No clash of maritime colleges, Pyne insists

The minister says a new ­Adelaide-based college will complement an existing maritime college in Tasmania.

Mr Pyne with Graeme Hunter of Kellogg Brown & Root. Picture: AAP

Christopher Pyne says a new ­Adelaide-based college that will provide workers for the federal government’s $90 billion shipbuilding program will complement, rather than undermine, an existing maritime college in Tasmania.

The University of Tasmania’s Australian Maritime College was yesterday revealed by the ­Defence Industry Minister as a partner of the planned Naval Shipbuilding College.

This comes after the AMC last year expressed “shock” about the NSC’s establishment and that it was “caught in the (political) crossfire”.

Mr Pyne named a joint venture between US companies Kellogg Brown & Root and Huntington Ingalls Industries as the successful tenderer for the overarching Naval Shipbuilding Institute that will be headquartered at Adelaide’s Osborne shipyards.

The federal government has committed $25 million for the NSC, which Mr Pyne previously said would be operational in January. Enrolments are now expected to commence mid-year.

More than 25,000 personnel are needed for the government’s $90 billion continuous shipbuilding program, which includes construction of 12 new ­frigates from 2020 and 12 new-generation submarines, all in Adelaide.

“The AMC will be a really intrinsic part of this consortium because the way the NSC will work is the employers will say ‘these are the number of people we need in skilled trades — engineers, mathematicians, others’ and then they’ll go out to institutions,” Mr Pyne said. “So the students will go to the AMC physically for the first year or two, and then transfer.”