With Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s attendance at the Quad summit in Tokyo hot on the heels of an in-flight phone conversation with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson regarding AUKUS, it appears that small-group configurations—‘minilaterals’—have acquired a central place in Australia’s approach to regional security. The new PM’s race to the Quad leaders’ summit only hours after his election victory demonstrates the paramount importance he, like his predecessor Scott Morrison, attaches to such cooperative mechanisms.

The terms ‘Quad’ and ‘AUKUS’ are now highly familiar to any follower of international affairs.

Defining ‘minilaterals’ defies a single or simple answer. To reduce them to their essence: they are small-group (typically 3-6 members) configurations that bring together ‘like-minded’ partners in alignment to work on practical solutions to shared policy challenges.

Exclusive minilateral groups typically unite around a common purpose that brings their members into alignment. This distinguishes them from much larger pan-regional multilateral forums aimed at simply bringing states into dialogue (such as the East Asian Summit or ASEAN Regional Forum). The latter are more inclusive, but encompass too many states to form easy consensus, and often contain antagonistic parties.

Minilaterals may be functionally specific, designed to focus on one issue area such as economics or security, or may adopt a more multi-faceted and comprehensive common agenda.

Even security-orientated minilaterals are no longer confined to ‘traditional’ security issues but increasingly focus on ‘security’ writ large to facilitate collaboration on economic, environmental and health (pandemic) and other non-traditional security challenges.

As relatively informal institutions, they are aimed at retaining flexibility and adaptability, and generally lack a developed organisational apparatus and/or infrastructure. Nor are they bound by mutual defence treaties, as found in military alliances.

Minilaterals are set apart from larger multilateral security institutions like ASEAN-plus but exist in a state of dynamic tension with them. For example, the Quad pays due deference to ASEAN ‘centrality’ in is official statements, including linkage with the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific, while—so far—AUKUS has not referenced ASEAN, and is viewed with scepticism by the Southeast Asian grouping.

Minilaterals are open-ended groupings in that they are potentially amenable to deepening or widening the field of cooperation or expanding their membership—provided the candidate state shares the core mission and values of the minilateral. Ill-considered admission of new members, or too many new members, would undermine these, effectively transforming them into multilaterals.

There are, of course, caveats to this general formula, and every minilateral will be unique. For example, the former six-party talks (2003-2009) did bring together the US, Japan and South Korea with North Korea, China and Russia for the (nominally) common purpose of denuclearising the peninsula, but the divergent interests of the assembled parties were ultimately irreconcilable, finally leading to North Korea’s withdrawal.

Australia’s deep investment in minilateral formations is relatively easy to account for. The country’s formidable array of defence networks includes its pivotal alliance with the US and its special strategic partnership with Japan, and extends to trilateral and quadrilateral cooperation, and beyond. As a geostrategically located ‘middle power’ Australia is deeply affected by the swirling currents of competition in the Indo-Pacific but lacks the indigenous resource base and capabilities to provide for its security independently. Allies, partners and minilateral alignments are therefore a strategic necessity to safeguard Australian national interests (often in tandem with its values). Several minilaterals such as the Quad, AUKUS and others are also ‘networked’ into the US ‘hub-and spokes’ alliance system in the Indo-Pacific; the greater edifice upon which Australia depends to ensure its national security and uphold the regional rules-based order.

Despite being overshadowed by the larger powers of the US, Japan, India and the UK, Australia’s contributions to the Quad and AUKUS are viewed positively by its partners. It brings assets such as its geostrategic location (training grounds and facilities, especially in the Northern Territory), diplomatic influence (especially in the increasingly crucial South Pacific), a small but capable military, (with ambitious plans for modernisation) and a ‘can-do’ attitude. In return it intensifies its interaction with these major powers, gains access to advanced defence technologies and acquires a more influential voice in shaping the regional security environment. This becomes a ‘virtuous circle’ as the major powers assist Australia develop its engagement and capabilities, the country’s appeal as a valued partner increases commensurately.

Though the Quad and AUKUS have dominated discussion of Australia’s minilateral activities, the practise of minilateralism to supplement (and reinforce) the US alliance and the broader ASEAN-led regional architecture did not begin or end with these two examples. Several other minilateral configurations remain important to Australian strategic policy.

In particular, the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) process with the US and Japan, initiated in 2001, holds high potential and is overdue for a renewal, having last met in 2019. The TSD unites Australia and Japan as the two most proactive of America’s allies—and ‘special strategic partners’—into a closely knit and potentially highly effective mechanism, especially when it comes to addressing more traditional military threats. With shared adhesion to Washington’s’ Indo-Pacific strategy, the military forces of the three powers are complementary and interoperable, and, unlike the Quad, are less subject to equivocations over strategic signalling, as witnessed recently though India’s divergent response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Likewise, the 1971 Five Power Defence Arrangements involving Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore, is an often overlooked relationship, yet it remains an important facilitator of defence cooperation in peninsular Southeast Asia, creating synergies with AUKUS and Britain’s Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ policy.

