Opening of WA Submarine Discovery Centre

MEMBER FOR BRAND, MADELEINE KING: I want to start by thanking Deputy Mayor Barry Winmar, Deputy Mayor of Kwinana, for that really kind and generous welcome- thanks, Barry. It was such a great contributor to the community of Kwinana, but the whole state, and always very generous, and you're welcome to the country. And also, I want to personally acknowledge traditional owners of the country on which we are on today, the Whadjuk Nyoongar people. Thanks for coming this morning to the opening of this really tremendous facility. It's wonderful to be here. I'm from Rockingham, I live around the corner, and I'm really pleased to be able to welcome my good friend, our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, Richard Marles, here today to talk a bit more about this center. I'm going to acknowledge a few people- there's a few people here today, so please bear with me. The State Minister for Emergency Services, Corrective Services, Defence Industry, Veterans, Racing and Gaming, the Honourable Paul Papilla. The State Member for Rockingham, Magenta Marshall, my colleague, Senator Varun Ghosh, Senator for Western Australia. We also have the US Chargée d’Affaires, Erica Olson, the US Consul General to Western Australia, Colleen Altstock, UK Consul General to Western Australia, Maria Rennie. And also, of course, want to acknowledge all members of the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Defence Force, more broadly here today. Executive Officer of HMAS Stirling, Fletcher Wall, Commander of the Submarine Force Dan Sutherland, as well. And from local government, who play a really important role in AUKUS, in Garden Island, and the work at Henderson, and those representatives here today are the Mayor of Rockingham Lorna Buchan, Deputy Mayor Rob Schmidt, the Mayor of Kwinana Peter Feasey, Deputy Mayor Barry Winmar, the Mayor of Mandurah Amber Kearns, and Deputy Mayor of the City of Cockburn, Chontelle Stone. So that’s all the acknowledgements for today, and I do apologies if anyone I have missed out. 

AUKUS is you know a generational opportunity and as someone who was born in Kwinana and grew up in Rockingham, can hardly imagine the opportunities that are available now to young people in this area. The Garden Island Causeway finished construction in 1973- and that's when I was born- Garden Island itself was commissioned in 1978, welcomed, given the freedom of the city in 1988 and just a few short years ago HMAS Stirling exercised that freedom of entry into the city, in what was an event supported by thousands of locals across Rockingham and Kwinana and the wider western southern suburbs of WA, and that says a lot about the support the community has for this great national, international enterprise that is taking part here in Rockingham. And as someone who went to a local school about a couple of miles away, near Rockingham Beach Primary and Safety Bay Primary, I could never have imagined a center like this with this kind of future available for a young person who's growing up in Shoalwater Bay in Rockingham. So I just want to thanks to the ASA for all the work they're doing, and that's been a hard work, and I want to thank the local councils, all of them, for their support for this kind of center, but also for the really important work they are contributing to, alongside state government and the federal government, as we, as Barry has said, work on this really tremendously important national endeavor of ensuring our national security for generations to come, and I can't wait to see the young children that will be in here, the older children, me, I see the experiments on the wall, just to learn a lot more about the depth of opportunity for young people in this state to be part of this submarine discovery center, but also the future of AUKUS. With that, I'll hand back to Kate. I believe. Thank you very

