The Illawarra has been told that it needs to "shout from the rooftops" if it wants to secure a future submarine base in Port Kembla.
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The assessment came from Sarah Pavillard, CEO of ADROITA, a defence-focused professional services firm, at the i3net industry breakfast: Defence, held on March 11.
With Brisbane expected to face significant issues hosting a submarine base, from the long navigation out Moreton Bay to deep water to even the threat of jellyfish, Newcastle and Wollongong are thought to be the preferred options.
"New South Wales in my opinion is the only real credible candidate and the only two credible ports of consideration are of course Newcastle and Port Kembla," Ms Pavillard said.
Besides the location, what separates the two ports is the level of coordinated advocacy that each region can mount.
"The Port of Newcastle has numerous issues, but an active and very strong advocacy from the Hunter Defence Network. The Illawarra and the Shoalhaven lacks this collective advocacy and coordination in mobilising to support defence as an industry base," Ms Pavillard said.
Also speaking at the event, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said that there had been significant bipartisan work to put forward Port Kembla as an alternative to the Navy's base in Garden Island in Sydney, and that this led up to Port Kembla being considered for the future nuclear fleet.
"We've certainly done a lot of work behind the scenes, a lot of work to get it to this particular point," Mrs Fierravanti-Wells said.
The seeds of a collaborative alliance could be seen to begin to germinate at the i3net breakfast, with figures from local industry sharing their experience in defence contracting.
Laurie Koster, managing director of Alkath Group, a Nowra-based supplier to the Australian Defence Forces, said that contracting to defence had come a long way from the pink, yellow and green books that laid out opportunities for suppliers.
Today, contracts are awarded through complex expressions of interest programs, managed through a number of defence prime contractors and with numerous security requirements for prospective subcontractors. The opportunities are there, but it can take a long time to be realised.
"From the day we started on a sale, to the day we signed a contract was nine years," said Mr Koster. "We delivered that seven years ago, but we are still supporting that equipment."
David Bridge, director of BPS Defence and chair of i3net, said it took his business 18 months to achieve the required security clearance, but that the number of opportunities out there for businesses in the Illawarra to get involved in defence meant it was a sector that could not be ignored.
"There are 80 organisations within i3net, one of the objectives I've got is to get every one of those 80 organisations to really look at how we can contribute to building sovereign capability and to make the Illawarra the defence hub."
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