The list goes on. One could mention the Australia–India–Japan trilateral, but this would seem of relatively less utility than the Quad itself, or the Australia–India–France trilateral, again of lesser import and utility, and recently tainted by the diplomatic travails between Canberra and Paris over AUKUS. Not all minilaterals acquire the profile and relevance of the Quad or AUKUS.

Of course, the diplomatic landscape is littered with defunct or otherwise moribund minilaterals such as the six-party talks, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, the Trilateral Cooperation and Oversight Group and the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat. Each and any minilateral is subject to dissolution, but certain configurations appear to be going from strength to strength with both political endorsement and strategic analyses taking optimistic views on the Quad and AUKUS.

There is good reason for Canberra to support greater integration within its most prominent minilateral mechanisms as they provide valuable intersections with—or alternatives to—both the US alliance and the multilateral regional architecture. In this respect they add another powerful instrument to Canberra’s diplomatic and strategic toolkit as Australia faces unprecedented challenges to its national security.

China is seeking a security, policing and communications cooperation deal with 10 Pacific island countries, according to documents seen by Reuters. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s whirlwind tour of the Pacific beginning today in Solomon Islands will reach its peak at a 30 May foreign ministers’ meeting in Fiji.

China has pushed a draft communique to the 10 Pacific island countries involved in advance of the meeting. Almost immediately, Federated States of Micronesia President David Panuelo expressed concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s intent.

This pushback is vital for regional stability and the cynicism over China’s intent or motivation is key—why is China doing this and why now? As ASPI’s Executive Director, Justin Bassi recently wrote, China’s ‘end game is to push out US and allied interests, achieve regional hegemony, create vassal states, control access to supply chains and improve its ability to take Taiwan with minimal costs’.

Panuelo also recently wrote to Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare urging him to reconsider the potential regional security impacts of a Chinese military presence in Solomon Islands. Panuelo fears this new, broader agreement could increase tensions and spark a new Cold War between China and the West.

According to Reuters, Panuelo pointed out that this was a ‘pre-determined joint communique’. The CCP would like all Pacific island countries to blindly follow the script, but Panuelo is unlikely to be the only Pacific leader to have issues with the agreement.

The challenge for Australia and the region is that we are competing with China’s ‘predatory mercantilism’ which undermines the international rules-based system and directly threatens our interests. Australia, the US, New Zealand and others should back in the Pacific islands, which means pouring sunlight on China’s actions and intent. The draft regional agreement and Wang’s visit are clearly part of a scaled-up effort towards Chinese regional hegemony and influence in critical economic and security sectors.

Some Pacific countries have existing bilateral policing relationships with China, with Fiji’s being the most developed, but a regional agreement such as this would likely aim to take engagement to new heights.

The draft communique reportedly pledges cooperation on data networks, cybersecurity and smart customs systems. This would provide the CCP with opportunities to collect biodata and conduct mass surveillance. Some of this may be used for policing, but it will also serve other purposes for the CCP. Increased transparency, including leaks, of China’s human rights abuses of religious minorities in Xinjiang and the harsh crackdowns of entire cities during the Covid-19 pandemic should be a deep concern to all in our region.

In the lead up to the APEC leaders’ summit in Port Moresby in 2018, Papua New Guinea accepted about 200 gifted surveillance cameras and a Chinese EXIM bank loan for a Huawei-built data centre. Although proving too costly to maintain, this data centre was later revealed to be highly vulnerable to remote access and the information it collected would have been readily accessible by the CCP.

China’s proposed action plan also reportedly includes the provision of forensic laboratories. China has previously gifted digital forensic labs across Southeast Asia, including to Vietnam. ASPI’s Mapping China’s Tech Giants project shows that these labs were developed in cooperation with Meiya Pico—a CCP-affiliated digital forensics and information-security company that has been linked to the surveillance software MFSocket scandal.

The CCP could use some of this surveillance data for other malign purposes that do not serve the interests of Pacific island countries. The risks that mass surveillance and monitoring technologies can pose to developing countries have already been highlighted in numerous cases across Africa.

China’s extraditions in Fiji in 2017 and Vanuatu in 2019 should also serve as a reminder that Pacific sovereignty isn’t one of Beijing’s concerns when tackling crime abroad. Both events raised concerns over China’s policing and extradition practices and questioned Fiji’s and Vanuatu’s abilities to uphold the law in their own countries.

