Malcolm Turnbull meets shipbuilders at an ASC facility after naming France as the winner of the $50bn submarine build to take place in South Australia. Photograph: Ben Macmahon/AAPView image

in fullscreenMalcolm Turnbull meets shipbuilders at an ASC facility after naming France as the winner of the $50bn submarine build to take place in South Australia. Photograph: Ben

Macmahon/AAPAustralian election 2016 This article is more than 9 years oldAnalysisTurnbull tiptoes through the wreckage of Abbott's broken pledgesThis article is more than 9 years oldMax

Opray

promises before having to face up to the ballot box, the memory still fresh in the mind of scorned voters.

So it was that the prime minister turned up in Adelaide on Tuesday with an apologetic smile and a promise to backflip on Tony Abbott’s backflip: Australia’s next generation of submarines

will be built in South Australia after all, just as pledged in the leadup to the 2013 federal election and reneged upon shortly after the Coalition secured government.

Scott Morrison v the Grattan Institute: who should we believe?Read more The difference this time round is rather than a mere verbal contract with voters, there is an actual contract being

hammered out with numbers and timetables and signatures on dotted lines. French company DCNS beat bids from Germany and Japan to win the $50bn contract to deliver 12 Barracuda submarines,

with the bulk of building to take place at Osborne shipyards in Adelaide.

Speaking at the shipyards Turnbull declared: “The submarines project will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel – here where we stand today – for

decades into the future.”

The submarine news has the potential to kill several birds for the Coalition with one multibillion-dollar stone, reassuring not just Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) employees of their

job security but also those facing the axe in other industries battling to survive in South Australia’s beleaguered economy. The emphasis on local steel at least implies that there is some

hope on the horizon for the 300 Arrium workers uncertain of their future in the state. In addition, the South Australian government has simultaneously announced that support will be provided

to reskill retrenched Holden workers for work with South Australia’s shipbuilding industry.

It follows Turnbull’s confirmation last week that the first two years of the $3bn offshore patrol vessels construction project would also take place in Adelaide from 2018, narrowing the

so-called “valley of death” facing local shipbuilders.

The Coalition brand had become synonymous with South Australia’s economic malaise after going back on the promise to build submarines locally, ending support for the automotive industry and

watching on as the steel sector collapsed.

Turnbull has now at the very least disassociated himself from Abbott’s decisions, reducing Labor and Nick Xenophon’s line of attack.

Some 2,800 jobs have been promised nationally on the submarine contract (including indirect work flowing down the supply chain) in addition to 400 jobs created courtesy of the offshore

patrol vessels contract.

Turnbull promised the submarine work would deliver advanced manufacturing jobs “for our children and our grandchildren for decades to come.”

History is on Turnbull's side in double-dissolution gamble – but only justRead more Unfortunately, as it stands, those future generations will still have to make do with far fewer jobs than

there used to be in South Australia, even with tens of billions of dollars of shipbuilding work in the pipeline. In terms of employment numbers within the shipbuilding industry this latest

announcement represents more a reinstatement of jobs that have been vanishing rather than a significant gain.

The numbers pale in comparison to the 24,000 jobs predicted to disappear from South Australia by the end of 2017 due to the collapse of car manufacturing. Add to that the thousands of jobs

already being shed across the rest of the state’s economy and the likelihood that a dozen submarines are hardly likely to sustain an entire steel industry.

But those are the details, and this is an election. Abbott might not have done Turnbull too many favours in South Australia, but there’s at least one valuable lesson he imparted: it is

slogans that win elections. Australian built. Australian jobs. Australian steel.

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