Workforce

Question

Senator Leah Blyth: How many do you need to send over to ramp up? What does that look like when that's ramped up? VADM Mead: So the ramp up for the Virginia program, we need about approximately 350 by middle of 2027, and that will ramp up to 500. This is the Virginia program that will ramp up to 500 by 2030. So, there'll be about 350 Australians and 150 US in 27. And the US numbers will go down and our numbers will increase to 2030, there's about 500 Australians and about 50 US. And those 50 US would be like deep specialists in the nuclear reactor. We now have workforce, ASC workers over working in the United Kingdom, we have a billion dollars' worth of initiatives. Kylie can go through it in intimate detail, ranging from schools to TAFEs to PhDs to master's degrees in Australia and overseas universities to cover the full breadth of that industry workforce that we need, to use a crude term, blue colour and white collar. We are putting enormous amount of effort into the workforce. I'm not shying away from the statement that I've always made, and we said from the very beginning that the greatest risk to the program is workforce. It is something that we can not be complacent about and never take our eyes off the ball. I will never be happy with the numbers, even if Kylie tells me we're ahead of the curve. I'll always go to sleep that night wanting more and wanting more, because workforce will be the key to the success of the program, in particular, the build of SSN-AUKUS Senator Leah Blyth: Fantastic. Thank you. And maybe for the specifics that could be provided on notice, I'm conscious of time and the hour, but that would be really helpful to see exactly where that billion dollars is going and what's being done.