Building Bigger, Better SA: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Peter Malinauskas talk bright SA future and retaining tomorrow’s homegrown talent

South Australia’s brain drain has boosted the nation for years but the state is about to prosper from its greatest resource, says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

• SA the ‘Silicon Valley of Aus’

South Australia’s interstate brain drain has boosted the nation for years, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will insist on Friday, declaring “it’s time” the state prospered from its people through nuclear-powered submarine construction.

In a keynote speech to The Advertiser’s Future SA forum, Mr Albanese will label SA’s people “your greatest resource” as the submarine project puts the state “at the heart of the defence of our continent”.

Premier Peter Malinauskas Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with workers aboard a Collins Class Submarine at the Osborne Naval Shipyard, in Adelaide, in April, 2023. NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Premier Peter Malinauskas, another Future SA speaker, is urging a federal decision on the nuclear-powered submarine builder, needed to kickstart hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure work at Adelaide’s naval shipyard.

In speech notes supplied to The Advertiser, Mr Albanese likens the submarine project to the post-war automotive industry’s uplift of manufacturing, saying it “will be a catalyst for innovation and research breakthroughs that will reverberate throughout Australia”.

“Jobs worth staying home for. Jobs that keep the best and the brightest within South Australia, and attract them from across the continent,” Mr Albanese says.

“The rest of Australia has long benefited from the talent and energy of South Australians who’ve moved interstate. It’s time you were better positioned to prosper from your greatest resource – your own people.

“This is Australia’s decisive decade – and one of the central roles belongs to South Australia. A future made in South Australia – by South Australians.”

In an interview with The Advertiser, Mr Malinauskas said a federal government decision on the Adelaide AUKUS submarine constructor was the first key milestone in a critical year for the $368bn project.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden shake hands when announcing the AUKUS pact in San Diego in March, 2023. Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Advertiser on February 20 revealed BAE Systems Australia would be announced in March as the Adelaide nuclear-powered submarine builder, but this has not yet occurred.

Mr Malinauskas said an announcement would kickstart hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure work at Osborne, including moving electricity transmission networks and gas pipelines, along with crucial training and skills development,

“I think every year is going to be critical in this whole enterprise, if they’re going to make their timelines. The key milestones that are in front of us are the Commonwealth reaching a decision around who’s going to build the submarines – that’s pretty important,” he said.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during g a press conference at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide. NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

“From that decision, we can start to see action in terms of the Skills and Training Academy, because whoever is going to build the submarine, quite reasonably, is going to want to have input into that Academy, how it looks, how it’s run.”

BAE, which is designing and constructing Hunter Class frigates at Osborne Naval Shipyard, has been the overwhelming favourite to build submarines under the trinational security pact.

The UK government last October awarded the firm a $7.62bn contract to design the SSN-AUKUS submarine and build supporting infrastructure at its Barrow in Furness shipyard in northwestern UK.

The US is set to order just one of two planned nuclear-powered submarines in 2025, instead of a planned two, raising concerns about the sale of three to Australia from the 2030s under the AUKUS pact.

Mr Malinauskas said the shaved production heightened the need to move as quickly as possible on Adelaide construction.

“If Australia wants submarines, we’ve got to build them for ourselves because every other country can’t meet their own demand, let alone someone else’s,” he said.

“People who advocate for an off-the-shelf option need to know there are no off-the-shelf options. So we’re going to build the submarines ourselves.

“The whole premise of the AUKUS proposition is that the UK and the US are willing to share this technology with us only because we are willing to build a fourth line of nuclear submarine production amongst those three countries.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Peter Malinauskas on a tour of the Osborne Naval Shipyard in April, 2023. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Mr Malinauskas said the Rann Labor government’s investment at Osborne, which helped secure a 2005 air warfare destroyer contract, showed the need for economic infrastructure.

“The (Advertiser) Building a Bigger, Better South Australia series has demonstrated the enormous potential the state has for growth in front of it. I think the challenge for the state is turn its mind to how we deal with the capacity to realise that potential, to turn that growth into a reality,” he said.

“Central to that will be a fair bit of effort that isn’t always top of mind when we think about what we want from our governments. We expect governments to deliver, first and foremost, in critical areas like health and education, and that can never change.

“But we’ve also got to elevate in the community’s minds the importance of investing in skills, the importance of investment in infrastructure that really is exclusive economic infrastructure rather than just roads, for instance.

“Those things are, in many respects, just as important as health and education, because they help stimulate the revenue base for government to invest in health and education.”