ABSTRACT
Few countries have experimented as widely with defense offsets as Australia has. The instruments range from voluntary to mandatory offsets obligations to gradations of increased reliance on local content requirements but without formal offsets. Policy experiments with local content requirements continue. The 1998 Defence and Industry Strategic Policy Statement (DoD, 1998), which is the government’s official industry policy statement as of September 2003, makes no reference to offsets or specific local content targets but reaffirms a set of procurement rules for foreign companies competing for Australian defense business.
