Shipbuilding industry workforce in SA could drop to zero

SOUTH Australia’s shipbuilding workforce could dip to zero, the industry has warned, as ASC prepares to face Senate Estimates today.

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SOUTH Australia’s shipbuilding workforce could dip to zero, the industry has warned, as ASC prepares to face Senate Estimates today.

Concerns have intensified in recent days that Adelaide will miss out on a contract to build Offshore Patrol Vessels. Many see the OPVs as a small but crucial project that will keep a core shipbuilding workforce between the current Air Warfare Destroyer project and the Future Frigate build.

Defence Industries Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith said the OPV project was worth $5 billion and hundreds of direct and indirect jobs.

“It would be a major setback if the OPVs are built anywhere else,” he said.

Western Australia is chasing the OPV contract, which would leave just a few people in SA to hand over the keys to the AWD. That would mean ASC hits the bottom of the so-called Valley of Death and faces all the difficulties of rebuilding the workforce.

Defence Teaming Centre chief Chris Burns said there would be no one left without the OPVs.

“That’s a fact,” he said.

“It’ll be the people handing over the ship, not the workforce.

“The third AWD will be effectively handed over in 2019, if not earlier. If we don’t start work on the frigates until 2020, people won’t be sitting around doing nothing.”

More than 800 ASC jobs dried up from late 2014 and late 2015 and ASC chief executive officer Mark Lamarre has previously warned another 500 jobs could go this year as work winds down.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union estimated the shipbuilding workforce could drop as low as 500 — but that was after the Government gave the impression, but not a guarantee, that at least the first few OPVs would be built in Adelaide.

Mr Burns points out that not only is SA capable of building all the surface ships, but because of the cost saving in building all the ships in the same place, the Government would effectively get the first few boats free, and with less risk.

Former Defence procurement chief Warren King said last week that there would be a “conflict” building the OPVs and the frigates in Adelaide, while the Government says it is waiting for the outcome of a report on the OPVs.

Meanwhile, Hindmarsh MP Matt Williams will meet with the Italian contenders for both the OPVs and the Future Frigates this week. He says Techport is the nation’s superior facility and should be “at the heart of a continuous shipbuilding industry”.

“It should come as no surprise that I am pushing to have both the Offshore Patrol Vessels and the Future Frigates built in Adelaide and I am 100 per cent confident that we have the capacity to do so at a competitive price,” he said.

The Italians, Fincantieri, are among the global crowd that will attend the major Australian Defence Magazine conference in Canberra today. Defence Minister Marise Payne is set to give the keynote address.