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Australia’s largest private arms supplier, Robert Nioa, has become a regular of Donald Trump’s inner circle – and a confidant of Peter Dutton. He is also Bob Katter’s son-in-law. By Jason Koutsoukis.
Donald Trump’s son and the Australian arms dealer
Donald Trump Jr has his hat on backwards, the branding of weapons manufacturer Barrett printed across the strapback. Grey clouds sit low and almost touch the horizon. There is a spray of silver in Trump Jr’s beard. The rod he is holding doesn’t seem large enough for the sharks he says he’s catching.
Alongside him is Bob Katter’s son-in-law, Robert Nioa, an Australian weapons tycoon and confidant to Peter Dutton. His eyes have the slightly fearful quality of a person fishing for sharks.
Since his January 2023 acquisition of renowned American gunmaker Barrett Firearms, Nioa has forged a friendship with President Donald Trump’s son, a man universally referred to as Don Jr. The relationship gives the Queensland entrepreneur and conservative donor entree to the world’s most powerful office.
“Donald Trump Jr invited Barrett owner Rob Nioa to join him and his Field Ethos Journal team on their latest shark fishing adventure in Florida,” read a Facebook status posted by Barrett on February 27. “Don got Rob onto a great shark – one that seemed to grow even bigger back at Mar-a-Lago!”
There is no picture of the shark.
The post continues: “Beyond fishing, Don Jr. is an expert long-range shooter and a proud owner of several Barrett rifles. He played a key role in user trials before the launch of our MRADELR (Extreme Long Range) rifle and may very well be involved in testing future innovations.”
Nioa would later say it was great to catch up with Trump Jr “for a few days shark fishing and Mar-a-Lago hospitality”.
On December 10 last year, another Facebook status posted by Barrett described a trip hunting quail and white-tailed deer. Donald Trump Jr was in attendance with Nioa and Nioa’s son, Will. A picture shows the three men standing side by side, Trump Jr holding an enormous military-tested rifle. In the background is a little pewter statue of a pheasant and a television large enough to be used as a kitchen table.
“On a recent hunting trip, Barrett Firearms owner Rob Nioa and his son Will presented Don Trump Jr. with a custom Barrett MRADELR, hand-painted in a battle finish American flag design and dubbed the ‘Freedom’ ELR,” the Barrett post read, before praising Trump Jr again: “A skilled long-range shooter, Don played a pivotal role in the pre-release testing of the first ever batch of MRADELR rifles.”
Nioa and Trump Jr are close enough that the two men now catch up in person every few months.
“He’s great company in hunting camp,” Nioa tells The Saturday Paper, “and a very gracious host.”
Nioa’s political connections run as deep as his defence contracts. When then defence minister Peter Dutton opened NIOA Group’s $11 million Brisbane headquarters in 2021, it signalled more than just a corporate milestone – it underscored a lucrative relationship.
Less than six months later, in April 2022, Dutton awarded NIOA Group a $527.2 million contract for supply of sniper systems, assault breaching gear and small arms to the Australian Defence Force.
A month after that, Dutton officially opened the Rheinmetall NIOA Munitions projectile forging plant in Maryborough, Queensland, which received $28.5 million in federal government funding.
Today, the NIOA Group is a prime contractor for key Defence programs, including the Australian Army’s future artillery ammunition, the Major Munitions Contract, which covers the supply and potential domestic production of more than 70 types of ammunition from 20 international factories. It also has the Lightweight Automatic Grenade Launcher program.
“In Australia we operate half of the Australian government-owned munitions facility in Benalla, Victoria,” Nioa told the National Press Club in December 2023, “where, with partners like Rheinmetall and Northrop Grumman, we have privately invested in establishing medium calibre cannon ammunition and 120mm tank ammunition production lines.”
Dutton was in the audience as Nioa spoke. The opposition leader was seen shaking hands with Christopher Pyne, the former minister for defence industry who is now a lobbyist and chair of the NIOA Group board.
At the heart of the empire, however, is Nioa himself.
Michael Shoebridge, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, tells The Saturday Paper that the NIOA Group “is as close to the missing middle in the Australian defence industry as we have at the moment”.
Shoebridge, a former deputy at the Australian Signals Directorate and Defence Intelligence Organisation, as well as a former first assistant secretary for strategic policy at Defence, credits Nioa with transforming a sporting firearms shop tucked into the corner of his father’s Queensland petrol station into a global business taken seriously across the United States and Europe.
“He’s a really impressive person. He’s been a very motivated, aware businessperson, and he’s partnered with some pretty impressive foreign partners.”
A graduate of Brisbane’s Anglican Church Grammar School, Nioa, 56, is group chief executive of NIOA. He is also the son-in-law of Bob Katter, the longest-serving MP in the House of Representatives, who split from the Nationals in 2001 to move to the cross bench and founded Katter’s Australian Party in 2011.
The Brisbane-based weapons mogul owns a sleek, matt-black Embraer Phenom 300 private jet – a $7.6 million flying fortress tricked out with gold trim, leather upholstery and personalised water bottles. It stands as a symbol of his empire, as did the $20 million Legacy 500 he owned previously.
Back on the ground, Nioa’s influence extends beyond government contracts.
