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Morrison’s last-minute dry dock won’t fill shipbuilding void

Published on Tue 15 March 2022 at 5:18 pm

After years of delay, neglect, and snubs when it comes to Western Australian shipbuilding, the PM today begins his last-minute ‘please like me’ tour with the long-awaited announcement of infrastructure that won’t be operational until 2028.

In the meantime, 300 shipbuilding jobs in WA are to be lost by 2023 and the government is a year late in delivering the naval shipbuilding plan.

Mr Morrison needs to explain why his government has failed to ensure a program of continuous shipbuilding that will sustain WA as one of two national shipbuilding hubs. The Henderson precinct in my electorate has world-class shipbuilding and sustainment potential that has been subject to chronic neglect by this incompetent Liberal government.

So far WA has received less than five per cent of Defence shipbuilding, despite WA Liberals running full-page ads in The West Australian promising WA a 50:50 share.

In September last year the PM confirmed two hammer blows to Western Australia’s obvious shipbuilding capability and potential by:

The Morrison government’s record on Defence procurement has been waste, delay, chaos, abandoned projects, capability gaps, and broken promises. Western Australia has felt the sharp edge of all those failures. Western Australian shipbuilders deserve better.