From some humble beginnings, Warialda's Mick Davis has built a business which spans the length of Australia, and his achievements have resulted in a meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
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Mick, a Torres Strait Islander man who created Indigenous-run Warialda Engineering and Welding about 20 years ago, has been invited to an audience with the PM on Monday, February 13.
"It's all got to do about Closing the Gap," Mick said. "It's about Indigenous business and that sort of stuff, and what he's done is invited professional Indigenous businesses to his gathering down at the Parliament House."
Mick believed the national interest ignited after their business won the Australian Ethnic Business Award in November 2016. "We're starting to get a bit of recognition, the judges were very interested in our ability to keep reinventing.”
Everything we’ve done is sort of off our own back.
- Mick Davis
Mick was a man who put his hand to anything until a challenge from an Inverell business owner to create a device to lift logs resulted in the award-winning Davis Starlifter.
He was candid about issues he has faced as an Indigenous man building a business tailored to the Australian agricultural industry, but said their success in isolation seemed more intriguing to others.
“This where a lot of our pull’s coming from, as to why we get drawn into the circle, is that it’s very, very hard for the government, and people, to find people like ourselves, that are sitting out in the middle of nowhere, that’s got no backbone of mining or anything that’s propping us up, virtually no government support to prop us up, and everything we’ve done is sort of off our own back,” Mick said.
“I think that’s the key thing. Not many businesses can do that – Indigenous, or non-Indigenous. We’re quoting on work from Darwin down to the bottom of Victoria.”
Today, the 18-staff family business manufactures infrastructure for the feedlot industry, and has just purchased a machine to cast items such as cement troughs and road barriers.
Mick said he has met with former Prime Ministers, so he was not feeling nervous about Monday’s meeting. “Especially coming where I come from,” he said.
“And being in business for 20-odd years, and working our way up, and all that, the barriers we’ve had to jump and that, I think if I fronted the Queen, it wouldn’t make me nervous.”