In May 2022, the Liberal Party charged $5000 a head for an exclusive NIOA-sponsored event, where guests were treated to a private firearms demonstration, a live shoot and fine dining.
The company’s board is stacked with political insiders. In addition to Pyne there is former Labor parliamentary secretary for defence David Feeney, a close friend of Richard Marles, the current defence minister, since the late 1980s when they ran the Melbourne University Labor Club together. Also on the board are Victoria Cross recipient Mark Donaldson and former US under secretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment Ellen Lord.
The Nioa family’s history of political donations has raised eyebrows, however, particularly their failure to disclose contributions in appropriate timeframes.
Over three years to June 2022, Liza Nioa – Robert’s wife and Katter’s daughter – gave $300,000 to Katter’s Australian Party, some of which went undeclared until March 2023. In 2023, she contributed another $99,996 to the party, while the Nioa Family Trust separately donated $63,500 to the Liberal National Party. Since 2022, the trust has donated $131,000 to the Australian Labour Party.
In October last year, the Albanese Labor government dealt a major blow to the NIOA Group, snubbing the company’s bid for a lucrative contract to produce the world’s most in-demand artillery shells, 155-millimetre shells that provide high-explosive firepower to neutralise enemy positions and disrupt troop movements.
Despite NIOA already producing 45,000 shell casings a year at its Maryborough plant, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy announced the construction of a new forging plant at the federal government’s munitions factory in the north-eastern Victorian city of Benalla that will be run by French-owned Thales Australia, under a deal potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Thales Group acquired 50 per cent of Australian Defence Industries in 1999, after it was privatised by the Howard government, and got full ownership in 2006 when ADI was rebranded as Thales Australia. The company now operates 35 sites nationwide, employing more than 3800 people.
“Rob Nioa is a very smart, very capable executive, who does a lot of very good work in the defence space,” one defence industry executive tells The Saturday Paper, “but there is a view that he leans too heavily into his relationship with the LNP and that that has cost when it comes to the awarding of a number of defence contracts under the current government.”
Nioa himself has not hidden his displeasure at missing out on the 155-millimetre shell contract, arguing that not only was his company’s bid significantly cheaper than Thales Australia’s but also that it would have been able to start producing shells much faster given the fact the company already produces 155-millimetre shell casings at its plant.
Following the shells contract, all eyes are now on the Australian government’s desire to establish domestic rocket motor manufacturing capability.
The Department of Defence issued a request for information last September seeking industry input, allocating an initial investment of $22 million over three years to develop a manufacturing complex, and part of the broader Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise, which is backed by up to $21 billion of federal government funding over the next decade.
NIOA Group, which has partnered with US company L3Harris AeroJet Rocketdyne to explore the establishment of a multi-user rocket motor factory in Australia, is seen as a major contender to win that contract.
The bid will again pit NIOA against Thales Australia, which has partnered with US defence multinational Lockheed Martin to jointly develop and produce solid rocket motors for the Australian market.
Additionally, Thales Australia has invested $6 million in advanced manufacturing equipment at its Mulwala plant in New South Wales, to accelerate sovereign guided weapons manufacturing capabilities.
Privately, Nioa argues that awarding the contract to the French-owned Thales would limit Australia’s ability to export any rocket motors to the US, with the US Department of Defense inherently suspicious of Thales.
“It would not be a drama, at all, for the US if that contract goes to Thales,” one former Australian defence official told The Saturday Paper. “My guess is that it’s already quite clear that the NIOA–L3Harris bid is not right.
“Rob can blame the Commonwealth if he wants, but there are a whole lot of reasons why his bid would not stack up, and his argument that Thales is not an Australian company is simply not valid.”
Whether NIOA’s chances of winning the bid would improve under a Dutton government remain to be seen.
His strong links to Dutton notwithstanding, Nioa has some advice for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when it comes to dealing with President Trump and his administration.
“On many policy fronts, the Albanese government has a different viewpoint to the Trump administration and [that] is likely to remain so. Think climate change agenda, positions on traditional fuel and power sources, and responses to Palestinian and Israeli/Middle East issues,” Nioa tells The Saturday Paper. “Trump, however, has shown he will work with people whose agendas are at odds with his for specific purposes.”
With Washington shifting its global defence priority to deterring war with China in the Indo-Pacific, Nioa believes that Australia now enjoys unique geographic relevance as a US ally in the region, which should be a key strength on which Canberra can build.
“A hot topic for the Trump administration is allies pulling their weight on defence expenditure and not getting a free ride on US defence expenditure,” Nioa says. “You either have or you haven’t been spending sufficiently, and you either have or have not got the right budget moving forward.”
After Trump called on European allies to increase defence expenditure from 2 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP, and countries such as the United Kingdom immediately responded by announcing a planned increase in spending to 3 per cent of GDP, Nioa said Australia needs to follow suit.
“We also need to get on with it, not just say it. We’ll be judged by our actions not our words,” Nioa says. “The first Trump administration advised Australia to invest in establishing domestic guided weapons production. Seven years later, we can’t make any guided weapons.
“Our plans see us bringing online critical elements like rocket motor production in the 2030 timeframe. So about 12 years after we were asked, if we actually do what we say we will do.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on March 8, 2025 as "Shark fishing with Don Jr and Bob Katter’s son-in-law".
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