South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has challenged One Nation voters to think about who will “wipe your bum when you’re 90″ before they back a party with strong anti-immigration policies.

In a speech to business leaders in Adelaide on Wednesday, Malinauskas revealed his multidecade plans to transform South Australia through mining and defence work – and the important role of immigration.

After saying SA needed an extra 2011 skilled migrants a year to deliver major projects such as nuclear submarine building and copper mining in its far north, Malinauskas minced no words about One Nation’s anti-immigration views.

“You can either hold back the wave of jobs coming our way or we can prepare for them now. Why on Earth would we have a policy debate in this country about holding back high-paid jobs?” he said.

He said the extra skilled migrants were on top of the estimated 20,000 people a year expected to be added to SA’s population through natural growth.

This has spurred a bold housing target of 13,500 new homes a year in South Australia to “seize the generational opportunities that are set to transform the state”, announced on Wednesday by Labor.

While recognising there were “no votes in saying the number needs to go up”, Malinauskas said he wanted to stand firm against rising anti-immigration sentiment in Australia, emboldened by the popularity of far-right political groups. Recent polling has shown a surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s far-right One Nation and a more conservative Angus Taylor-led Australian Liberal Party.

“I saw the [One Nation] campaign launch when they announced Cory [Bernadi] running for One Nation,” he said during questions after his speech to a Committee for Economic Development of Australia lunch.

“You saw a lot of Australian flags … with people wrapping themselves around the flag – and that’s OK, I’m cool with that, because I like our flag too.

“I don’t look at the Australian flag and see a misdirected sense of nationalism. I don’t look at the flag and see colonial oppression. I see a flag that has been party to our country and the record prosperity and peace that we have been able to generate.”

Malinauskas said politicians needed to inject “a little bit of fearlessness and frankness into the political discourse”. His message to One Nation voters was: “Who’s going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you’re 90?”

“Because it ain’t going to be your kids, because if I get my way, they’re going to be working on submarines with high-paying jobs so they can afford to own their home that has been built by someone. So who’s going to do that work?” he said.

“The really physically demanding jobs on housing construction have always been performed, traditionally, by waves of migrants – the concreters, the bricklayers, the roofers, in 40-degree temperatures. That was the Greeks and Italians – I’m talking generalisations.

“If we’re taking people out of the housing construction industry to work on the submarines — because they’re going to have to be Australian citizens — we’re going to need people to do that work in aged care.

“I’m not going to be the politician who wraps myself in a flag and then says ‘I don’t want to let people come into South Australia who are going to do the work that no one else wants’.

“By the way, just like Malinauksas isn’t a name that came out on the first fleet, nor is Bernadi.”

Bernardi, One Nation’s lead candidate for the SA upper house at the March state election, said Malinauskas was trying to invent his own definition of patriotism.

“But [he] refuses to face the facts that our immigration policy is not working in the interests of our state and our nation,” he said.

“Immigration policy is not discerning enough. It’s not delivering on the housing construction skills we need, and is instead making our housing crisis much worse than it needs to be.

“The Premier needs to focus on a home-grown South Australian workforce that addresses skills shortages across all industries, not just naval construction. South Australians struggling to buy a home or find an affordable rental can’t live in submarines.”

It follows a flurry of significant announcements from the Malinauskas government in recent days, including $30 billion for a nuclear submarine manufacturing hub at Osborne, backed by a $3.9 billion payment from the federal government.

On Monday, Malinauskas released a $27 million skills policy that would generate 1000 university, TAFE, trade and upskilling opportunities for AUKUS-related jobs.

Republished from InDaily