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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

As Trump’s radical reshaping of the US pulls into focus, so too has the list of those who have gained entry to his inner circle. And that list includes not only Australia’s richest woman, but also Australia’s largest private arms supplier.

Robert Nioa might not be a household name yet, but the weapons mogul is a close confidante to Peter Dutton, married to a Katter, as well as a fishing and hunting pal to Donald Trump Jr.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis, on Robert Nioa’s arms empire and the impact he’ll have on Australian defence policy.

It’s Wednesday, March 12.

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RUBY:

So, Jason, you've recently discovered that you are now once removed from Donald Trump Jr. Can you tell me how that came to be?

JASON:

Ruby, it's a frightening thought, isn't it? But it came about because I was invited to a dinner recently at a favourite Canberra restaurant for the lobbying class, a Cantonese restaurant called Chairman and Yip. And this dinner was hosted by a guy called Robert Nioa. Robert is from Brisbane, he went to one of the prominent Anglican grammar schools up there known as churchie and, after his father started selling sporting firearms at the back of their gas station in rural Queensland, Robert has managed to grow that business into an international defence company, and his company is now Australia's largest private arms supplier. And during the course of this dinner, Robert Nioa started talking about his very warm and cosy relationship with Donald Trump Jr and how the two of them have become quite close friends. So once I knew that, I had a lot more questions to ask.

RUBY:

I bet. So what did Robert Nioa say to you about Trump Jr and his friendship with him?

JASON:

So it turns out that Donald Trump Jr and Robert Nioa, they're close enough that they hang out in person every couple of months. And this friendship, of course, goes back to early 2023, when Robert Nioa bought the US gunmaker Barrett Firearms. Barrett Firearms are famous for making very high precision sniper rifles and these are, apparently, Donald Trump Jr's favourite gun.

RUBY:

Okay and, Jason, we know that access to any of the Trump family is currency right now and Trump's children especially have sway over Donald Trump. So how does this relationship factor into how Robert Nioa is dealing with politicians here in Australia?

JASON:

Well, that's a really interesting question because access to the Trump White House is so sought after, as you can imagine. But Robert Nioa is also very well-connected here in Australia. He's Bob Katter’s son-in-law. The board of his company, the NIOA Group, is stacked with political insiders, including the former defence minister Christopher Pyne, along with a very influential former Labor parliamentary secretary for defence, David Feeney, who's a very close friend of the current defence minister, Richard Marles. But I think perhaps Robert Nioa's most important political contact in Australia is the leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton.

Back when Peter Dutton was defence minister in 2021, he opened Robert Nioa's $11 million Brisbane headquarters. Less than six months later, in April 2022, Dutton awarded the NIOA Group a $527 million contract to the Australian Defence Force. This is involving the supply of sniper systems, assault breaching gear and various other small arms. Peter Dutton also opened the Nioa Munitions Projectile Forging Plant, which also received a $28 million grant from the federal government. Also that month in May 2022, which was, of course, the month of the last federal election, Robert Nioa’s company sponsored an exclusive fundraiser for the Queensland LNP. This event gave guests who were paying $5,000 a head the opportunity to participate in a live shoot that was put on by the people from the NIOA group.

RUBY:

Okay, so as you say, there is this relationship between Nioa and Dutton that has been quite lucrative for Nioa. He's also very well-connected beyond that and has built his company into a major defence contractor. So what did you learn about just how big his empire actually is?

JASON:

So when Robert Nioa spoke at the National Press Club in December 2023, he laid out just how significant his company is for the Australian defence sector.

Audio excerpt — Robert Nioa:

“It has now grown to be the largest Australian owned supplier of munitions to the Australian and New Zealand Defence Forces. In Australia, we operate half of the Australian government's Benalla munitions facility in Victoria, where, with partners like Rheinmetall and Northrop Grumman, we have privately invested in establishing medium calibre...”

JASON:

With all those defence contracts has come a fair bit of business success, and perhaps that's why Robert Nioa has been able to afford a matte black Embraer Phenom 300 private jet. This is a $7.6 million flying fortress with gold trim, leather upholstery and even personalised water bottles.

And just like a lot of very wealthy people, he's also a fairly significant political donor. Over the three years to June 2022, Eliza Nioa, Robert's wife and Bob Katter’s daughter, gave $300,000 to Bob Katter's Australian Party, some of which went undeclared for almost a year. In 2023, Eliza Nioa contributed another $100,000 to the party, while the Nioa Family Trust separately donated around $63,500 to the Liberal National Party. Since the Labor Party came to government in 2022, the Nioa Family Trust has also donated around $100,000 to the ALP. For a weapons mogul like Robert Nioa, these aren't huge amounts of money, but it does underscore his deep connections to politics and the fact that this is a man with a significant amount of money in the bank, a lot of connections in Canberra and now, he's got a direct line to the American president via his son, Don Jr.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - how Nioa’s relationship with Dutton could shape Australia’s foreign policy agenda.

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RUBY:

Jason, you've been profiling Robert Nioa, who is this weapons mogul who has close ties to many influential people, including Donald Trump Jr and Peter Dutton. But if his closest political relationship is, as it seems, with Peter Dutton, Dutton is obviously not the Prime Minister at this moment in time. So what has being close to the LNP, what has that actually meant for Nioa’s defence contracts under this Labor government?