Preventing the opportunity for surveillance activities like those identified above is part of the reason Australia has already invested enormous amounts of money into outbidding China and blocking its access to critical digital infrastructure in the region.

Mass surveillance is against Australia’s values and interests, at home and abroad. Australia’s new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made it clear that ‘Australia should always stand up for [its] values’.

These agreements and the potential for a Chinese military presence are not just against Australia’s interests but the entire Pacific’s, so more leaders need to make their voices heard. They also need to know they will have Australia’s ongoing support to meet their development, security and training needs.

Australia’s new government couldn’t be clearer with its intentions to listen to the Pacific and build even further on the already significant Pacific step-up investment.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on her first day in her new role that Australia wants to ‘help build a stronger Pacific family’ and ‘bring new energy and more resources to the Pacific’.

This includes plans to establish a new Australia Pacific defence school that will increase training programs for select Pacific countries’ defence and security forces.

Focusing on our Pacific relationships first and foremost is essential through practical support and investment in critical sectors that will drive development and security. But more money is not the silver bullet. To outcompete China without using its tactics of bribery, bullying and breaching of sovereignty, Australia needs to push back, and hard, against actions that are not in our interest and support the Pacific voices that share our concerns. This requires resources backed in by influence and power in the region, ensuring transparency of malign behaviour and a mobilisation of like-minded partnerships and alliances.

Australia has a new government and the climate war draws to a close.

The voters have delivered a realignment of politics as well as power.

Labor has crept back into office with a historically low primary vote. Only one third of electors made the party their first choice.

The ALP is triumphant but this is more tough win than triumph. Still, a ‘win is a win’, a pragmatic phrase for a close election that’s changed much.

Anthony Albanese is Australia’s 31st prime minister. He joins Gough Whitlam (1972), Bob Hawke (1983), and Kevin Rudd (2007), to become the fourth Labor leader to take the party from opposition to government since World War II.

After nine years in office, the Liberal Party is pushed into purgatory, losing House of Representatives seats to Labor, the Greens and independents.

Electorally, the heart has been ripped from the Libs; they’ve lost a swathe of heartland suburban seats that have defined the party. They’ve toppled from their base, symbolised by the loss of Kooyong by the deputy leader, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Kooyong isn’t just heartland, it’s the heart—the seat held by Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party. The  identity crisis arrives as a heart attack.

The colour imagery of the ‘teal’ independents gets it exactly—the teals merge the Liberal blue with the climate imperatives of the Greens. Thus, the teals attacked from the Liberal centre in those heartland seats as the base rose up.

In claiming victory, Albanese declared, ‘Together we can end the climate wars.’ Victory for the teals, as much as for Labor, defines the result of the war.

The Liberal history of denialism crashed into an electorate that’s decided the science is settled. The ABC’s Election Compass found climate change was the top election issue nominated by 25% of respondents.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison strained mightily to drag the Libs closer to the science side of the fight, but he becomes another political casualty of climate. On the roll of those who fell on the front line, Morrison joins Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd—five prime ministers whose careers were deeply wounded and then truncated by the conflict.

The five prime ministerial casualties reflect the intensity of the climate war that has run for 15 years. Following a decade of skirmishing, date the start of major hostilities from 2007, when John Howard lost office. Howard took some wounds in the climate debate, but it wasn’t the defining issue in the defeat of his government.

Indeed, if we’d implemented the 2007 climate policies of either John Howard or Kevin Rudd (and they had much in common) we’d be much further down the road to where Australia needs to be. The climate war has sent us wandering through no-man’s land for 15 years, and the teal women have declared that we’re finished with that no-man’s stuff.

Today’s identity crisis for the Liberal Party shows how international issues have shaped and remade Australian political parties during our 120 years of federation.

Labor split three times during the 20th century—in World War I, the Great Depression, and over the challenge of communism (in Bob Carr’s vivid phrase, ‘Labor blew its brains out’). Nothing so dramatic for the conservative temperament. Instead, the anti-Labor parties spent the first half of the 20th century fusing and rebranding themselves under half a dozen party banners.

The Menzies genius—calling politics ‘both a fine art and an inexact science’—was to create a Liberal brand that’s endured for 75 years and constantly delivered power. Now the Libs must refashion their identity to save the brand.

Savour the brutal efficiency of an Australian election. Counting started as the polls closed at 6pm on Saturday. Just after 10pm, Morrison rang Albanese to concede defeat. By 10.50pm, Morrison was speaking to Australia, announcing he’d step down as Liberal leader. Fifteen minutes before midnight, to chants of ‘Albo’, the man who will serve as the 31st  prime minister fronted the cameras.

