DEFENCE
A long game, but a rewarding one New Zealand Defence Industry CEO Jennie Vickers chatted informally at the ASIS New Zealand Chapter Women in Security event about the Defence Industry, the challenges of supplying Defence, and the potential rewards.
Jennie Vickers is the CEO of the New Zealand Defence Industry Association (NZDIA). A lawyer, she was previously ANZ Director for the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM).
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The New Zealand Defence Force is called in its strategy ‘the force for good for New Zealand’. I work very closely with the NZDF head of industry engagement Debbie Howarth, and she came up with this idea of describing industry as being ‘the force behind the force’. Christopher Pyne, who was Australia’s Defence Industry Minister, adopted the phrase for Australia but we all know that Debbie came up with it first! It’s a fantastic sector to work with, and the NZDF and Ministry of Defence people are committed to improving the participation of NZ industry. They have a very committed minister in Ron Mark and have had an impressive amount of funding over the past couple of years. It’s a great pond for industry to play in, but it can also be quite a difficult pond to play in. Ten to fifteen years ago the industry that looked after Defence Force work were probably almost all ex-Defence, so the trust that existed between Defence and Industry was exceptionally strong on an individualto-individual basis. What we’re seeing now is that in a world of heightened security awareness, there is a need for a massive cultural transformation around all the aspects of how to build trust when you’re not an ex-Defence person and start from scratch. The New Zealand Defence Industry Association (NZDIA) has been around for over 20 years now. We were established specifically to find answers to the question of how to build a local industry that supports
Defence without having to constantly go overseas to buy what it needs. We were set up by the government to bring industry together with the Defence Force at the time the ANZAC frigates were being procured. I arrived in New Zealand in 1997 about the time that project was happening, blissfully unaware that it was all going on but delighted to be seeing the benefits of that policy. It’s about 23 years later and what we now have is a government policy around procurement and delivering on the ‘broader outcomes’. It actually means we’re back at that same mindset of how do we make sure we encourage New Zealand industry to have a bigger part to play and then create jobs, support communities, and get them to be all the things they need to be? And so that’s my job – connecting, collaborating, joining people together, arranging for Defence people to come and speak and therefore for industry to come and engage. We work very closely with Gary [Morrison, CEO of the New Zealand Security Association] and other associations. We’ll play nicely with anybody. If we can deliver for New Zealand and make jobs, then we’re all heading in the right direction. Doing business with Defence is exciting and financially rewarding. In the near future an announcement is to be made about the winner of the alliance project for Defence camps and bases. That will open the door to a massive amount of work right the way across the Defence Force. Line of Defence
