Defence’s key economic role in the Northern Territory
Notwithstanding the economic benefits Defence spending brings, we should never forget its national security role. Read what they’re doing here.
Northern Territory
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While a lot of the focus on the northern Australian defence build up is economic, it’s critically important to remember that the activity is underpinned by national security considerations.
Releasing the 2024 National Defence Strategy in April, Defence Minister and Deputy PM Richard Marles left no doubt about the ADF’s priorities.
“Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War,” the NDF summary said.
“It demands a co-ordinated, whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to Australia’s defence.
“This new approach is founded on National Defence – a concept that harnesses all arms of Australia’s national power to achieve an integrated approach to our security.”
He said encompassed within the NDF was a ‘strategy of denial’ spanning all aspects of Defence including maritime, land, air, space and cyber.
And within the National Defence framework the ADF will pivot to an “integrated, focused force designed to address Australia’s most significant strategic risks”, with a priority to defend Australia and the region, deter adversaries from our northern approaches, protect Australia’s regional and global economic ties, contribute with partners to the security of the Indo-Pacific and contribute to the maintenance of the global rules-based order.
Defence has been reluctant to talk up Australia’s strategic challenges but Darwin-based Solomon MP Luke Gosling, a former soldier, picked the scab in May when he shone a light on Australia’s current security threats.
He detailed the potential for a “saturation strike” by enemy aircraft on the Territory and compared Australia’s national security environment to that before WWII.
Writing in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Strategist magazine, Gosling said the strong focus on northern Australia in defence planning including the National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program reflected the crucial role the region would play in defending the nation.
While China was not specifically mentioned, the ADF’s current northern Australia focus targets that country’s bellicose expansion through the Asia-Pacific region.
“If modern-day attackers flew towards the Top End, our F-35As and F/A-18F Super Hornets would fly out to engage them with air-to-air missiles, defending our infrastructure and population centres,” he said.
“Picture the manoeuvres of the British and US planes that shot down Iranian missiles heading for Israel in April — only this time over the Arafura Sea, again.”
Against that backdrop, the Territory economy has enjoyed an enormous infrastructure windfall since the Commonwealth announced in 2017 it would spend $747m upgrading the NT’s four major Defence Force bases, with the contract being awarded to Sitzler.
There has since been a steady flow of Defence Force projects with plenty more to come that Master Builders NT chief executive Ben Carter quantified in a report released last year as being worth $6.2bn to the NT economy over the next four years and add 7640 direct and indirect jobs.
But despite the surge in population, the NT News in September highlighted the challenges of attracting personnel and their families to the Territory when the army announced long-range missiles would be based in South Australia.
“The Defence Strategic Review identified northern Australia as the frontline but the heavy artillery required to defend that front line is located in southern Australia,” an NT business figure told the NT News.
“The Commonwealth is saying northern Australia’s open slather so long as southern Australia’s safe.”
The attached graph shows Defence employment in the Territory has dropped by about 2000 over the past decade.
At a debate between the Territory’s two major party leaders this week, Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro attributed much of the Territory’s recent economic activity to Defence.
“Now if Defence wasn’t here in the Territory, probably many of you would be wondering exactly what it is they’d be working on,” she said.
Chamber of Commerce chief executive Greg Ireland was emphatic when asked whether Defence had been why the NT economy had ticked along during the past few years
“It absolutely has, it is 11 per cent of our economic activity and Defence construction will be essential to us for the next few years.”
Projects currently under development include the $1.6bn RAAF Base Tindal airfield and infrastructure works, $760m for P-923 facilities at RAAF Base Darwin, $601m for the Larrakeyah defence precinct redevelopment program, $518m for the MQ-4C Triton drone at Tindal and assorted others.
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