Over 330 delegates attended ADM’s Defence Estate and Base Services Summit (DEBSS), held in Canberra’s Hotel Realm on Monday.
With Australia’s strategic warning time no longer a comfortable 10 years, the defence estate organisation has undertaken to lift its game and streamline its processes for approving and conducting major facilities works.
Delegates attending the DEBSS event were told one step has already been made – the value threshold for referral to the Parliamentary Public Works Committee has been lifted from $50 million to $75 million.
Celia Perkins, Deputy Secretary Security and Estate Group, told the conference much work had been done internally to streamline procedures for approval of major projects, with more planned.
“Last year China finished and put into the water more naval vessels than our entire fleet. We can’t continue with an expectation that it’s reasonable to take 5-7 years through the approvals for some of the projects we need to do,” she said.
Perkins said the government absolutely heard that message and was on board with it.
“We are doing some internal process reforms. We are going to look at every opportunity we can to shave time out of the processes,” she said.
Perkins said in line with the government’s strategic objectives, the defence estate would shape regional partnerships by providing facilities, training areas and ranges to enable increased partner country training and conduct of exercise with the ADF.
“We help to deter actions against Australia through the deployment from our bases of ADF and partner country capabilities if required and providing support to raise, train and sustain functions of our bases and training areas,” she said.
“We will enable the ADF to respond with force if required by ensuring bases are prepared for operation and surge requirements.”
Ms Perkins said to guide their response, the Security and Estate Group would be updating its strategy early in the new year to ensure the organisation was entirely aligned with the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan.
She said the Defence Estate continued to suffer from long term under-investment which saw the remaining useful life of the estate decline from around 22 years in 2001 to around 13 years.
That was clearly identified in the 2015 First Principles Review, describing an unsustainable cycle with funds being diverted every year to non-value adding maintenance and health and safety compliance.
To address that and support growth of ADF capabilities, the government has committed $38 billion to estate and infrastructure over the next decade, growing in subsequent decades, with $8 billion allocated to the Northern Territory alone in recognition of its importance to northern defences.
“A resilient and sustainable estate has to be a priority for all of us and it’s essential for defence capability,” Perkins said.
In a video message to the conference, Defence Industry Minister Melissa Price said the defence estate comprised 70 major bases, 400 properties and 30,000 structures across 2.8 million hectares of land.
“Now as we contend with a far more complex and far less predictable region than at any time since the Second World War, Australia’s defence estate and infrastructure is becoming even more important for the Australian Defence Force’s core role,” she said.
Minister Price said while the national picture was one of success, Defence needed to continually evolve and assess better ways of doing things.
“To that end Defence is proceeding with service delivery reform. Under the base services transformation program, the department is undertaking customer centric research to better understand contract practices, processes and experience,” she said.
Among the many companies doing business with Defence on estate and infrastructure are a growing number of indigenous firms, especially in regional areas.
Ranjan Rajagopal, General Manager Commercial for Downer Defence, told the summit indigenous businesses contributed $4 billion to the economy and that figure was increasing.
Those businesses employed 30,000 people, though just 37 per cent were indigenous, still much better than other businesses.
“Any way you look at it, indigenous businesses are just infinitely better at employing indigenous people,” he said. “Good things are happening but we need to make great things happen.”
A full account of the DEBSS event will appear in the February issue of ADM.