Page 50 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2022

50 INDIGENOUS ADVANTAGE IDIC
JULY-AUGUST 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
ENABLING INDIGENOUS DEFENCE INDUSTRY
Australia has made significant strides in the past decade in its journey towards supporting social procurement and supplier diversity.
ROYA GHODSI | SYDNEY
TO date, the government’s Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) has generated over $3.5 billion in contracting oppor- tunities for more than 2,000 Indigenous businesses.
Further, Australia’s national supplier diversity intermedi- ary Supply Nation now has over 600 corporate, government and not-for-profit members actively looking to purchase from Indigenous businesses, and a registered database of over 3,700 Indigenous businesses.
As the demand for Indigenous products and services
continues to grow, the Indigenous Defence and Infra- structure Consortium (iDiC) is doing significant work in building up Indigenous entrepreneurs, partnering with large primes such as Boeing, Jacobs, Leidos and BAE Systems to grow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Is- lander companies.
Their latest strategic partnership with independent advi- sory, design and engineering firm Beca was announced in January this year.
IDIC