SA Premier Jay Weatherill to travel to France in bid to maximise local jobs on $50bn submarine deal

PREMIER Jay Weatherill will tonight depart for the French shipyards of Adelaide’s future submarine builders in a bid to maximise local jobs on the $50 billion build — but the Opposition says it’s a “vanity trip”.

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PREMIER Jay Weatherill will tonight depart for Paris and the home shipyards of Adelaide’s future submarine builders in a bid to maximise local jobs on the $50 billion build.

The departure comes just over a day after the Federal Government announced France’s DCNS as the victor of a competitive evaluation process that included offers from Germany and Japan.

He said meetings on the trip were likely to include DCNS executives and local and national government officials, with a focus on ensuring as much of the work as possible occurs in SA.

He will return to Adelaide on Sunday evening.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall has criticised the speedy departure of the Premier to Paris as a “vanity trip” which will achieve little.

Premier Jay Weatherill speaks to the media outside ASC in Osborne. Picture: Tom Huntley

However, he did not rule out joining a Government-funded delegation in the future, if presented with a worthwhile itinerary.

“Less than 24 hours after the Premier declared that we needed to work in a bipartisan way to squeeze every single last job out of this wonderful announcement ... the Premier’s decided to head off on a vanity trip to Paris,” Mr Marshall said.

“It’s very difficult to see, with such a short period of time between the announcement and the trip, that anything useful could be set up.

“This trip is about jumping on a plane with very little thought, basically to create a photo opportunity.”

Mr Marshall said he had contacted Mr Weatherill on Tuesday and offered to “pay my own way” but he had not been provided with any details about the visit “so the only thing that we can extrapolate from that is that this is just a personal PR trip.”

Asked if he would accept a taxpayer-funded spot on a future trip, Mr Marshall argued that if it constituted “legitimate business for the state then the Premier has offered to pay for that out of his Budget and that will be welcome”.

Addressing ASC workers on site on Wednesday, Mr Weatherill said the workers could “take credit” in the two-year effort resulting in a successful bid to build submarines in South Australia.

“They accepted the argument that we did have the skills and capabilities here to do it in Australia and we still want to be a nation that still makes things,” he said.

“Because, without you, without what you’ve done here on this site, there would have been no victory.”

Mr Weatherill said he hoped to ensure “every single job” on the submarine project came to South Australia in the coming months.

“We’re told that about 90 per cent of the work will be here, we’re told there will be thousands of jobs, we’re going to make sure that’s real ... to make sure that commitment is delivered,” he said.

Derek Hugo left his job at Holden 12 months ago and began working for ASC.

“Manufacturing didn’t seem to be sustaining too well (so) with that concern, what do you do next,” he said.

“I didn’t want to be in the same boat, looking for the same jobs.”

He admitted upskilling himself to take on the new position at ASC.

ASC worker and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union member Matthew Primiero, 26, said the news of France winning the submarines bid was positive but was aware that no contracts had been signed yet.

“There’s no guarantee (of jobs for local workers) yet ... there’s still a little way to go, “ he said.