Joint Press Conference, Adelaide

SUBJECTS: AUKUS; Prime Minister’s visit to the United States; Unsafe and unprofessional interaction with PLA-AF; EU defence relationships; Critical Minerals Framework; SA election. 

MARK BUTLER, HEALTH MINISTER & MEMBER FOR HINDMARSH: Thanks everyone. I'm Mark Butler, I'm the local member for this area — the Member for Hindmarsh. I used to be called the Member for Port Adelaide. I'm so delighted to welcome the Acting Prime Minister and the Defence Minister Richard Marles here. I'm with Amanda Rishworth, another great South Australian, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and the new Member for Sturt, Claire Clutterham, who spent five years working here at the ASC. And we're joined, obviously, by the South Australian Premier. This precinct has been delivering terrific jobs and prosperity to South Australians for 40 years, and importantly, obviously, also great naval capability to our defence forces. It was the product of some visionary cooperation between a state Labor government led by John Bannon and a federal Labor government led by Bob Ford. Mick Young, my predecessor, was a great advocate for the jobs that he knew would come to this part of his electorate of Port Adelaide. And it's so exciting to know that the cooperation between the state government today and the federal government today is a launch pad for 40 more years, at least, of great jobs, great employment, great opportunity and terrific naval capability for our country. So I’m going to hand over to the Acting Prime Minister. 

RICHARD MARLES, ACTING PRIME MINISTER: Well, thank you, Mark. It's great to be here with Mark Butler, the local member; with the Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas; with Amanda Rishworth, the Minister for Employment; Claire Clutterham, former employee of ASC, but now the Member for Sturt; and also great to be here with Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, the Director General of the Australian Submarine Agency. And it's really exciting to meet the workforce here at ASC this morning. People who've come through university doing engineering degrees are now in the graduate program at ASC. People doing their apprenticeships through Tafe SA around a range of traded with the prospect of having a career-long employment here at ASC. And we've also met a number of workers who in the next couple of months will be going to Barrow-in-Furness, to the BAE facility there, where they will be working on the construction of nuclear-powered submarines for the United Kingdom. And that's a great opportunity for them, but the skills that they will be acquiring there and the experience that they will be acquiring there will be fundamental to building our own future nuclear-powered submarines right here at the Osborne Naval Shipyard. And they will be the initial cohort, but they join right now 180 workers who are at Pearl Harbor working on the sustainment and maintenance of Virginia class submarines and that number will grow to 200 by the end of the year. Now, outside, six months ago, we turned the first sod on the Skills and Trading Academy here at Osborne. In the last six months, 300,000 tonnes of material have been brought to this site, and that build is on schedule. It will be completed in 2027 and it will have its first intake of apprentices and students in the financial year 27-28.

Now last night, our time, the meeting between our Prime Minister and President Trump was a really important affirmation of the United States and Australia's commitment to the AUKUS program. But I'd want to make the point that we've been consistently saying that this is a program which is very much in the interests of the United States, as it is in the interests of Australia, as it is in the interests of the United Kingdom. And AUKUS is moving at a pace. When you meet these workers around here you can touch, feel and see AUKUS occurring. AUKUS is happening. And in the process, what we will see at this site, at the Osborne Naval Shipyard is the building of our future nuclear-powered submarines. And in time, this workplace will have 7,000 employees working on submarines, on Hunter class frigates — and that will be the largest, the most complex industrial facility in our country. Now it's obviously very central to the South Australian economy. But in fact, this is a national endeavour. Because you will see products be brought here, which will have been built and manufactured all around the country. In fact, to build our future nuclear-powered submarines, we will need to engage the industrial base of our entire nation. And that is a great project. It will be a great achievement of our country. And at the end of it, what we will have is the single biggest increase in our military capability since the establishment of the Navy more than a century ago. It will be profoundly important for Australia's national security. And all of this is being implemented, all of this is being delivered by the Albanese Labor Government.

PETER MALINAUSKAS, PREMIER OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Thanks very much, Richard. It's great to have you and Adelaide as Acting Prime Minister and of course, it's a privilege being here with Minister Butler, Minister Rishworth. Claire is a former employee of ASC but also the Member for Sturt. I'm always very grateful for when Vice Admiral Mead is in town, we catch up frequently. I'm very grateful to Vice Admiral Mead providing inspiration as a runner - probably the best marathon runner employed by the Commonwealth - but more importantly, delivering this extraordinarily important project in South Australia but more important, again, for the nation. 

