DAVID BEVAN:
The Prime Minister is on the line, and you come bearing gifts!
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Ali. This is a great national enterprise and the announcement today is that we are partnering with BAE to build the future frigates, to be built here by ASC in Osborne, in Adelaide
This is going to be a continuous shipbuilding program. 5,000 jobs directly, another 10,000 indirectly through a national supply chain.
ALI CLARKE:
Okay how many exactly will be here in South Australia and for how long will they be employed?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, there will be, this will generate 5,000 jobs here directly in total and is a continuous shipbuilding program. See, the big change, Ali, from what previous governments have done is that we are committed to a continuous naval shipbuilding program. That means that as, you know, the final, last of the Future Frigates is built, the workers will be starting to build their successors. So we have to, have to end this stop-start approach to shipbuilding, which has been created, created by the Labor Party. I don't want to sour a great announcement with a partisan note, but we have got to be truthful about this. During six years of Labor, they did not commission one new naval vessel. That is why as the Air Warfare Destroyers, the last of the Air Warfare Destroyers is completed, you face a decline in employment. Now, what we're doing is we’re creating a lot of new jobs, obviously with infrastructure and with all the other naval projects that are starting here – the OPVs, the planning for the submarines, the Future Frigates – but in the future what you will have is this city Adelaide will be the centre of naval shipbuilding in Australia. It will be one of the naval shipbuilding centres in the world and in the region. It is my commitment and determination to build a sovereign shipbuilding industry in Australia that will build ships not just for Australia but for export as well.
ALI CLARKE:
So just to clarify Prime Minister, you're saying 5,000 jobs here. Do you mean in South Australia? Because your own press release from your own department says that this will create 4,000 Australian jobs.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, it’ll be 5000 direct jobs right across Australia…
ALI CLARKE:
Yes, but here in South Australia how many jobs will there be?
PRIME MINISTER:
There will be I believe around 4,000 jobs in South Australia associated with the shipbuilding project.
DAVID BEVAN:
That's with the Future Frigates? That's not mixing in jobs from the submarines as well?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that that includes that, it is associated with the Future Frigates and the shipbuilding projects here, because you've got to remember the workforce starts off building the OPVs and then they will move on to Future Frigates. So it's a massive commitment to jobs here in South Australia.
DAVID BEVAN:
When do the first jobs kick in?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the first jobs will kick in – with the OPVs, the shipbuilding will start this year. It will be cutting steel on the Future Frigates in 2020. But as soon as the contracts are signed, if you're talking about Future Frigates, as soon as the contracts are signed, of course the design work will begin in earnest. So the employment starts and that obviously ramps up as the project ramps up.
DAVID BEVAN:
Was BAE’s preparedness to take on ASC as a subsidiary during the build a key factor?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it was a requirement. It's a requirement that we've made and would have applied to any successful tenderer. The object of that is to ensure that we have an Australian sovereign shipbuilding industry. So what this will mean is that the Commonwealth Government will retain its sovereign share in ASC at all times. BAE will take responsibility for ASC during the period of the project, which will go right through to into the 2030s. Then the Commonwealth will then resume ownership of ASC and by that stage you will have a much larger shipbuilding company with all of the intellectual property and know-how and expertise associated with that.
So that then means you have in Australia, you will then again have a fully Australian-owned shipbuilding company with all of the expertise and know-how associated with it.
ALI CLARKE:
Okay so if BAE is taking control of ASC for this period, the government is still retaining ASC through it. At the same time, the Senate inquiry is saying that the shipbuilding processes involving the government has been full of cost blowouts, delays and poor management. Also some early warning signs that your management needs to be seamless and it's far from that. Will there be penalties ready to be put in place, if these projects go over budget and don't deliver on time given the government still involved?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the government's involvement in ASC will be to have a sovereign share, which basically gives it veto rights over the selling of the company to somebody else. This is standard procedure in fact. The UK Government has a similar sovereign share in BAE itself in the UK. But the project will be controlled by BAE, it is the prime contractor. This is an important part of that of the process. What we have sought to do, and succeeded in doing, is ensuring that the company that designs the warship, BAE, is also the company that is responsible for building it. We've found from experience with the AWD projects that that is this is the best way to do it. But we've also been able to ensure that at the end of the project, that shipbuilding company, with all of its expertise and its workforce, its IP that has been developed, will then come back into wholly Australian government ownership.
