Page 4 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2022

4 EDITORIAL
JULY-AUGUST 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
ADDRESSING THE IMPORTANT ISSUES
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
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I’M writing these words immediately fol- lowing the COVID-delayed ADM Con- gress in late June and while you can read a more detailed account beginning on page 18, there are one or two important points I’d like to highlight here.
The first is that, unless you’ve been completely off-grid for the last couple of months, you’ll know Australia has a new government and there’s new range of Ministers for Defence and industry to deal with.
Congress was well attended by the new government, despite Minister for De- fence Richard Marles being in India and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy
paign to establish an Advanced Strategic Research Agency, a similar organisation to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US. Labor has previously promised to maintain spending at two per cent GDP, which on the face of it is a good thing, but it very much depends on how slavishly it adheres to that number – if at all – given a slowing economy.
As ASPI’s Marcus Hellyer noted in his address to the ADM Congress, the infla- tion rate has more than doubled in the past two years and that means the defence budget will have to increase beyond a two per cent GDP baseline if it is to adequately fund projects already in the pipeline, let aloneemergingpriorities.
We’ve already seen the pressure that can be applied to the defence budget with the recent cancellation of Air 7003 and scal- ing back of Land 400 Phase 3 to find an additional $10 billion for the REDSPICE cyber security program.
Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes, and the ADM team will be watching developments closely over com- ing weeks and months.
The second subject I’d like to talk about is the value Indigenous businesses bring to the defence industrial sector and I’m very pleased to introduce the Indigenous Advan- tage theme in this issue. Defence has long been a strong advocate for the Indigenous community and Deputy Secretary of the Security and Estate Group Celia Perkins and current Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld are both Defence Indigenous Champions.
There are many benefits of an Indig- enous work force, not least of which is a depth of local knowledge. Yet the benefits of engagement for local communities in terms of pride, stability and in terms of prosperity cannot be simply measured on a balance sheet. I hope you enjoy the two stories we’ve included in this issue and I hope we can all learn something from them. ■
“THERE ARE MANY BENEFITS OF AN INDIGENOUS WORK FORCE TO DEFENCE BUSINESSES, NOT LEAST OF WHICH IS A DEPTH OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE”
visiting Rwanda at the time. Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite delivered the first key- note address of the event (and the first in his portfolio); and the Member for Solomon Luke Gosling partici- pated in a panel deal- ing with problems faced by SMEs when growing to become primes.
Thistlethwaite’s ad- dress was designed to reassure industry that things in the defence sector won’t dramati-
cally change under the new government and he pledged to accelerate industrial-based collaboration with allies and partners – par- ticularly under AUKUS. He also pledged to implement a Defence Industry Development Strategy, which will include a “specific and audited” Australian Industrial Capability embedded into contractual arrangements for all major Defence materiel procurements and local contracts.
Furthermore, Thistlethwaite reiterated promises made during the election cam-