JASON:

So, I spoke to one defence industry executive about this and he said, look, there is a view that Robert Nioa leans too heavily into his relationship with the LNP and that that has cost him when it comes to the awarding of big defence contracts under the current government. What specifically this person that I spoke to was referring to was a decision taken by the Albanese government in October last year, where NIOA's bid for a lucrative contract to produce the world's most in-demand artillery shells went not to the NIOA group but to the French owned Thales Australia under a deal that's potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So, Robert Nioa didn't win that contract for the one five five millimetre shell and he was pretty annoyed about it. And he's now up against the same competitor again for a solid fuel rocket motor contract. So all eyes will be on whether he's snubbed again.

RUBY:

Right. So there's a sense that he has failed to get contracts because he's too close to Dutton?

JASON:

So Pat Conroy's the minister for defence Industry, and his office have been adamant about the fact that they have nothing to do with the actual decision making when it comes to contracts like the one that Robert Nioa is complaining that he missed out on. But what we do know is that when Robert Nioa failed to get that project his father in law, Bob Katter, didn't hesitate in picking up the phone and ringing the Prime Minister's office to complain and demanded that the government have another look at it. I think this surprised the Prime Minister's office because if, of course, they did what Bob Katter asked of them, they would all be referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. So it was a pretty extraordinary request from Bob Katter but I guess he was just thinking that he was doing the right thing and advocating on behalf of his son-in-law.

RUBY:

And so someone like Robert Nioa, he must have thoughts on the best way to handle our relationship with the Trump administration. Did you ask him about that, about what he's observed firsthand about the Trumps and our position as a US ally?

JASON:

Well, a hot topic for the Trump administration is allies pulling their weight on defence expenditure. We've heard Donald Trump complain pretty loudly that America's European allies are not spending enough when it comes to defence and he's calling on them to increase their defence spending from 2% of GDP to around 5% of GDP. And countries like the United Kingdom have already responded to that. The week before last, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, announced that the UK planned to increase its defence spending to 3% of GDP before the next election. Robert Nioa is certainly of the view that Australia needs to follow suit.

RUBY:

Right so, Jason, what we have is a defence contractor calling for an increase in defence spending, which is obviously not that surprising. But if he is someone with influence in the Trump administration, how significant do you think his perspective is when it comes to how Peter Dutton thinks about defence?

JASON:

Oh, I think it's quite significant. Peter Dutton clearly trusts Robert Nioa. I think if Peter Dutton was to become prime minister, he would definitely try to make use of Rob Nioa’s connections to the Trump administration. And I think Rob Nioa himself, is also someone who hasn't hidden the fact that he thinks Peter Dutton would be a better prime minister for Australia when it comes to defence. It's pretty clear that these two have a pretty strong connection. And if Peter Dutton does win the election, whenever it's called, I think we're going to say Rob Nioa become a lot more influential when it comes to Australian defence policymaking.

RUBY:

So, Jason, if Peter Dutton wanted to lean in into his connections with Trump, I mean, he very much could. He has this close relationship with Robert Nioa, who's friends with the Trumps. Dutton's also close to Gina Rinehart, who has her own relationship with the Trump family, and Dutton has talked about his ability to get things done with this administration. But do you think that there is a risk here that if he does that because Australians, I think, are turned off by Trump, that anything that Dutton does that aligns with him could backfire?

JASON:

I think Peter Dutton has to be very careful about how closely he aligns himself with Donald Trump. After Donald Trump won the election in November, Peter Dutton came out pretty quickly to congratulate Donald Trump. And in the first weeks following that election victory, Peter Dutton was also happy to align himself with a lot of the things that Donald Trump said he would do when he became president. The risk, though, for Peter Dutton, is that since Donald Trump was sworn in, he has disrupted the US government to to such an extent that it's now starting to really concern voters here in Australia. And that's just getting worse and worse each week.

From what I'm hearing, the Labor Party is of the view that that Donald Trump is hurting Peter Dutton. It's coming up in their polling. They're saying that voters believe that Peter Dutton's election slogan, let's get Australia back on track, is a little bit similar to the Make America Great Again slogan that has been so successful for Donald Trump and that it is backfiring a bit for Peter Dutton.

RUBY:

Well Jason, thank you so much for your time.

JASON:

Ruby, great to talk with you as always.

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RUBY:

Also in the news...

The Australian Federal Police have confirmed that the caravan found in January filled with explosives and antisemitic material was all part of a fabricated terrorist plot.

The AFP found that the caravan was planted by criminals from Australia and overseas who then intentionally informed the police of the caravan’s location in order to “cause fear for personal benefit”

At the time, NSW Premier Chris Minns described the incident as “terrorism”. Yesterday he defended his response saying it “would have been negligent not to take this incredibly seriously”.

And,

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has doubled down on his criticism of President Trump, saying Australia should not “muzzle ourselves for fear of offending Mr Trump”.

The US President took to his Truth Social platform to call Turnbull “chaotic” and “abusive”, believed to be in response to Turnbull’s comments in a Bloomberg interview over the weekend where he criticised Trump’s leadership style.

The comments come at a crucial time for Australia-US relations, with tariffs against Australian steel and aluminium currently due to commence on Thursday.

I'm Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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