Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

participants in Australia understand how important it is that when Defence now is considering procurement decisions they will consider Australian industry content, they will consider sovereign industrial capability and they will consider workforce issues and skilling issues. So, this is incredibly important to the Australian defence industry, and industry has welcomed these changes. Secondly, we have delivered an independent ARC audit program so that we now will be able to audit companies on their ARC obligations. This means that if they do not comply they are less likely to get more work from this Australian government with respect to defence industry. Thirdly, we have finalised our enhanced ARC contractual framework. This makes sure that small and medium-sized Australian defence industries are front and centre when it comes to making defence program decisions in our nation.

Just to illustrate the defence industry capability of our nation: today, with the Minister for Defence, we will proudly announce that Collins Aerospace Australia has delivered its 1,000th infrared imagery capability for the global F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. This is a huge achievement, and we proudly were able to contribute $1 million to a grant program to assist them with this work. We're very proud of our contribution to the F-35 global program—$1.7 billion worth of Australian contracts. Some 50 Australian contractors are involved in the Joint Strike Fighter program, which is supporting some 2,500 Australian jobs.

Every day, we're thinking about what the barriers are to small and medium-sized defence companies in Australia and, one by one, we are knocking them down to make sure those companies are at the centre of our decision-making, supporting Australian jobs. More importantly, we are creating more jobs.

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