COMMANDER SUBMARINE FORCE, COMMODORE DAN SUTHERLAND: Deputy Prime Minister, Minister King, Minister Papalia, honoured guests, ladies and gentleman, my name is Commodore Dan Sutherland, I'm the Commander of the Australian Submarine Force. I'd like to add my acknowledgement of the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet with the Whadjuk Nyoongar people and acknowledge their elders of past, present, and emerging. It's really exciting for me to stand here today, because, like Minister King, I also went to school a few minutes down the road at what is now South Coast Baptist College, and I also could never have imagined standing in a place like this with the opportunities that a center like this offers the local community, as you've already heard, the Navy, who I'm privileged to represent here today, has had a close relationship with the Rockingham community for over four decades, the submarine force for over two decades, and this is the first thing of its kind. It is fantastic that people who want to know more about submarines can come in their community to this facility and ask the questions that they want answered. And even though this facility is not a recruiting facility, I certainly hope that we may find one or two or more people who find, like I and my colleagues and shipmates in the submarine force have, that this is a career that is interesting and something that appeals to them. There are fantastic opportunities for submarines they're an amazing capability, and this is a fine place to learn about them. So, thank you very much.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, RICHARD MARLES: Well, can I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we may pay my respects to others, past and present, and thank Barry for the wonderful welcome to country. Perhaps, in terms of acknowledgements, if I could acknowledge Madeleine, Paul, and Lorna, and through them, all the representatives here from local, state, and federal government, and if I could acknowledge Kate and Dan, and through both of you, all the representatives of the ASA, and those wearing our nation's uniform who are here today, we really appreciate you being here. On an A380 which is a as complex a plane as exists, there are about 30 different systems which make an A380 fly, things from hydraulics, to propulsion, to air conditioning life support- all of those go to the making of an incredibly complex machine to operate- 30 different systems. On a submarine there are hundreds of different systems, which make it work. Submarines are unbelievable machines. When they're designed, they have to be designed with the precise density of water- when you think about it, in order to move throughout the water column, if they're lighter than water, they would float if they're heavier than water they would sink, and that's an incredible engineering discipline. When you think that there are open spaces within a submarine, but also very heavy items within a submarine. A submarine is more complex than the space station, it is more complex than the space shuttle. Submarines are the single most complex machines that humanity have ever built. And right here you can learn all about that at the West Australian Submarine Discovery Centre. And so quite apart from what our future submarines mean in terms of our military capability, they are just machines of wonder, and I'm so excited about the opening of this Centre and what it means in terms of people being able to learn about how incredible a set of machines they are. And of course we are right next to Australia's submarine base. HMAS Stirling, on this day is the home of our Collins class submarine fleet, and at the end of next year it will be the home of Submarine Rotation Force West. We're spending $8 billion on upgrading HMAS Stirling to make it ready for SRF-West, and as part of that, there are 3,000 people who will be employed in seeing the upgrade of the base, which of course, will become a bigger base going forward, and all of that is a huge endeavor here. All of that represents significant opportunity. In total, what we are doing with AUKUS is the single biggest industrial project in our nation's history, but we are really acutely aware that there is a social license, which is important to remember that we do not take for granted for communities like Rockingham, but more broadly Western Australia in hosting this incredible platform, and the basis from which it operates. And it's why this Discovery Centre is so important. It's part of that social license. It's part of being a place where people can ask questions about what is actually going to happen there. What does low-level nuclear waste look like? So that we can dispel the myths around all of that, we can educate the community around that, but people can also, in turn, get a sense of exactly how extraordinary these machines are that do operate from Stirling right now, but of course, in terms of the future Australian nuclear powered submarine fleet will be operating from Stirling in the future, and Submarine Rotation Force West, which will be operating from Stirling from the end of next year. This will be a place that, as Dan said, we hope younger people will come and be excited, and maybe imagine that they have a career in this. We're a place where school kids can come and learn about why we need submarines, but what submarines actually are. So, I really want to thank the ASA for the work that it's done, and through you Kate, as you said, a small space packs a mighty punch. It really is genuinely impressive. We're really excited about what it's, what it's going to be able to do. It opens for business tomorrow, and so it is an enormous privilege for me to be here today to open the Centre. But in opening it, let me finish by just thanking the community in which we are situated right now, the City of Rockingham and the other surrounding municipalities of Cockburn and Fremantle. We do not take for granted the extent to which you are hosting such an important and critical national asset, and our partnership with you has been absolutely fundamental in terms of delivering what we are doing here. It is people who live in your municipality, primarily who are building HMAS Stirling right now. And for those submariners who are in the Navy right now and in the future, these are the communities in which they live, and we thank you for being fantastic partners with the Commonwealth government in enabling all of that to happen, and I don't know if I say magic words, but with that very, very privileged to declare the WA Submarine Discovery Centre open. 

ENDS