Page 39 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2019

Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and Indian
Ocean – $72.4 million.
• MAZURKA – Contribute to the Mul-
tinational Force and Observers in Sinai.
• OKRA – Contribute to the Coalition to defeat Daesh in Iraq and Syria –
$269.3 million.
• PALADIN – Contribute to the UN
Truce Supervision Organisation in the
Middle East.
• RESOLUTE – Contribute to the
whole-of-government maritime surveil- lance and response in the maritime ap- proaches to Australia – $59.3 million
• SOLANIA – Contribute to maritime surveillance within the Pacific Region.
• SOUTHERN DISCOVERY – Pro- vide ADF support to the Australian Antarctic Division.
• STEADFAST – Contribute to the NATO Mission in Iraq supporting con- tinued capacity building of the Iraqi Se- curity Forces.
Defence Indigenous
Employment Strategy
Defence is committed to meeting and sus- taining an Indigenous participation rate of 2.7 per cent and the Government’s Indig- enous procurement targets to support the Government’s Closing the Gap agenda, ac- cording to the Budget papers.
The Defence Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) provides the overarching strategy for Defence’s commitment to Indigenous inclusion. The fourth iteration of the Plan is being finalised and will focus on four key action areas:
• Building stronger relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.
• Cultivating a deeper understanding and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history and contempo- rary issues across the organisation.
• Increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation through employ- ment and procurement opportunities.
• Monitoring and reporting on the De- fence Reconciliation Action Plan.
Defence’s Indigenous workforce contin- ues to grow, with 2.5 per cent of ADF and APS personnel identifying as Indigenous.
In 2017-18, Defence awarded 605 con- tracts to Indigenous businesses. This was an achievement against the target of 420 contracts. These procurements totalled $455.2 million expenditure under the Commonwealth Indigenous Procure- ment Policy.
Infrastructure
Defence will be spending $1.8 billion on infrastructure programs around the nation in the year ahead, $50 million increase on the previous year.
Infrastructure has many fathers; Defence Estate and Infrastructure Group, CASG, the Public Works Committee, cabinet approval and a mix of all the players in various combi- nations depending on the
value of the program.
In a nutshell, major
capital facilities projects
are defined as having ex-
penditure over $15 mil-
lion and are subject to
government approval and
a formal review by the
Parliamentary Standing
Committee on Public
Works (PWC). Medium
facilities projects have a
budget of between $500,000 and $15 mil- lion. Projects valued at over $8 million are subject to government approval. Proj- ects valued at between $2 million and $15 million are required to be notified to and agreed to by the PWC but may not be for- mally reviewed by the committee. Projects over $15 million require referral to and full consideration by the PWC, with approval granted by parliament. If in doubt, PWC
has a look at the program, which may or may not need approval by parliament.
The PWC meets every Thursday that both houses of parliament are sitting, according to the committee secretary. PWC has met about 50 times both in Canberra and around the nation at various future facility sites this financial year, with Defence programs mak- ing up the bulk of their workload, roughly
TABLE 3 Infrastructure - Top 3 projects by spending by state for this financial year in $m
NSW
Garden Island upgrade stage 1 86.3
Garden Island upgrade stage 2 84.1
Explosive Ordinance Logistics reform at Myambat 39.5
QUEENSLAND
C-17 support facilities 36.9
Airfield capital works Oakey 35.6
Chinook facilities in Townsville 33.3
VICTORIA
Airfield capital works at RAAF East Sale 93
Explosive Ordinance Logistics reform at Mangalore 16.7
School of Signals redevelopment at Watsonia 13
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Air 7000 MPA P-8A works at RAAF Edinburgh 50.3
JORN upgrade at Alice Springs 33
High performance computing at RAAF Edinburgh 57.4
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Maritime operational support for Sea 1654 109
HMAS Stirling Phase 3A redevelopment 100.8
Air 7000 MPA P-8A works at RAAF Pearce 48.8
NORTHERN TERRITORY
RAAF Tindal JSF facilities 77.6
Air 7000 MPA P-8A works at RAAF Darwin 63.9
Air Traffic Management under Air 5431 at RAAF Darwin 23.9
60-70 per cent of hearings in any given year. Budget papers provided an upcoming list of Defence programs that PWC is slated to look at in the coming 12 months, at both the major and medium project level. The 26 pro- grams cover a wide range of facilities around the country. For those particularly keen on this list, it can be found on P143 of the Port-
folio Budget Statements for Defence.
The $2.5 billion 20-year Australia
www.australiandefence.com.au | May 2019 | 39
“Big announceables for the Budget seem to be a thing of the past with the government preferring a constant drip feed of decisions."