The remarks from President Trump last night are certainly the words that we've been looking for and affirmation from the Trump Administration of their enthusiasm for the AUKUS endeavour. Critically, from the South Australian government perspective, this should be a source of great confidence for every parent of young people in our state who are contemplating an industry choice for their children into the future. We need more and more young South Australians putting their hands up to gain the skills and the qualifications that are going to be central towards the nation's ability to be able to deliver the new AUKUS deal, the SSN-AUKUS program. There are children in school today who we will want to be acquiring an appetite for STEM. There are children in high school who we want to go into our technical colleges. There are kids graduating from high school and going to university who we want to choose engineering degrees, because we need all that and more to be able to deliver AUKUS. And parents, quite reasonably, want to have a sense of confidence that this as a program is happening, and as the Acting Prime Minister just said, it is happening. Last night amounts to a green light from the administration, as much as we could have hoped for, and sends a clear signal just to get on with the job, which is exactly what we've been doing in South Australia. Right from three year old preschool, to technical colleges, to the revitalization of public Tafe, and also an amalgamation of universities — we're doing it all. And we do every bit of it in conjunction and in lock step with the federal government that is helping to make sure that as a state government, we're pulling the right levers at the right time to do what is required. 

Now, you know, while of course, this is ultimately an endeavour that is about our national sovereignty and security, it also has the ancillary benefit economically here in South Australia. And I guess what we're most preoccupied with is to see a project like this contribute to improved living standards in our state. It is true that there has always been a gap between the national average wage and the average wage we see South Australians getting. But that gap is closing. In fact, over the last three years, it's closed by 250 basis points. The wages of South Australians are catching up to the national average, and no small part— that is on the back of our economy becoming more diverse, more complex, doing yet more skilled work. And probably one of the greatest representations of that is what is happening here on the Lefevre Peninsula in Osborne. Whether it be at ASC, or BAE, or all of the suppliers and contractors that contribute to this national endeavour, what we see is high skilled jobs, which means secure, better paid jobs. And that's good news for living standards in the state of South Australia. So not only in this state are we contributing to the national effort, we're doing it in a way that actually improves living standards for our citizens, but particularly into future generations, which is why we're such enthusiastic supporters of this effort. 

But I will say one more point, which I think is worthy of repetition, and it goes to what Richard said. The truth is that we can't look at AUKUS as a South Australian or a Western Australian project. This is a truly national enterprise, which means young people from around the country should think about their opportunities to participate in all of the work that a project of this size and scale produces. We need all hands on deck. We need every young person interested in STEM. We need every graduate from university thinking about how they might contribute to something that does the nation proud. So this is not a South Australian or Western Australian project. This is a national endeavour. But I'm very pleased that South Australia will punch above its way to make sure that it gets done.

VICE ADMIRAL JONATHAN MEAD, AUSTRALIAN SUBMARINE AGENCY: Thank you, Premier. Three years ago, the Deputy Prime Minister, and this was before the announcement of the optimal pathway, told me that he wanted to build a sovereign submarine at pace. And so before even the announcements, we went out and acquired land from the South Australian Government to commence the build of our own sovereign SSN-AUKUS by the end of the decade. And so, since that time, we've acquired the land, we are designing a shipyard, a shipyard that will look very much like the shipyard in the United Kingdom, but to the most contemporary standards in the world. And we will have down here in Port Adelaide, the most advanced shipyard in the world, to build the most advanced submarine in the world. And that will commence, the build, by the end of the decade. We have made great progress. We have spoken about the Skills and Training Academy, but we have made great progress on the design of the shipyard itself, so that we can execute the Deputy Prime Minister’s and the government's intent to commence build of this submarine by the end of the decade, and to deliver by the early 2040s. I do wish to thank the Premier of South Australia, he has been a magnificent person to deal with, a counterpart, and his people who really went forward to facilitate the shipyard, the Skills and Training Academy, workforce, and generally to be part of an integrated commonwealth-state team. And I thank him and his team once again. Because what we are doing down here in South Australia in building the shipyard and then building the submarine, has not been done before in Australia, and would not be done without commonwealth-state friendships, relationships and partnerships. Thank you very much.

JOURNALIST: Does Ambassador Rudd have the government’s support to continue on in his role?

MARLES: Look, last night we saw a meeting between Prime Minister Albanese and President Trump. It's a really significant meeting between our two nations and Ambassador Rudd was a key part in seeing that meeting come about, and I can say that firsthand in terms of my engagement with Ambassador Rudd. He has done a fantastic job representing Australia in the United States as our Ambassador. And you know, we've been making this point consistently: if you take a step back and look at the relationship, look at what is happening in a national security sense, look at what's happening in terms of our defence relationship, look at what is happening in terms of our economic relationship — the critical minerals deal that was signed last night, the fact that we have the lowest tariff rate of any country — our relationship with the United States is in a very good place, and our Ambassador to the United States deserves his share of credit for that.

