, know how and capability that this project is capable of delivering.
 
And it's time Simon Birmingham and Stephen Marshall made sure that they delivered this for South Australia.
 
There's a bit of a history here and I know you've been following this.
 
You remember the Libs wanted to build the subs in Japan and they were stopped because of the local campaign. The Liberals sent a supply ship contract to Spain. They now have no local requirement for South Australian jobs.
 
I mean, the fact is, the Liberals have always looked down at South Australian defence workers. They've always looked down on our workforce and their capability, and it's time they were called out and it's time they did the right thing.
 


 

BYNER: Well, there's another issue here and that is that we know for sure that there is expertise going begging at the Australian Submarine Corporation where a number of people have left, and that is expertise we won't get back.
 


 

WONG: That's right.
 


 

BYNER: So there really is an urgency to this isn't there?
 


 

WONG: Absolutely and there's been a lot of discussion about what is described as the ‘valley of death’.
 
The fact is that because of the way in which this has been handled, you've got too many people with critical expertise who won't be there when the build does ramp up.
 
Part of that is the failure by the Coalition, by the Morrison Government, by South Australian Liberals to actually deliver the outcomes we need.
 


 

BYNER: Well, we will pursue this with some vigour. In fact coming up shortly, Penny, is Rex Patrick who's also big on this and I'll see what we can find out from him but thank you for coming on today.
 


 

WONG: Leon, thank you for your continued campaign on this. It's really important.
 


 

BYNER: The jobs here, for defence, these are high value jobs.
 


 

WONG: Absolutely.


 


BYNER: They're very important for the state, absolutely. Because once, once you lose the expertise in these areas, it's very hard to get it back.


 

Authorised by Paul Erickson, ALP, Canberra.