Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As part of my Fisher defence industry initiative, I recently organised for eight local businesses to tour Queensland defence contractor NIOA and the multinational Airbus and their maintenance facilities in Queensland to see what is possible and what it takes to succeed in this innovative sector. We began at NIOA where Rob Nioa himself inspired us with the story of how his father's business, selling firearms to local farmers from the back of a ute, has grown to form such an important part of Australia's domestic defence industry sector. We toured the warehouse floor and the heavy duty vaults that contain NIOA's cutting-edge ammunition and weapons. We inspected their indoor firing range where military personnel are put through their paces on small arms weapons systems and were shown some of the 155mm artillery shells that NIOA and Rheinmetall will be manufacturing as part of their Maryborough Forging and Manufacturing Facility.

At Airbus helicopters we saw the company's portable, virtual and augmented reality system, which is helping design and maintenance work for the ADF's MRH90 aircraft. We saw seven of these undergoing the maintenance and even had the rare privilege of sitting in the cockpit. I'd like to thank Rob Nioa, Andrew Mathewson, and everyone at NIOA and Airbus, who so enthusiastically supported our visit, as well as the Fisher business leaders who took part.