JOURNALIST: Donald Trump enthusiastically backed AUKUS, but the US Navy Secretary said there was a need to review— to use the review, sorry, to clarify ambiguities around the pact. Do you know what those ambiguities are?

MARLES: Well, firstly, I think President Trump's words were very clear. I mean, it is a clear affirmation of AUKUS, of its benefit for the United States and of course it has a great benefit for Australia, as it does for the United Kingdom. I reiterate, AUKUS is underpinned by a trilateral treaty that was signed a year ago in Washington, DC, which I signed on behalf of Australia, between the US, the UK and our country. And so it is very clear. Now, having said that, we've also been really clear that we welcome this review. Looking at how we can do AUKUS better is a process that we embrace. It's what we did when we came to government. It's what the Brits did when they came to government in the middle of last year. And however we can do better in terms of delivering AUKUS, we are keen to get after that, and we really look forward to this review as an important body of work which will inform that. 

JOURNALIST: Are the ambiguities around the commitments that Australia might make in the event of conflict involving the US?

MARLES: Look, all of those matters are very clear and were clearly set out when the optimal pathway for acquiring this capability, when AUKUS was first announced, back in March of 2023. So there's no ambiguities there. But this is a massive project. We talk about it in terms of being just about the biggest industrial endeavour that our country's ever engaged in. Getting on the horse of operating a nuclear-powered submarine is a very significant step for a country to take, and we are very open to making sure that we are doing this in the best possible way and we think that this review will be an important part of informing that.

JOURNALIST: When President Trump says that the AUKUS deal is moving too slowly, is there scope to speed this up? And could we see Osborne subs in the water earlier? 

MARLES: Our starting posture here is to do this as quickly as we can. If there are ways of moving this thing forward faster, we will always be open to that. And again, the review, I think, is an important part of that. But in saying that, we're under no illusion as to the scale of the task here. Submarines, nuclear-powered submarines, are the single most complex machine that humanity has ever built. We're not only building that, but we are standing up a production facility to build that. It is going to take time. So our best estimate is that those first submarines that will be built here at Osborne will enter the water in the early 2040s. It’s why we were so keen to close that gap if you like, to bring the date forward to the early 2030s in terms of acquiring in service Virginia class submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. That is a really important step in the process. So I'd also made clear that, relative to what we inherited when we came to government back in May of 2022, we've already brought forward the entry into service of the first nuclear-powered submarine by a decade. So we've taken enormous steps forward in relation to that. But we'll always be open to how this can be done quicker.

JOURNALIST: Does the Prime Minister need to champion AUKUS more as a national enterprise, rather than having (inaudible)?

MARLES: I think that the Prime Minister is a huge champion of AUKUS. I mean, the Prime Minister was there in San Diego in March of 2023 announcing the optimal pathway— fundamentally announcing AUKUS. And since then, I could not have wanted a better partner as the Defence Minister, in the Prime Minister that we have today as a as an absolute champion for AUKUS.

JOURNALIST: Can there be more of a focus on a team Australia push then, if people are looking, to follow Paul’s line, of more groundswell across the country? If you’re saying every part of the country is going to have to play its role, should there be more of a focus on the Team Australia of this?

MARLES: Well look, I actually think it is really important to understand that this is a national endeavour. And I think it is also fair to observe that in parts of the country, certainly here in Adelaide, there's a real focus and understanding of AUKUS and what this place is going to mean to the economy of Adelaide, but the economy of South Australia. I think there is a point to be made that this is actually going to engage the industrial base of our entire nation. You know, in states like Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria; we don't get this done without engaging the industrial bases of those states. And that is a message that, you know, I've been working on with Pat Conroy, the Minister for Defence Industry, with the relevant ministers across those states to just highlight how important AUKUS is in an industrial sense, for them. And it goes for Tassie, and of course, Western Australia has its own story. I think this is a very well understood project in Western Australia from an operational sense, with the Submarine Rotational Force-West, which will be operating from 2027 at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham. But it is absolutely right to say, yes, there is a lot of activity that occurs in South Australia and Western Australia, but we don't get this done without engaging the entire national industrial base. And at the end of the day, what we get from this, a future nuclear-powered submarine is a military capability which is there to keep every Australian safe. 

JOURNALIST: Just on the confrontation on Monday in the South China Sea. Are you considering lodging an objection with your counterpart about that? 

MARLES: Well, whenever I meet with my counterpart, we raise these issues. And that has been the case when the Chief of the Defence Force was most recently in China. So we take those opportunities. But I would want to be really clear that we now have a very set procedure when incidents of this kind occur. It actually matters that there are very consistent behaviours and very consistent messages that are given. And that's what we've done in this instance. There are a lot of interactions between the militaries of Australia and of China in places like South China Sea, and the vast majority of those you never hear about. To be fair, the vast majority of those are safe and professional. But where there are instances, and they have occurred, where there are occurrences which are unsafe and unprofessional, we walk through a process and a procedure now and we absolutely stick rigidly to that because consistent behaviours and consistent messaging in this moment is really important.

