With regard to advocacy on behalf of the industry, our Alliance is represented on many government boards and forums to ensure the needs of SMEs are taken into account – and we are in daily contact with key stakeholders.

 

Since our inception, we have been making strong representations through government, industry and media to relocate the Full Cycle Docking of Collins Class submarines from Osborne SA to Henderson WA.  We believe this is clearly in the national interest and will create a local benefit of around 3000 jobs.  Our aim is to secure a positive decision from Canberra before the end of 2019.

 

We also believe that with its well-proven sophisticated capabilities in the mining, oil and gas sectors, WA small businesses can remotely offer unparalleled services, technologies, components and project management skills to the new frigates and submarines to be assembled in SA.  However, this will require active decisions by governments and the Primes to embrace this opportunity.  Given SA has some but not all the capacity to deliver these construction programs, as a priority we believe interstate partnerships should be utilised before considering existing European supply chains or the use of skilled migration.

 

The Henderson Alliance is also actively seeking out SME opportunities in other emerging industry opportunities such as Lithium Valley (energy metals & battery manufacturing), the Drone Hub, the Western Trade Coast and the SME Export Hub.

 

We are a foundation member of the Australian Defence Alliance (ADA) which provides national advocacy and representation on issues of importance to all SMEs, including ensuring a healthy local content regime is in place.  Through the ADA we have also been able to offer many training and development opportunities to our members, as well as two national collaboration events where some of our SME members were able to secure interstate partnerships to secure defence industry contracts.