Patrick Durrant | Sydney

SA Defence Industry Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith recently led an SA delegation to Europe alongside Premier Jay Weatherill which placed defence industry and trade at the top of the agenda.

“We did a defence and trade business mission to the UK followed by a week at Euronaval, the major naval and maritime defence expo in Europe,” he told ADM.

“We also toured the shipyards of the three contenders for the Sea 5000 Future Frigates program.

"We told them we’d pull out all stops to ensure that any issues they have … would be swiftly dealt with."

“There’s quite a level of excitement in Europe at the moment about prospects for defence industry in Australia. This is because of the epiphany we’ve had in that regard over the last two to three years.”

Minister Hamilton-Smith said it was important that DCNS (with which high level meetings were also conducted) and the three frigate contenders, (BAE Systems, Fincantieri and Navantia) all understood the SA Government would be their partner in the Future Submarine and Frigate programs.

“We told them we’d pull out all stops to ensure that any issues they have, whether they are to do with infrastructure, skills development, or anything else would be swiftly dealt with.”

The delegation included about 25 SA-based defence industry companies. All were given ‘one-on-one’ opportunities with the designers and shipbuilders present, so as to assist them to embrace the supply chain for the various programs.

“They got an insight into what they need to do to ensure they are job ready for the programs,” Minister Hamilton-Smith said. “We had steel cutting companies, valve manufacturers, software engineers and test and evaluation people there – all keen to see how they could best place themselves for the work on offer.”

For the Minister it's paramount that Australian industry and workers get as much out of the programs as they can. Naturally he’s especially keen for SA companies to get a "slice of the action", but the important point was that Defence got the best capability, which was also ideally home grown.

“If there is a company in another state that can provide a better capability for the frigate or submarine manufacturers then good for them.”

Minister Hamilton-Smith said all three Future Frigate contenders’ shipyard visits had been very impressive. Fincantieri took advantage of their FREMM design being the only one of the three in service and the delegation was flown by helicopter to the recently commissioned (30 September) Italian Navy ASW FREMM frigate Alpino off La Spezia. Once aboard they clearly got the special treatment, with a series of demonstrations including high speed manoeuvring, a live firing display, and even an air defence exercise involving Italian Air Force Tornadoes all laid on.

On matters closer to home, the Minister commended the Government's recent separation of ASC into three business units (shipbuilding, sustainment and infrastructure) but wanted more detail.

“That includes who’s now actually going to build,” Hamilton Smith said to ADM. “The analogy I like to use relates to the building of a house once the architect has been selected. So are we going to nominate the architect to also be the builder? Or are we going to look for a separate builder?”

He wasn’t sure when the National Shipbuilding Plan would be released but stressed it was urgently required.

“We now need to know what is to be done, when it is to be done and how it is to be done; also exactly how much is going to be spent doing it.”

Other questions, such as what is to happen with the ASC, the Osborne shipyard, and skills and workforce development would also remain unanswered until that happened he said.

Minister Hamilton-Smith stressed the importance of the Team Australia approach to all Defence programs and called on the Federal Government to provide the “statesmanship” required for the national shipbuilding enterprise.

“A very good start would be for Minister Payne or Minister Pyne to organise a ministerial council that brought together all of the State Ministers responsible for defence industry, so that we could work together as a nation,” he told ADM.

“Just about every other State portfolio has that – for instance Health, Transport, Treasury. For some reason it’s not happening in Defence and it needs to.”