Of all Australia’s many defence infrastructure projects, far and away the biggest is the Henderson precinct in Western Australia, a multi-billion-dollar, multi-generational enterprise where warships will be constructed and nuclear-powered submarines sustained, Australian Defence Magazine reports.
That’s not all that’s happening in the West, home to the SAS Regiment, Harold E Holt submarines communication base and RAAF bases Curtin and Learmonth from where the air defence of Australia would be conducted against a foe approaching from the northern Indian Ocean.
Western Australia is also planning its own defence industrial precinct which it has named the Western Defence Forge.
Presenting the keynote address to the ADM Western Australia Defence Summit in Perth, David Hanley, Defence Department Deputy Secretary for Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment, said WA had long understood that our security and prosperity depended on the sea.
“Our western approaches, our trading connections and our responsibility across the Indo-Pacific, make maritime capabilities in this part of the country essential,” he said.
“The measure of that capability is not necessarily the number of ships. It is how we deploy them and it is how we sustain the capability. That is actually behind Henderson, not simply as a shipyard but an enduring capability to build maintain, sustain and upgrade the capabilities that Army and Navy need.”
He said the recent decision on siting of Henderson was an important step, but the task now was to turn that into actual facilities ready when programs needed them.
“That requires a lot of work. It requires sequencing of the design, an inordinate number of approvals, construction, working with the WA government, industries and the communities around the precinct.” he said.
Shipbuilding at Henderson begins with Austal’s construction of Army landing craft – 18 landing craft medium and eight landing craft heavy – the foundation for continuous shipbuilding.
“Delivering the landing craft heavy is essential but leaving behind a stronger shipbuilding enterprise is equally important,” he said.
Australia is buying three Mogami-class general purpose frigates made in Japan, with another eight to be made at Henderson.
Hanley said the local Mogami build was linked to the successful delivery of the Henderson precinct.
He said the test was not simply whether a yard could assemble a frigate. It was whether the whole support system was ready to support and sustain the vessels to the required standard.
“Australia’s industry role cannot wait until local construction begins at the end of this decade. We must be ready to sustain the first Japanese-built ships when they arrive at the end of the decade. That requires trained maintainers, spares, technical data, engineering support and support facilities now,” Hanley said.
“Future construction and future sustainment must therefore be developed together, not treated as separate projects years apart.
“In fact, the sustainment solution for the Japanese frigates will need to be done in three years. The normal period of time for many of the shipbuilding projects we have under way today is seven.”
In late August, the government announced the site selection for the new Defence Precinct at Henderson, including the boundaries, layout and preferred location for naval shipbuilding and sustainment activities and for sustainment of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced funding of $12 billion.
Henderson has actually enjoyed naval associations for more than a century. Back in the 2000s, the Australian Marine Complex was established, transforming Henderson into a commercial and naval ship repair centre supporting the nearby HMAS Stirling naval base.
In 2024, the Commonwealth and WA governments launched a joint plan to turn Henderson into a consolidated, Commonwealth-owned defence precinct.
Earlier this year, Bechtel Infrastructure Australia was appointed to develop the master plan.
This is a very big deal for WA.
Addressing the conference, Linda Dawson, head of the office of defence industry in the WA Department of Premier and Cabinet, said the construction endeavour was huge.
But there was also a vast amount of work outside the defence areas, including development of the common user facility to support non-defence industries.
“All of these industries from defence, resources, energy maritime and logistics capabilities and critical minerals need to sit side by side,” she said.
“The SMEs that service all those sectors are multi-revenue stream focused. They are building out their workforces to support across all sectors.
“We have to build some future infrastructure to make sure they have the fabrication halls, the lay down areas, the maritime ship lift capabilities, all the things they need to support that endeavour.”
Dawson said there were many enablers for the work at Henderson, such as roads and carparks.
“There has been a lot of talk about light rail and all sorts of different capabilities to allow ingress and egress seamlessly from Henderson. It is congested already,” she said.
“So how do we, as we add more and more workforce into that space and build out the construction capabilities, actually enable a fully mobilised workforce to deliver operationally and build the capabilities we are trying to in the national endeavour?
“There’s a lot to be done – upgrades to power, upgrades to water, upgrades to amenity. There is a significant amount of opportunity in that construction endeavour and probably far greater in workforce numbers and size and scale in some respects as an integrated program than some of the other work afoot.”
WA is also planning the Western Defence Forge as a centre for advanced defence manufacturing.
A total of 179 companies expressed an interest. That included 28 international companies with 13 international defence primes, 20 Australian companies and 118 WA-based SMEs.
During the Land Forces expo in Perth in October, WA government announced five anchor tenants, including Thales Australia, Noia and Honeywell Aerospace.
No location has yet been specified but Collie, south of Perth, is regarded as a good possibility.
Dawson said this was about growing global defence manufacturing capabilities in WA and was to be undertaken in three phases, starting with anchor tenants.
“Then we are moving into looking at the enabling capabilities required around test and evaluation, logistics and supply chains, engineering services, all of the capabilities that might exist within the state or external to the state to enable and support actual product delivery,” she said.
“The third phase is about looking at ongoing skills requirements, the research and innovation buildout so that we are actually building out integrated industry clusters that have sustainability into the future.”
