Whiteaker, Sen Ellie

Senator WHITEAKER: Can you explain what you mean by that. Mr Stewart : Yes. The Defence precinct decision has not been fully made—that whole footprint at the moment. We are working very closely with the Commonwealth and the local industries to see what we can create as a temporary shipbuilding yard to allow us to build LCH. That's not ideal. That's certainly not what we'd hoped when we started on this journey, but, unfortunately, that's where we've found ourselves now. The current position is that we will be building a temporary yard for LCH, and we're working with the state and also with the Commonwealth to make sure that we get the footprint right, that we can deconflict from any resource industries and that we don't create any problems in their area as well. We're working closely with them. At the same time, we're also working with the Commonwealth to see where the final solution is. That's probably more complex than what we would've liked, I would say, and it's probably been a bit frustrating for ourselves, the state and for the Commonwealth, but we are where we are, and we recognise that now. We're starting to make decisions on what the temporary shipyard is going to look like. We've certainly put a good plan in place, and the Commonwealth are fairly supportive of that. But we recognise that, sometime in the future, we're going to have to mobilise somewhere else, and it'll be somewhere within the footprint. We just currently do not know where that is. CHAIR: Within the Henderson precinct footprint? Mr Stewart : Yes. Once the Defence precinct has totally understood, then they'll understand where nuclear submarines are going to be, where sustainment's going to be and also where shipbuilding's going to be. There's a high probability that we will have to mobilise to somewhere else, hence the reason that we're probably going to look at movable buildings rather than temporary buildings to make sure that we can have a facility that's fit for building landing craft heavy while also recognising that we're going to have to relocate to another area within the Henderson precinct during that program, after that program or after the next program.