A summit on ship and submarine building in Australia will call on the local defence industry to help the South Australian Government strengthen its case for the Navy’s next submarine fleet to be built in Adelaide.

The State Government hopes to bring together a range of experts involved in the naval ship building field to help form the its submission to a national defence industry white paper.

In recent months, the Federal Government backed away from a promise to build submarines in Adelaide with fears it was close to signing a deal to buy the Japanese Soryu-class submarines at a cost of about $25 billion.

• Doubts over future of local defence manufacturing 
• Sub deal could go offshore

South Australia’s Defence Industry Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith said the nation faced a clear choice.

“We need a naval ship building industry in this country,” he said.

The Commonwealth Government has an opportunity now to set up a flow of continuous work for 30 years, that makes us one of the world’s leading, cost competitive naval shipbuilding nations.”

The planned summit follows a submission to the Senate inquiry into naval shipbuilding from Dr John White that suggested buying Japanese-made submarines could be up to three times more expensive than building them locally.

Dr White is one of the Coalition’s key shipbuilding advisers and co-authored the Winter-White report on shipbuilding in Australia, an as yet unreleased report into the troubled Air Warfare Destroyer project.

Coalition foolish to ignore advice: Xenophon

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said the Federal Government would be foolish to ignore Dr White’s advice.

“Dr John White is an internationally renowned expert with a proven track record on how to build ships and submarines and he’s essentially warning the people of Australia that the Australian Government is taking the wrong direction,” Senator Xenophon said.

“The fact that Dr White … has broken his silence is incredibly significant.

“I just can’t imagine the frustration he would have felt and the point he had to get to, to say he has to speak out on this.

“What this expert is saying is that we need to build these submarines right here in Australia, particularly in Adelaide.”

Mr Martin Hamilton-Smith will be taking that message to Canberra when he appears before the Senate inquiry next week.

“We’ll be making these very same points, that there is an advantage in building submarines and surface ships right here in Australia,” Mr Hamilton-Smith said.