Up to 700 submarine jobs should go to Western Australia, Australian Strategic Policy Institute expert says
HUNDREDS of submarine jobs should immediately be shipped west, a top Defence expert says, if that is where the sustainment of the ageing Collins class submarine will end up.
- Secret plans to move jobs west
- WA sniffing around for SA jobs
- Decision yet to be made on Collins jobs
HUNDREDS of submarine jobs should be immediately shipped west if that is where the sustainment of the ageing Collins class submarines ends up, a top Defence expert says,
Defence analyst Marcus Hellyer, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says planning to keep the submarines in the water needs to start now so the workforce is ready in time.
About 700 people at Adelaide’s ASC work on major overhauls of the submarine fleet, while lower-level maintenance is already done in Western Australia. Defence is investigating the pros and cons of shifting all maintenance as work as the 12 Future Submarines ramps up here.
While the Federal Government says it has “no plans” to shift the work, a major RAND Corporation report said in 2015 that it was “inevitable”, Defence insiders say it’s certain to happen, and WA politicians are clamouring for it.
Premier and Cabinet Department chief Jim McDowell recently told The Advertiser that he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the work was moved, but added that it didn’t concern him as there would be Future Submarines sustainment work in Adelaide to take up the slack.
Mr Hellyer has been working on modelling based on Defence’s statements that at least one Collins class submarine will have to be kept in the water until 2050.
The others will gradually come out of service as the Future Submarines hit the water.
He said it was clear more than one older submarine would need to be kept going so there were enough boats in the water as China builds up its own maritime forces.
Also, he said, you “need submariners to train submariners”.
He said “on the balance of probabilities” it made sense to send sustainment west but “if you’re going to do it, start now”.
That’s because every 10 years the Collins subs get a deep service known as a full-cycle docking, but by about 2026 they’ll need life-of-type extensions which are even deeper, and Mr Hellyer said you needed the workforce up to speed doing FCDs before they did LOTEs.
“You have to make a ‘captain’s call’ right now,” he said.
“One of the things about the Australian workforce, particularly the blue-collar workforce, they don’t really move.
“If you moved west you’d probably have to rebuild the workforce.
“You need to start on it now.”
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said if there was a move there would still be jobs at Osborne for the SA workerforce.
He has consistently said there had been no decision made to move the FCD from Osborne to WA but that Defence has to make contingency plans in case it was not possible for all the work to be done in SA.