Page 106 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec19-Jan20

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FROM THE SOURCE MELISSA PRICE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 105
DECEMBER 2019 – JANUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
One good example for me, if I think about my electorate, I look at the City of Geraldton, if you talk about STEM, and I’ve done this with parents to try and understand well what is the knowledge, what’s the education of parents. When I talk about STEM a lot of the time, number one, they don’t know what you’re talking about. If the parents haven’t been to university, the chances are that when you talk about STEM they don’t really get it. They may have heard it in the news but they don’t really understand it. In fact, when I was in Karratha, people that are very engaged in the business community and I would say one of them was involved in a STEM industry, they didn’t know what I was talking about.
So I think we need to be very careful that we’re not talking to ourselves. We need to be talking to people who we would like to be involved in this fabulous defence in- dustry and I believe that we haven’t been spreading the message far and wide.
“I’M VERY FOCUSED ON INDIVIDUAL COMPANIES, WHAT’S THEIR PROBLEM, HOW CAN WE HELP THEM OVERCOME WHATEVER ROADBLOCK IS IN THE WAY.”
ADM: It has been almost four years since the release of the 2016 Defence White and its associated partner documents. Is it time for an update? Will a publicly available version of the Integrated Investment Program (IIP) be released? It’s up- dated every six months internally but it hasn’t been released externally for defence industry to know what’s going on.
So there’s a lot of rumour and innuendo and guessing about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it in terms of the timelines, and it’s really hard to make investments in terms of capital and people when you don’t know what the timeframe is.
PRICE: At Sea Power in Sydney last year, Minister Reynolds spoke about Defence reviewing its force structure plan. I know this is a regular activity and process to critically
ABOVE: The JSF program has been a great opportunity for Australian industry globally.
look at the changing strategic environment. To take stock of what’s happening around the world and its possible im- pact on the ADF and forthcoming investment priorities and decisions. Australia’s defence industry is an essential part of delivering our ADF capability – as your readers know, a fundamental input; a partnership. That’s why any future investment outcomes of this review will be released to the public and industry.
It’s worth noting CASG makes a significant effort to keep industry informed as projects evolve, through things like working groups and industry engagement activities and information in the Portfolio Budget Statements. We know how important it is to bring industry along with us on this journey; it’s the only way we’ll achieve our shared goals.
ADM: What role do you see state-based defence advo- cates or agencies playing in the Defence debate and de- cision-making process?
PRICE: I think they are playing a really important role in connecting industry to Defence opportunities and it’s one thing to identify a small business in a state but it’s another to identify perhaps infrastructure that you might need. I think that’s also important, that the state’s got visibility of what could be the infrastructure require- ments or what is it that they are offering to whatever program might be on the cards.
What I would like to do or what I would like the state based defence agencies to do, is to do a bit more of this forward leaning which I talked about at the outset; iden- tifying those companies that perhaps have got some capa- bility rather than waiting for them to come knock on their door, and I think I’ve met every state since I’ve been in this role and a number of those advocates and bodies. Obvi- ously there is a matter of resources but I think they could do a lot more in making those connections. I think they’ve been really important as part of the journey in identifying who’s capable of doing what but I think that it’s time for them all to step up now.
ADM: Does Australia have the capability to become a global player in the Defence export/trade space?
PRICE: So one of my priorities, and there’s a number of them, is really to identify where are those roadblocks, to help those Australian companies who want to export, that we help them as much as we can. So rather than focus- ing on where we are in some league table, I’m very focused on individual companies, what’s their problem, how can we help them overcome whatever the roadblock is in their way, and there’s currently a review of those processes at the mo- ment. So that’s at an Australian shopfront level.
ADM: To confirm, Defence Export Controls (DEC) is being reviewed at the moment to make sure it’s fit for purpose? PRICE: Yes. This was actually something that the Minister of Defence has required but also we’ve got an additional list of issues that we would also like to explore. This is all about human behaviour as well, so we need to make sure that if a potential export application is not going to proceed, that we say no quickly, rather than keep people hanging on the line.
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