NT businesses fear ship lift snub amid procurement target shift

Territory businesses are worried they will miss out on ship lift benefits as a procurement target shift was flagged. Read what’s happening.

Established ‘buy-local’ protocols will be bypassed if the long-awaited Darwin ship lift project goes ahead.

Local business operators have raised concerns with this masthead that much of the work for the project and the benefit of its construction will flow to businesses outside the Northern Territory.

The NT News has been told the 20 per cent weighting attached to Territory businesses gaining government tenders has been reduced to 5 per cent.

The claim follows revelations published earlier this month that land title for the ship lift site had still not been secured by the NT government.

A business operator who contacted the NT News said given the substantial government contribution to the project, it would be unfair if Territory businesses missed out on much of the work.

Promotional drawings for Darwin’s ship lift project.

“This is hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars from the Territory and Commonwealth governments but it’s interstate and international businesses that will benefit,” he said.

Northern Territory Buy Local Industry Advocate Denys Stedman said he was investigating whether the local procurement targets had been dropped.

The claim comes just days after ship lift joint venture partners Clough announced Berry Springs business Wilga Indigenous Corporation had received a $16.9m subcontractor package to deliver 430,000 tonnes of rocks to the project.

The project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns and was last priced at $515m – $300m of which was a loan from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund and the remainder from NT Treasury.

The NT government did not specifically answer questions around the local procurement target, but acknowledged the specialist nature of the work.

“The contractor’s targets for local supply and services are being maximised with NT government oversight for all procurements,” a spokeswoman for chief minister Eva Lawler said.

“The procurements aim to meet or exceed NT government procurement policies. The project is also subject to meeting Australian Industry Plan requirements.

NT Chamber of Commerce chief executive Greg Ireland.

“It should be noted that there are a range of specialised elements that are not available within Australia. As such, local content policies will be difficult to strictly apply. For example, the ship lift and transfer system only has three possible suppliers internationally.”

NT Chamber of Commerce chief executive Greg Ireland said the specialised nature of the ship lift project would restrict the capacity of local businesses to be involved.

“Obviously we’re encouraging businesses to be involved in every opportunity outside of that to maximise our local participation,” he said.

Mr Ireland said he remained confident the ship lift would eventually be built, but said the long delivery times of this and other major project were frustrating.

He pointed to the government’s failure to secure land tenure with site owner Paspaley.

“I am confident but like many Territory projects it delivers high frustration to the community,” he said. “I have had extensive talks with the delivery team, but when we hear stories around land tenure not being settled, I would have thought there would have been plenty of time to have got that through. Seems like a nonsense to us.

“(Government) has had many years to settle that particular discussion. Seems crazy from our perspective that that’s still a potential barrier to this project after all this time.”