A fresh political row has broken out over billions of dollars worth of work on Australia’s submarine fleet as the Defence Department mulls sending hundreds of maintenance jobs to WA.

Despite South Australia winning the lion’s share of the navy’s $90 billion shipbuilding program, SA senators yesterday launched a fresh bid to keep multibillion-dollar contracts to refurbish the Collins-class submarines in Adelaide, 3000km from their operational base at Henderson.

The Federal Government-owned Australian Submarine Corporation already has 400 workers at Henderson for maintenance jobs on the Collins-class fleet, but so-called “full-cycle” work — a two-year overhaul of a sub in which it is cut in half, gutted and fully refurbished — could deliver another 700 jobs to WA.

The navy has long floated the merits of moving the maintenance work, conceding last year there would not be enough room at Adelaide’s naval dockyards when construction of new frigates and a new submarine fleet begins after 2020 — which executives from ASC and Australian Naval Infrastructure, which owns the yards, also admitted at a Senate estimates committee hearing yesterday.

They confirmed planning for a move had started.

ANI chief executive David Knox said it was in discussion with the French-owned builder of the next generation of subs to lease the space currently used for the full-cycle maintenance work.

ASC chief executive Stuart Whiley said he had been asked to estimate the cost of a move to WA from 2022 to 2026, as well as options to retain the work in Adelaide, by June.

With billions of dollars and hundreds of jobs on the line, the issue is set to become a hot political topic as a Federal election looms.

SA senator Rex Patrick, a member of Nick Xenophon’s former party (now renamed Centre Alliance), said the ASC’s requirement to cost the retention of the work in WA was a “political ruse”, demanding a guarantee the work would remain in SA.

Federal Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, the South Australian MP who delivered the naval shipbuilding work to his home State, and WA senator and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said no decision had been made on the future of the maintenance work.