There were four main drivers of the policy:
1. Introduce a Defence Industry Advocate as outlined in the Mortimer review;
2. Provide local defence industry with equality of opportunity, where a demonstrated capacity exists or a competitive manufacturing venture could realistically be established;
3. Ensure that the DCP remains a 10-year forward-looking document and work towards re-establishing a pro-disclosure policy to assist industry in its planning; and
4. Establish the DMO as an Executive Agency.
There was also an emphasis on the increasingly complex nature of tendering seen in the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) and holding more to the ‘truth in tendering' approach as companies should be held accountable to the information supplied in tender documents.
"I firmly believe that if the DMO is serious about reform and serious about gaining efficiencies both internally and from industry, then it should proactively engage with industry on how best to manage the increasingly cumbersome Defence tendering process.
"Mechanisms to ease industry's and indeed DMO's burden should include such things as: the standardisation of documentation; an emphasis on the provision of information as opposed to the provision of data; wider industry education to avoid the high occurrence of incomplete and non-compliant tenders; and importantly, pursuing a pre-qualification policy for recognised companies.
"As the sheer volume of data (as opposed to information) Defence requires you to provide increases, so do your costs," Baldwin said.
"I often wonder if anyone within Defence has actually used the folders upon folders of industry-supplied data to draw concrete conclusions that actually have a tangible impact on the tendering process itself."
He also spoke candidly about the need to include Australian industry more where there was already a capability in place, citing the Land 121 Ph 4 situation where local options were included at a later time.
Baldwin acknowledged that it was too early to start putting dollar values to these changes but confirmed that Senator David Johnston would be releasing more detailed information during the election campaign.