Anthony Albanese must heed Peter Malinauskas’s wise words on making AUKUS front and centre
Peter Malinauskas wants AUKUS to be a consideration in deliberations over the level of Australia’s skilled migration program. But more than that, he is urging the federal government to think bigger on AUKUS, beyond the defence portfolio, and to understand how an enterprise of this size and ambition will touch almost every major area of public policy.
As the Labor Premier told the Defending Australia summit: “When we think about housing, what does it mean for AUKUS? When we think about infrastructure, what does that mean for AUKUS? When we think about education, health, or innovation policy: AUKUS has implications that reach into every portfolio.”
This is an all-encompassing mindset that federal governments are not always good at achieving, given the silo-like nature of many government portfolios. But the size and ambition of the plan to build five SSN AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide, and maintain three US Virginia-class submarines, is beyond anything attempted in Australia.
It makes sense for AUKUS to be a key consideration in the debate over migration levels and skilled migration. Malinauskas warns now is not the time to cut migration levels when SA’s defence sector will need to more than double its workforce of 14,000 in defence and associated industries by the 2040s.
Foreign nationals cannot work on the AUKUS project for reasons of national security, which means the submarine enterprise will recruit those extra 15,000 Australians from existing ranks of plumbers, electricians, boilermakers, draughtsmen, fitters, engineers and mechanics.
This would lead to a gaping hole in the overall ranks of those workers, which Malinauskas argues is best filled by migrants.
“Without a healthy influx of skilled migrants, who is going to backfill those jobs,” he asks.
In an economy close to full-employment, the size and scale of the recruitment needed to make AUKUS work is truly daunting.
As Defence Minister Richard Marles told the summit: “At its peak, up to 4000 workers will be employed to design and build the infrastructure for the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Construction Yard in Osborne while a further 4000 to 5500 direct jobs are expected to be created to build the nuclear-powered submarines.”
As well, the current submarine workforce of crews and maintenance workers will need to grow from around 800 to 3000.
This ambition will affect almost all portfolios.
Malinauskas has called out both sides of federal politics on this issue. He is right. AUKUS is so big it will succeed only if it is treated as a truly national enterprise, rather than a shipbuilding project.
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