Tory Shepherd: Adelaide needs a City Deal to stop defence building jobs going to other states and countries

THE numbers are astonishing. $90 billion over 40 years, and more. 8000 shipbuilding jobs. But other states want the work — and to keep it in Adelaide, we need to make a deal.

• FUTURE ADELAIDE: Our historic opportunity — now is the time to strike
• CITY GROWTH: Adelaide’s top 10 suburbs to live, work and play
• TRAFFIC: Techport bottleneck threatens to stifle growth
• JAMIE BRIGGS: Right plan can help SA make the most of defence

MORE than a million parts are needed to make a 4500-tonne submarine. From a steel hull thicker than your arm to missile bays to toilet bowls.

Before we get to those toilet bowls, we’ll be building two Offshore Patrol Vessels and nine Future Frigates here in Adelaide.

The naval shipbuilding program is enormous, $90 billion over four decades, and beyond that if it is truly continuous. More than 8000 jobs, according to PwC.

For people who have never visited the ASC shipyards at Osborne, and who never want to work on a steel hull, these numbers may seem distant or meaningless.

But those numbers, these programs, will have a ripple effect across the state.

The area around Port Adelaide will — finally, hopefully — boom. The defence industry (and the space industry that will develop alongside it) will also feed into tech hubs like Edinburgh, Tonsley and Mawson Lakes.

But the supply chain for all those parts will be spread across the city, the state, the nation and the world.

These ripples will determine the shape of Adelaide’s future. The PwC CityPulse report shows how important it is to make the right decisions now to make sure that future is the shape we want. While these billion-dollar projects may seem years away, the need to start preparing for them is immediate, and urgent.

Adelaide must be able to train the workers that the shipbuilders need, and to attract the ones we can’t provide.

We have to make sure those workers can afford to live here, and get to where they need to be. We have to nab as much of the work as we can, and that means making sure SA businesses form a large part of that global supply chain.

Our training institutions and universities will have to adapt to the new demands, and our schools need to step up their efforts in getting children into the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) streams.

The PwC report makes it clear that we have a lot to be proud of in Adelaide, but it also points out that there is a lot of groundwork still to do.

Western Australia has made it clear it would happily take hundreds of jobs off our hands.

The other states would also like a share, and there may be pressure from Naval Group’s French parents and the parent company of whoever wins the Future Frigate project to take more work offshore.

The three levels of government, the unis, industry and the community will all need to work together to keep Adelaide front and centre.

There’s a screamingly obvious way to bring together all the players and get the best deal for Adelaide. It’s called a City Deal.