JOURNALIST: Has the government received a response from China in regards to that?

MARLES: Look, we have made our position very clear to China. As I said yesterday, both through our embassy in Beijing, but also to the Chinese Embassy in Canberra and we have made our position very clear in relation to that and (inaudible). 

JOURNALIST: China said tat Australia infringed on its sovereignty by flying over the South China Sea. What do you make of that?

MARLES: I would want to be really clear that the patrol of the P-8 aircraft or the Royal Australian Air Force was a routine maritime surveillance control that happened in international airspace, above international waters and at every moment our crew was adhering to international law. We've been really clear about that. And the interaction that we saw– I mean, having a Chinese fast jet come alongside of itself is pretty routine, but what occurred with, on two occasions, the release of those flares being as close as they were, was unsafe and unprofessional.

JOURNALIST: What do you say to critics who say that Adelaide‑based nuclear‑powered submarine construction won't happen, and even if it does, it'll be too late?

MARLES: Well firstly, I've been answering that question pretty consistently since becoming the Defence Minister back in 2022. And I suspect I'll be answering that question for a number of years to come. What I would say to those critics is, have a look around us right now. You can't talk to the people that we just have here, those who are in the graduate program at ASC; those who are about to go off to Barrow-in-Furness. You can't look at the development of the Skills and Training Academy without absolutely feeling in the most palpable sense: AUKUS is happening now. Future nuclear‑powered submarines are going to be built right here at the Osborne Naval Shipyard. And in time, this will be the biggest and most complex industrial facility in the country. So it matters less what I say, it is facts on the ground which actually answer that question. 

JOURNALIST: We've seen the value of Australian defence export permits really explode in the last five years. Given the way the US has stepped back its support for NATO countries. Is Australia becoming a more valuable defence partner for European countries?

MARLES: Well, I mean, we value our partnership with– obviously, with the United States, we value our partnership with countries in Europe as well. AUKUS involves the United Kingdom, but within the EU we do a lot of work with countries such as Spain, and France, and Germany. We have literally just signed– or have Kongsberg, a Norwegian missile manufacturer about to open a facility in the Hunter Valley. We are working very closely with European partners. And I guess the point I would make in answer that question: when I go to NATO, which I did in June of this year, there is very much a sense that the world is becoming more connected. That the rules‑based order, there’s not many orders, there is one, and where it is under pressure in one part of the world, it's on trial in every part of the world, and we all have a shared interest in maintaining it. And that means that we are actually working very hard on building those relationships, and as strong as our relationship is with the United States, and I genuinely believe it's never been stronger, it would also be true to say that there are a whole lot of newer relationships with European countries which are fantastic, to be honest, for Australia's national interest.

JOURNALIST: Premier, the critical minerals deal, what does that mean for (inaudible)? 

MALINAUSKAS: Yeah, we certainly welcome the announcements from the Prime Minister last night, because it speaks to the necessity and importance of critical minerals and metals and in our national economy, and our ability in South Australia to contribute to an important trade relationship between us and the US. When we think about critical middle and critical metals, then antimony is one of the ones that we know is in massive short supply globally, and that's particularly relevant in the United States where they need more antimony for their defence related industries. In order to be able to produce antimony, you need a operating lead smelter and they are in short supply amongst Western like‑minded countries, and it just so happens that we're home to one of those in South Australia, in Port Pirie.  So last night’s announcement has the capacity to translate to a real world contract that underpins the economics of where things are going in terms of Port Pirie smelter operations. So it was an important milestone last night and we certainly congratulate the Prime Minister and the President on reaching it.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)

MALINAUSKAS: Look, I'm not going to question or undermine the decision of the court. I would simply make the observation that another day, another former Liberal before the courts in getting this case sentenced to jail. I mean, how much– we keep seeing this. There seems to be a pretty regular drumbeat of either Liberals or former Liberals before a criminal court getting convicted or sentenced. It’s remarkable. 

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)

MALINAUSKAS: There’s going to be an election in March next year, and that’s entirely appropriate. 

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)

MALINAUSKAS: As I’ve said on this previously, I’m happy to repeat it, I think it sort of highlights were things are at. We’re less than six months away from the next state election. I'm here today focusing on one of the major economic pillars that will underpin prosperity for future generations, and Vincent Tarzia is obsessing about transgender prisoner arrangements. That, I think, tells you everything you need to know about the relevant focus of the two potential parties of government. 

ENDS