Page 115 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec-Jan 2021

DECEMBER 2020 – JANUARY 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FROM THE SOURCE
MELISSA PRICE 115
closely to ensure there are as many opportunities for Australian companies on all programs. Even if it can’t be achieved in the short term, sometimes due to pre-existing arrangements, I’m ensuring that Australian companies can get more opportunities across multiple projects. We aren’t just focusing on one platform or project, we’re taking a holistic ap- proach to all of the products and services offered by that company in Australia and my objective is to increase AIC across the Defence portfolio, not just in individual projects.
ADM: And what about the role of exports? We haven’t heard as much in 2020 about Australia becoming a top ten defence exporter. How is that campaign progressing?
PRICE: One of my priority areas for 2020 was to
really unpick the way that we go about export-
ing Australian Defence industry. So what are the processes, what are the resourcing that we have and includ- ing what was my travel program going to be. Now COVID’s tipped all of that on its head and, as you can imagine, we turned our focus to making sure invoices were paid earlier, that we focused on AIC.
In short, what could we do at home to improve the situ- ation for Australian SMEs and also the primes that were here. So that has really, in some ways, prevented me from really getting my teeth into what I would call the export program, but 2021, it’s now at the top of the list; stay tuned.
ADM: Earlier in 2020, you made an announcement to speed up $870 million worth of infrastructure programs. How is this progressing since AusTender does not reflect that growth in activity?
PRICE: The Estate Works Program that you refer to remains on track to release all works packages as intended. The de- fence estate consists of more than 700 owned and leased properties, comprising 25,000 buildings and 150,000 items of fixed plant and equipment. The Estate Works Program provides facilities for management work packages aimed at restoring and sustaining defence estate assets, as well as addressing safety and compliance requirements.
The Estate Works Program is a three-year rolling program of forward work packages with individual packages valued anywhere from less than $1 million out to $15 million. We are focused on providing opportunities for local small busi- nesses, many of whom are in regional Australia where our bases are located, and many of them took advantage of op- portunities that presented themselves during COVID.
On 14 May 2020 the Minister for Defence and I an- nounced the release of $870 million three year forward work programs from 2020 to 2021 and it’s part of the 2020 Budget Defence Stimulus Package. Government an- nounced a further injection of $300 million into the Estate Works Program for 2020/21 and 21/22.
Since July 2019 through to 23 October 2020, the Estate Works Program has let 361 individual contracts worth a value of $721 million, and since April 2020 (coinciding with the ministerial announcement in May) a total of 130 work
packages have been released to market alone with $214 mil- lion paid to contractors so far this current financial year.
Pleasingly, some 30 contracts with a total value of $70 million have been awarded to Indigenous companies to date in this financial year. I am very impressed with the efforts of Steve Grzeskowiak and his team with the E&I Group program, given that we’ve just been experiencing every- thing that COVID-19 threw up.
And one of the things that I would really like to finish on with is E&I Group contracts have a very, very high local in- dustry participation which is something that I’m very proud of.
ADM: And lastly, I think my readers would kill me if I didn’t ask, is an Integrated Investment Program (IIP) update go- ing to be made publicly available in the foreseeable future? PRICE: Well I think if people have been watching closely, they would have seen through the Force Structure Plan and also the Strategic Update, that that is in effect an update to the IIP.
ADM: I would argue that not so much, Minister. The Defence Capability Plan that the IIP replaced had a lot more detail when it came to scope and timeframes and requirements in there, and we don’t have program num- bers anymore which AusTender lives on, which a lot of procurement and acquisition programs still live on. There is no comprehensive map anymore. There’s wonderful coloured graphs in bands but there’s not a lot of detail. The IIP was always meant to be a living document that was updated frequently and I realise that it is internally. It would just be great to see that publicly available as well. PRICE: Yeah, look I think you’re right that Defence – and I know work is proceeding on this. We definitely need to find a better way to communicate with industry what the road ahead is without getting too far ahead of ourselves. So I think the FSP is a great start. ■
ABOVE: Defence have been called on to respond to a number of local tasks including bushfire responses and COVID19.
DEFENCE