The closure of Williamstown’s shipyard is imminent, a federal MP has warned.
Up to 1100 jobs at BAE Systems are on the brink, with present work contracted to Victoria’s only shipyard due to be completed by early 2016.
Gellibrand MP Tim Watts said at a doorstop at Parliament House last week that it was a very bleak and sad day in Canberra, and in his Williamstown electorate, after BAE announced it would not tender for the $600 million construction of 21 Pacific patrol boats because the tender would not be awarded until 2017.
BAE spokeswoman Kaye Noske said this meant production on the boats would not start for more than two years and it would be economically unviable to re-hire a workforce in 2017-18.
“As we have been saying, and as numerous experts engaged by the government have advised, the Australian naval shipbuilding industry needs the government to act on its statements about accelerating future naval shipbuilding projects with a plan that supports continuous production,” she said.
Ms Noske said no decision had been made to close the Williamstown shipyard.
“We continue to explore commercial and defence projects that will enable us to maintain a shipbuilding capability,” she said.
Mr Watts said the Abbott government had done nothing for the shipyard since coming to power 18 months ago.
“The reality of this announcement means that a shipyard that has been in operation, in some way, since Ned Kelly was in a prison hold on the bay, will be closing under the Abbott government,” he said.
“When I was elected, there were 1400 jobs at this shipyard, jobs of the future, good, solid jobs, high-skilled jobs and jobs that, if we could make them survive the next 18 months, would have been around for decades to come, building the Future Frigates project and the ships we need as an island nation in an increasingly insecure region.”
A spokesman for federal Defence Minister Kevin Andrews said the government was committed to supporting a productive and cost-effective naval shipbuilding industry.
He said the former Labor government, which did not commission a single naval vessel while in office, was to blame for the dire state of the industry.
“The shipbuilding losses that are now occurring could have been avoided had the necessary decisions been made by Labor,” the spokesman said.
“This is indeed Labor’s ‘valley of death’.”
– with The Age
