Chopper talk has garrison town of Oakey under siege

The fast-tracked retirement of two of the Australian Army’s helicopter fleets has raised fears in the Queensland garrison town of Oakey that it could lose a major employer.

‘We’d definitely feel it (if the base downsized),’ says Vicki Reeves outside her Great Country Pies shop at Oakey, northwest of Toowoomba. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

The fast-tracked retirement of two of the Australian Army’s helicopter fleets has raised fears in the regional Queensland garrison town of Oakey that it could lose a major employer.

Announced in December, the decision to phase out the MRH-90 Taipan came three months after Defence Minister Peter Dutton said the country’s Tiger helicopters would be retired.

They will be phased out between 2025 and 2028 and replaced by the new model Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.

The Oakey Army Aviation Centre, 30km northwest of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs, hosts both Tigers and Taipans and there are concerns among civic leaders and in the business community of a potential overlap in the helicopters being retired from the base and the new models coming in.

Without guaranteed platforms to train on, the base would likely lose a large number of its permanent workforce of about 1200.

Even more concerning to Oakey’s business leaders is a Defence conceptual proposal, which has not yet been adopted, to downsize the Oakey base and move the helicopter fleets to Townsville.

Bakery owner Vicki Reeves said any change in circumstances at the garrison would be acutely felt in Oakey, population 5000.

The issue has become more pertinent following the closure in November of the New Acland mine, another major employer in the region. “We’ve noticed a big difference since the mine ended, but we’ve always had a lot of support from the army base, from all the different sectors,” Ms Reeves said. “We’re lucky that we have that as a town.

“That’s really all we have left in Oakey in terms of big business.”

Every change in staff numbers at the army base is readily noticed at the bakery, mostly in the reduced sale of pies, made from a 70-year-old recipe passed down by Ms Reeves’s father-in-law.

Likewise, the construction of new runways and medical centres in recent years had a positive contribution with the contractors brought in to complete the work staying in town and spending money in local businesses.

“We’d definitely feel it (if the base downsized),” Ms Reeves said.

“On the other hand, if they increase the size of the army base and facilities there, that’s going to impact the town in a positive way.”

While he’s concerned about talk of downsizing or overlap in helicopters being retired and replaced, Coalition Groom MP Garth Hamilton said the changing of the fleet posed opportunities that included the potential to bring in heavy maintenance and manufacturing from overseas to service the new fleet.

“In any period of change, I want to make sure we don’t take a single backward step,” he said.

“The opportunity is we’ve seen the Minister of Defence talk about increasing our Defence spend. I think with the transition to the Apaches, we can capitalise on that and come out of this as winners.”

Toowoomba mayor Paul Antonio said the region was proud of its military history and eager to see it continue.

The Oakey garrison is made up of a flight training school, maintenance school, a Singaporean Chinook helicopter base and the army’s flight test agency.