Australia’s strategic outlook is deteriorating and, for the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect of threat from a major power.
This means that a major change in Australia’s approach to the management of strategic risk is needed.
The global drivers for the irregular movement of people, from human security to economics, are growing, not dissipating.
In 2016, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 65.6 million ‘forcibly displaced people worldwide’, 22.5 million refugees and 10 million stateless people.
Globally, there are some 767 million people living below the poverty line. In Africa alone, there are some 200 million people ‘aged between 15–24 and this will likely double by 2045’. While these figures are startling, the fact that in 2016 only 189,300 refugees were resettled highlights the scale of the likely demand for irregular migration.
Much has been said and published on irregular migration from the perspective of the migrant. In the process, it has become politically expedient to homogenise perceptions of people smugglers.
This new ASPI report focuses on people-smuggling syndicates globally.
The report provides a concise analysis of the various people-smuggling syndicates operating in the globe’s people smuggling hot-spots. This authoritative report provides a concise analysis of each people smuggling hot-spot, with accompanying policy recommendations for interventions.
Australia is expected to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council for the first time on Monday 16 October in New York.
It’s a significant candidacy—we have the opportunity to make a valuable contribution to the work of the pre-eminent inter-governmental body overseeing the protection and promotion of global human rights and, in doing so, also promote our own interests and build influence as a global player.
The candidacy presents a timely opportunity to consider the value of serving on UN inter-governmental bodies and Australia’s rationale and approach in putting itself forward as a candidate on a regular basis.
This new ASPI paper by Sally Weston examines the electoral process to serve on UN organs and bodies.
It explores the opportunities for representation and what it often takes to ensure that candidacies are successful in an inherently competitive field.
It also examines the benefits of Australian representation in UN bodies and organs and provides recommendations for Australia to sustain its UN engagement by strategically presenting candidacies to the UN membership.
Over the past 40 years, Australian governments have periodically commissioned reviews of the Australian intelligence community (AIC). The first such inquiry—the Hope Royal Commission of 1974—was commissioned by the Whitlam government as a way of shedding light on what had hitherto been a shadowy group of little-known and little-understood government agencies. It was also the beginning of a journey that would eventually bring the AIC more into public view and onto a firm legislative footing. The second Hope Royal Commission, in 1983, was partly a response to some dramatic external events, in the forms of the Coomb–Ivanov affair and a poorly judged Australian Secret Intelligence Service training exercise that went badly wrong. But it was also a continuation of the process begun by the previous commission.
The intent of this report is to examine approaches to ensuring Australia’s energy sources are resilient.
It discusses Australia’s energy continuity needs from a complex system-of-systems perspective and details several systemic vulnerabilities that contribute to potential gaps in the resilience of our energy supply.
The report provides options for addressing the surety of energy supply, reforming energy supply through the electricity grid, addressing evolving transport energy demand, and future-proofing our communities.
Steps to fulfilling these strategic options are examined in several recommendations addressing whole-of-government and whole-of-nation gaps in energy policy.
ASPI is releasing two research publications on the uses and limitations of big data in national security.
The first report, ‘Big Data in national security’, provides a high-level analysis of how big data capabilities can be used and managed by Australia’s national security community.
The second product, ‘Big Data in National Security – Online Resource’, is a background paper which provides policy makers and the public with a detailed analysis of the key concepts, trends, and challenges of big data in national security.
Big data requires big governance…
Hear Dr John Coyne discussing the report with author Michael Chi;
Watch the publication launch…
The research was conducted with the support and sponsorship of DXC Technology, formerly CSC Australia.
This document discusses the gaps in Australia’s emergency management legislation and the coordination of federal, state and local disaster management arrangements in Australia.
It analyses key legislation from the UK and US jurisdictions and reveals important lessons that could be adopted in Australia.
Whether in Mexico, the US or Australia, the image of the transnational serious and organised crime (OC) threat from ‘Mexican cartels’ used to construct policy doesn’t appear to engage with the reality that there’s no homogeneous Mexican cartel, cartels or OC group.
This report argues that, for Australia and Asia, the menace of Mexican OC is no longer looming on the horizon; it has already arrived.
However, the nature of the Mexican OC problem in Australia and Asia is not likely to be the same as that found in either the US or Mexico. To respond effectively to this rising threat, Australian policymakers need to approach the issue with a more informed perspective that engages with the complex nature of the various groups that collectively form what’s broadly considered to be Mexican OC.
Furthermore, the policy response to Mexican OC will need to more agile than the measures contained in Australia’s current National Organised Crime Response.
The proliferation of cyberspace and rise of social media have enriched and strengthened the application of democratic governance.
Technological developments have expedited the international flow of information, improved freedom of speech in many areas of the world, and increased the quality of interaction, accountability and service delivery from democratic governments to their citizens. But these benefits must be balanced against a longstanding vulnerability of democracy to manipulation that cyberspace has enhanced in both scope and scale.
The 2016 US presidential election demonstrated the increasingly complex cyber and information environment in which democracies are operating. Using US case study illustrations, this report offers a conceptual framework by which to understand how cybersecurity and information security techniques can be used to compromise a modern-day election.
The report places this case study in its historical context and outlines emerging approaches to this new normal of election interference before identifying associated policy considerations for democracies.
This Strategic Insights report explores Calum Jeffray’s key observations in his report Fractured Europe: the Schengen Area and European border security and analyses them through an Australian and then an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) border security lens.
It also provides recommendations for Australian border security policymakers based on the lessons learned from the Schengen experience. It examines the implications of Schengen for ASEAN member states in the development of the ASEAN Economic Community.