Thank you all for being here this morning for the inaugural AUKUS National Supply Chain Conference.

I particularly want to thank the Australian Submarine Agency, BAE Systems and ASC for partnering together to make today possible.

Before I begin, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Kaurna people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. I extend my respect to any First Nations people here with us today.

I also want to acknowledge all current and former defence personnel here with us today. Thank you for your service to our nation.

I look around the room today and I see so many friends and familiar faces. It is an absolute pleasure to be here.

You are part of the industrial base that will shape Australia’s delivery of this huge undertaking, AUKUS. For South Australia, that is not some distant proposition.

This state is not being asked to watch AUKUS unfold as a passive observer. It is being asked to carry the lion’s share of the work.

I am here today wearing a few different hats. As the Federal Member for Spence, located in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, home to RAAF Base Edinburgh, DST Group and the Edinburgh Defence Precinct, and a community with proud roots and a strong future in defence, defence industry and advanced manufacturing. As Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of AUKUS. And on behalf of the Albanese Government.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, and the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, both send their apologies, as they were unable to be here today.

But they asked me to represent them and to pass on a very clear message.

The Albanese Government is fully committed to delivering AUKUS and to building the industrial base required to support it.

Just last month, the Prime Minister announced a $3.9 billion down payment for the new Submarine Construction Yard at Osborne.

The projected investment to build that yard is around $30 billion over the coming decades, and the scale of it is immense. The total floor area is expected to be ten times larger than the existing Osborne South development. Construction is expected to use 66 million work hours and 126,000 tonnes of structural steel.

For those among us who are not especially fond of the metric system, I am reliably informed that this is the equivalent of around 17 Eiffel Towers of structural steel. The fabrication hall is expected to be about two and a half times the length of Adelaide Oval.

Those figures tell us something simple. We are past the point of talking about AUKUS in the abstract. This is now about delivery.

And once you move into that phase, the questions become much more concrete. Do we have the industrial depth? Do we have the workforce? Do we have the supply chains, the standards and the production discipline to deliver work of this scale and to the level it demands?

That is the task.

There is a strategic reason this matters so much. As the Deputy Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions, Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War.

In response to this, Australia now embarks on one of the most significant industrial transformations in our history. And AUKUS is one of the clearest reasons why we must rise to that challenge.

But in a room like this, the practical side of that challenge carries real weight. Can Australia achieve the industrial uplift that sits underneath our strategic ambition? Can we build and sustain the capability needed for the decades ahead? Can we back it with the workforce, the skills and the industrial capacity the job requires?

That is where South Australia comes in.

This state understands defence industry. It understands advanced manufacturing. It understands the value of continuous work and long-term investment. And it understands what it means when people can see a path into secure, skilled jobs in sectors of vital importance to the nation.

Osborne already matters to Collins Class sustainment. It already matters to continuous naval shipbuilding. And under AUKUS, its importance only grows.

South Australia is the home of submarine construction in this country. The work now under way will shape not only the next phase of the submarine build, but a broader industrial lift as well.

Australia needs the capability and the capacity to maintain, sustain and upgrade its naval vessels, including nuclear-powered submarines. Building here does not just create activity in the moment. It builds the understanding, the workforce and the industrial depth needed to support those capabilities over time.

That is what sovereign capability looks like in practice.

None of us should underestimate the standard involved. Where world-class is a passing grade.

Building a submarine is unforgiving work. It demands precision manufacturing. It demands systems integration, quality assurance, certification and accreditation.

This is unlike anything Australia has built before. And delivering it will mean South Australia growing both capacity and capability across its industrial base.

The opportunity across the entire supply chain is real.

This work will rely on primes, SMEs, universities, TAFEs, technology partners and governments moving together in lockstep. It will rely on shared standards and qualification pathways that are clear enough to navigate. And it will rely on Australian defence industry being able to plug into a broader industrial effort across all three AUKUS partner nations.

There are practical pathways already being built to help Australian defence industry qualify into US and UK submarine supply chains, including in areas like valves and pipe fittings.

That is important because Australian defence industry requires more than broad encouragement. It needs line of sight, and enough confidence in the signals coming from Government, Defence and primes to make real decisions about workforce, systems, equipment and growth.

That is especially true for SMEs.

Many of whom I have had the pleasure of seeing first-hand already possess the instincts you want for this space. They are specialised. They are agile. They solve problems. The opportunity now is to turn that capability into a stronger and deeper Australian presence across the supply chain.

The other major piece of this is workforce. And here again, South Australia is not waiting around for the future to arrive.

Serious work is already under way.

The South Australian defence industry workforce is projected to grow from around 3,500 direct jobs to more than 8,500 direct jobs in the 2040s, with naval shipbuilding and sustainment as major drivers.

Building nuclear-powered submarines is forecast to create 4,000 to 5,500 direct jobs in South Australia at peak, with up to 4,000 workers employed to design and build infrastructure for the Submarine Construction Yard at Osborne. The broader AUKUS pathway is also expected to support around 20,000 direct jobs across Australia over the next 30 years.

Cultivating the critical skills required by our defence industry presents both a challenge and an opportunity, particularly here in South Australia.

The pathway towards seizing that opportunity is laid out in the South Australian Defence Industry Workforce and Skills Report.

Produced by a task force established after the Jobs and Skills Summit, it shows what can be achieved when industry stakeholders, unions, academia, vocational education providers and all levels of government work together on practical solutions.

And the more recent South Australian workforce planning goes further again. More than 11,000 workers will be needed across all naval shipbuilding and sustainment activities in South Australia by 2040.

Vocational enrolments are rising. Degree apprentices are entering South Australian industry. And the Skills and Training Academy at Osborne is being built to support up to 800 to 1,000 learners each year once operational, backed by a further $480 million investment from the Albanese Government.

That is what a serious workforce pipeline looks like.

But it will take sustained work across the whole pipeline to ensure success. Schools, TAFEs, universities, apprenticeships, degree apprenticeships, traineeships, early career programs and mid-career transitions all have their part to play.

For South Australia, the opportunity here is not only to be the place where this work happens. It is to deepen the industrial base, strengthen the skills pipeline and build the capability that will sustain this work for the long haul.

That is important in Adelaide’s North, around Osborne, and right across this state.

When people in South Australia hear about defence industry growth, they hear skilled jobs. They hear apprenticeships. They hear the chance for young people to stay here and build a career here. They hear the chance for people already in the workforce to move into more specialised roles and keep building their own skills base.

As a South Australian, that matters deeply to me. I want this state to seize what is in front of it. I want South Australia to remain the home of submarine construction in this country.

And I want our defence industry to know that the Albanese Government understands what is at stake here, not just strategically, but industrially as well.

Because in the end, AUKUS will be judged by what Australia can build and sustain. It will be judged by whether we grow the industrial capability, the workforce depth, and the sovereign sustainment base needed to turn our ambitions for AUKUS into something durable and real.

That is the task in front of us. It is national in scale, and South Australia will carry a big share of it. And it is up to the task.

The Albanese Government understands that all too well. That is why we are backing continuous naval shipbuilding and advanced manufacturing. It is why we are backing the submarine build at Osborne. It is why we are investing in workforce development, qualification pathways, and the industrial base behind AUKUS.

And it is why we will continue backing workers, businesses and institutions, because together you are who make this project a reality.

Thank you again.