Defence industry lures Perth FIFO workers away from mining, pitching job as ‘interesting’ with ‘good pay’

A leading defence industry figure claims the battle to stop West Australian workers from taking up lucrative opportunities in the mining sector is being won because employees find their jobs interesting — and they can go home to their families at night. Appearing at a naval conference in Sydney, the head of the Government owned ASC (formerly Australian Submarine Corporation) has boasted that the attrition rate of his Henderson based workforce is just five per cent. ASC chief executive Stuart Wiley told the Indo Pacific Maritime Exposition on Wednesday that setting up a presence in the West was difficult initially, but keeping workers who do sustainment on Collins class submarines was easier. “Growing a workforce in Western Australia was pretty difficult, especially with the mining boom going on, and a lot of effort was actually spent transferring capability, building and designing courses and training systems that replicated the skills and capability required to maintain the boat,” he said. “Inside Western Australia, where you tend to think that there’s a high turnover of resources, we’ve actually seen really high retention rates. We’re seeing attrition sitting about 5% in Western Australia . . . because I’m going to try and make sustainment sexy,” the ASC boss joked. The ASC boss claims that unlike many fly-in, fly-out workers in remote mines, his organisation’s staff say they actually enjoy working in the defence environment. “They get fulfilled by what they do — they say a sense of satisfaction. They’re actually delivering something for the nation,” he said. “The personal protective equipment they wear is their uniform, and they see they’re delivering something that actually enables the Navy to go and do their job. And you know that that, in itself, is an empowering motivator to build a workforce. “People are not leaving us to go to the mines, because they can go home to their family that day, do some interesting work, get paid well and stay in Perth. So, we’re actually doing pretty well at the moment in Perth.” On Wednesday at the Indo Pacific conference, Thales Australia and Northrop Grumman signed a Memorandum of Understanding on possible future sustainment for advanced sonar systems on US nuclear powered submarines visiting Western Australia. “This new collaboration with Northrop Grumman enables this support to now extend to future RAN submarine and undersea technology capabilities being acquired under the AUKUS Program,” Thales Australia CEO Jeff Connolly said. Under AUKUS, US and British nuclear-powered boats are scheduled to begin regular deployments to Western Australia under the Submarine Rotational Force West (SRF-West) initiative from 2027. The Australian Submarine Agency, which is overseeing the multi-billion-dollar AUKUS program, says more than 1000 Americans will eventually be based around HMAS Stirling naval base and Henderson shipyard year-round to support SRF-West.