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Defence industry professionals have revealed a marked drop in the ease of doing business in the sector, with growing concern about the continuation of contracts over the next 12 months.
Defence Connect can now reveal the findings of the Australian Defence Industry Survey FY2024–25, pulling together a usable sample of 413 defence industry participants conducted in late 2024.
The detailed report captures insights from defence industry professionals into the experiences, attitudes and perceptions of working with the industry’s prime contractors.
Survey results have a steady decline in the industry’s ease of business perceptions, with 44 per cent of 2024–25 respondents saying it was difficult to do business with the sector (up from 36 per cent in FY23–24), while 14 per cent of industry respondents said it was “extremely difficult” to do business with Defence (up from 11 per cent in FY23–24).
Defence Connect senior analyst and government relations manager Steve Kuper said, “This feedback isn’t necessarily surprising when I have spoken with representatives across industry over the past 12–18 months, there is a growing sense of things getting harder and harder.”
When it came to the level of confidence around the continuity of existing or upcoming contracts over the next 12 months, 14 per cent of respondents were not confident that the contracts would “continue as planned over the next 12 months” (up from 11 per cent in FY23–24), meanwhile, 28 per cent of respondents had “little confidence” that the contracts would continue as planned (up from 23 per cent in FY23–24).
This echoed sentiments from the Australian Defence Industry Survey FY2023–24 which uncovered waning confidence in the sector, with one in three report respondents indicating they had “little” to “no” confidence that their projects would continue unchanged over the coming year.
“Unfortunately, despite the release of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and then subsequently the 2024 National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program, industry is finding it harder and harder to deliver on the stated objective of these official documents, that being to support the Australian Defence Force’s ability to project power and also the capacity for Australia’s industrial base to develop, produce, and deliver the equipment needed by our service personnel to keep us safe,” Kuper said.
To learn more about the report, please contact the director of Agile Market Intelligence, Michael Johnson, at
