Thursday, 6 March 2025

Manufacturing sector

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:15): (1499) The action I seek is from the Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing. There was a news report yesterday which said:

Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines are one step closer to fruition, with work starting on the academy to train builders …

in Osborne, South Australia. It stated:

The $480 million facility is being described as the cornerstone of the nation’s naval future under the AUKUS partnership, and promised to provide students in South Australia with safe and sustainable employment for life.

…

It aims to accommodate 800 to 1000 students, mirroring the successful model of the Barrow-in-Furness academy in the United Kingdom, where students contribute to building Britain’s nuclear-powered fleet.

So there we have it. The skills, the supply chain, the expertise, the investment, the future economic growth – there it goes, over the border to South Australia. Victorians are right to wonder: why wasn’t it us? Why weren’t we, the state with the education and engineering skills and advanced manufacturing industries, at the front of the queue? But we were not, and as far as anyone can tell we did not even try. Where was the ambition for the state? Where was the breadth of view to understand the strategic long-term importance to Victoria? Perhaps because the government’s ideological blinkers blind it so much the mere word ‘nuclear’ means it cannot possibly allow Victorians this opportunity. Did we miss out because the adverse investment conditions it has created in Victoria made it impossible, or is it that the Victorian state government is so economically illiterate it does not even understand the significance of the opportunity to begin with? I suspect it is all three. But it is Victorian workers and young people who were denied careers who miss out. It is Victorian businesses that miss out.

The reason this matters is that with the Victorian economy, particularly the manufacturing sector, any analysis says that we have massive potential, but it is essential to increase the supply of engineering skills to develop a sustainable domestic supply chain ecosystem. The bottom line is that the successful scaling up of these industries is essential to continued prosperity in this coming century, and we have just missed out on an incredible opportunity to help deliver that. We have also made ourselves a mere bit player in the biggest project in Australia’s history, and the government needs to explain why. The action I seek from the minister is to explain how we missed out on this investment and locating this training centre in Victoria and what steps he will take to address the lost skills, investment and long-term economic opportunities.