ALI CLARKE:
Okay so with this contract to be signed, will there be penalties if these ships go over budget, aren’t delivered on time, don't do what we need them to do?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, of course there are always commercial provisions like that in any contract for the construction of any project.
ALI CLARKE:
How do you respond to this Senate inquiry that said that the shipbuilding process involving the government is not going as swimmingly as we would hope?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this is early days. I mean this is a $35 billion project if we’re talking about the Frigates and what our commitment is to manage it, is to ensure that it is managed as efficiently and effectively as possible.
I mean, you know, the reality is we need to protect Australia's interests. We need to protect our maritime interests. We need to invest in our Navy. The Labor Party did nothing for six years. We are to that extent playing catch up. But the good news is that what we have established is a national enterprise of continuous shipbuilding. The large vessels – the Frigates and the submarines and the first of several of the OPVs – will all be built here in Adelaide.
This will become a centre of naval shipbuilding. These are cutting-edge industries and the benefits, Ali, for this, for South Australia, are immense. It is not just counted in the jobs that are going to be directly involved in the construction of that at Osborne, because what you will find over the years to come is that people will come here to work on naval shipbuilding. Then they will, with their expertise, they will go and set up their own businesses. You'll see an ecosystem based on engineering, on technology, on advanced manufacturing, will start to grow here in South Australia. This is going to be a dynamic game-changer for South Australia and it is all part of my Government's commitment to delivering more jobs, higher wages, more innovation and more economic growth in Australia. Of course, we're seeing that in all of the economic numbers that you’re familiar with.
DAVID BEVAN:
Prime Minister, yesterday it was revealed the Commonwealth is prosecuting ‘Witness K’ and his lawyer for their role in exposing Australia's bugging of the Timorese. How did the Spycatcher lawyer Malcolm Turnbull find himself sanctioning the prosecution of ‘Witness K’?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the way it works – and again you'll understand that there's not a lot I can say or I should say about matters before the courts – but the process is the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions concludes that there is a prosecution that should be undertaken, seeks the consent of the Attorney General to that. The Attorney provides the consent and the prosecution is then undertaken. Beyond that there is not much that I can say.
DAVID BEVAN:
No, but the Attorney General wouldn’t sign off on that without letting you know. So we have this, you can see the irony here, can't you? The Spycatcher lawyer is sanctioning the prosecution of somebody who revealed the bugging of the Timorese.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look, alright, Dave, let me scrupulously say I'm not making any comment on ‘Witness K’ or the matters relating to the case. But you have raised Spycatcher case, which of course was a legal case in 1986, so quite a long time ago. The situation there involved an old M15 officer called Peter Wright. He'd written a book, his memoirs, and our contention was that all of the information in his book was already in the public domain. So in fact there were no secrets in it at all. And the British Government actually didn't really argue with that point.
DAVID BEVAN:
But you also argued that it was in the public interest.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, well of course we did, but the point was that Wright had always been very clear that he did not want to – and asserted that he had not and the court essentially found he had not – disclosed any information that was secret or in fact was confidential or related to matters of current operational importance.
So again, I don't want to comment and I'm not, you’ve just asked me about Spycatcher. But you see, if I may be permitted to make an overall comment, if the British government had been shrewder about that Spycatcher case, what they would have said was, “Okay, Wright's book is a load of old cobblers. We won't worry about it.” It would have sold, you know, a couple of thousand copies. It sold millions, because Maggie Thatcher tried to ban it. That’s all history.
ALI CLARKE:
Well, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on what is a good news day for those involved in shipbuilding here in South Australia, thank you for your time.
We're out of time. I was going to ask you to give us the footy tips, because you did bump our football panel and they had to get up early. They’re a little bit upset but other than that, we’re moving on…
PRIME MINISTER:
I think you should rely on more expert commentary on that!
ALI CLARKE:
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull thanks for your time.
[ENDS]