Shipyard workers warn Government against breaking submarine election promise

Updated

Shipyard workers have flown to Canberra to warn Liberal MPs against dumping their election promise to build 12 new submarines in Adelaide.

Before the election, former defence minister David Johnston promised the Coalition would build the next fleet of submarines in Adelaide.

"The Coalition today is committed to building 12 new submarines here in Adelaide," Senator Johnston said on May 8, 2013.

"We will get that task done, and it is a really important task, not just for the Navy but for the nation," he said.

The Government has now said it is committed to letting local companies bid for the work but is in talks which could see it go offshore.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's (AMWU) assistant national secretary Glenn Thompson said shipyard workers meeting Liberal MPs today, including frontbencher Christopher Pyne, want the promise kept.

"Christopher Pyne, like other South Australians and other Liberals in ship building electorates, needs to stand up," Mr Thompson said.

"If they can't get the message that... [if] they don't take steps to secure our Defence capability, our sovereign capability, they are going to be taught a harsh lesson from the electorate."

The shipyard workers also plan to attend Question Time today.

Mr Pyne tried to turn the heat on Labor during an appearance on Sky News.

"Why are they in position to lecture the Government when they were utterly incapable of making the decisions that needed to be made in Government?" he said.

Andrews won't commit to 'open tender' for new submarine fleet

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday tried to clear up confusion surrounding the process for buying Australia's next fleet of submarines.

On Sunday night Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in the hunt for crucial party room votes, confirmed the contract, worth tens of billions of dollars, would be awarded through what he called "a competitive evaluation process".

It secured the support of South Australian Liberal senator Sean Edwards, who said he had a commitment from Mr Abbott for an "open tender" to allow Australian contractors to bid for the work against foreign shipbuilders.

But on a visit to Adelaide's ASC shipyards, Mr Andrews repeated the Prime Minister's language of "competitive evaluation process", a term that an analyst said was not used by the Defence Force.

When pressed by reporters on whether it was a tender process or not, Mr Andrews replied: "I will use the words I choose to use."

"Tender has a very specific meaning. We have to evaluate a whole range of issues," he said.

Mr Andrews listed those issues as the technical aspects, cost and schedule of the project, but he deflected questions about where the term came from.

"I'm not going to get into all sorts of definitions and what's a definition of that is, I'm saying as the Australian Defence Minister this is the approach we are taking," he said.

Senator Edwards joined the Minister on his tour of the ASC shipyards and said "open tender" were the words that he had used after speaking with the Prime Minister.

"But now I've heard about competitive evaluation," he said.

"It's the ability for these people here at ASC to involve themselves."

Visit cost taxpayers $33,000, Hanson-Young says

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young claims the senators were flown from Canberra to Adelaide and back on government planes, with the visit to the ASC shipyards costing taxpayers more than $33,000.

But she said the visit failed to clarify the confusion surrounding the submarine-building project.

"$33,000 of taxpayer money spent to send Liberal senators back to SA for what was a schemozzle of a press conference, there is no more clarification about what this means for jobs in South Australia," she said.

"To have the South Australian community, the rest of the public messed around like this — either the Australian companies can bid in an open process or they can't, fess up, be upfront about it and stop mucking around."

South Australian Labor senator Penny Wong accused the Prime Minister of lying and using the defence contract to secure a vote in the party room spill motion ballot.

"What we have are weasel words from the Defence Minister and the Prime Minister which are completely at odds with the commitment the Prime Minister made to Sean Edwards," Senator Wong said.

Later Treasurer Joe Hockey suggested Senator Edwards did not secure a new pledge from the Prime Minister regarding the next fleet of submarines.

"No, no it was always going to be the case and we are continuing with that [competitive evaluation] process," Mr Hockey told the ABC's 7.30 program last night.

Topics: defence-industry, defence-and-aerospace-industries, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, federal-government, adelaide-5000, sa

First posted