The electoral efficiency is delivered by the sturdy structures of Australian democracy—the political and policy agreements of a successful country that has much that it can agree on. That truth was reflected in the Labor–Liberal consensus in defence and foreign policy and the shared refusal to surrender to China’s trade coercion.

Almost as soon as Albanese is sworn in as prime minister today, he’ll board the plane for the Quad summit in Japan. That’s continuity in action. The Quad message to Beijing from Albanese is that China has to do the reset: we can talk after you take your hands off our throat.

Labor has embraced the AUKUS agreement Morrison created with the UK and US. AUKUS is Morrison’s defence legacy. If the nuclear submarines surface, then AUKUS becomes his monument in the same way Menzies holds ANZUS.

History should give Morrison a better score than Turnbull and Abbott in judging nine years of Liberal government. Abbott took the Libs back to office, but the party cut him down as unsuitable after only two years. Turnbull bears the scars of a leader deposed twice by his colleagues, both in government and in opposition.

Morrison confronted Covid-19, climate change and China and the new era of strategic competition.

On climate, he dragged the Libs to the point where he was talking about ‘decarbonisation’ as a positive rather than a negative, stepping beyond his performance as treasurer, when Morrison brandished a lump of coal in parliament. His achievement as prime minister was to disarm the Liberal denialism on net-zero emissions. As political performance inside the party, ScoMo nailed a political pirouette, doing bomb disposal while zooming down the mountain on one ski.

The new parliament will define the terms of the settlement in the climate war, delivering benefits that will be both domestic and international.

Join that thought about Australia’s national need and international standing to Albanese’s pledge to hold a referendum to write our First Nations peoples into the constitution, to honour ‘the oldest living continuous culture in the world’.

Change the government, change the country.

The early days in any great undertaking can be chaotic. The AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was announced last September, and it may be a little premature to worry about progress after only a matter of months.

Yet, while AUKUS rests on a bedrock of past practice and cooperative behaviour, there are worrying signs that all is not progressing swimmingly. And when there are indicators of deeper issues, it’s better to intervene earlier rather than later.

Let’s look at the ambitions behind AUKUS: deepening defence ties with a focus on technology for joint operations and capability, including the development of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, all to support the rules-based order and shared ideals.

There remains very much a sense that the US sees AUKUS as a way to provide Australia with a much-needed capability uplift, no less than to ensure the UK remains engaged in the world post-Brexit. There’s a lot of white space in the AUKUS statement—white space that officials are now working busily to fill.

In the defence and intelligence community, understandably, the focus is on what they know. And to be fair, the links between Australia and the US—and, more broadly, among the members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group—are deeper than ever.

But statecraft and strategic capability are about much more than defence and intelligence. And when deep in the well, it’s hard for that narrow community to see what’s at the periphery, let alone what’s needed further afield. That’s especially true given the assumptions implicit about national capacity.

So, what are the indicators that things are tracking poorly with AUKUS?

First, and most recently, there’s the security agreement that Solomon Islands signed with China, which has raised alarm bells in Australia, the US and elsewhere. For decades, Washington, with Canberra’s encouragement, has regarded the South Pacific as Australia’s responsibility to manage.

That doesn’t mean hectoring Pacific island nations. It means providing smart, sensitive stewardship for regional stability; supporting the island nations and their concerns and aspirations; and making the arguments for and showing the benefits of free, open, liberal democracies as the best future for regional nations.

That the US found it necessary not simply to send, at short notice, Kurt Campbell, its point man on the Indo-Pacific, but to fast-track the re-establishment of its Solomons embassy reflects strong concerns that Australia has fallen short.

Last year, there was the naval procurement ‘dumpster fire’ sparked by Australia’s cancellation of its contract with French company Naval Group to build 12 conventional submarines. It wasn’t simply that the French submarine option was a concern; it was the switch to the nuclear option and relations with the French that were handled poorly.

Both these issues reflect a loss of capability and capacity in Australia’s foreign service, as well as a lack of respect and trust in the foreign service by Australian ministers. Australia’s foreign representation has been eroded for decades, leaving coverage of its own ‘backyard’ thin and ill-equipped to report on, let alone respond to, a much better funded, well-resourced Chinese posture.

And Australian defence capability and procurement processes are similarly dated, risking the need to prepare for a future that is ever foreshortened and an environment that is increasingly disrupted.

It’s not simply that ministers are frustrated; ministerial frustration is both a symptom of and a contributing factor to the growing incoherence of the process.

Rather, it reflects an inability on the part of the Australian government to build national capacity and depth. Technology, whether in the form of military capability or digital systems, is still seen as magic fairy dust. And there is mistaking expenditure for investment, without governance or stewardship—generally a result of political entitlement and a corrupted process.

As the ‘southern anchor’ of a Western alliance structure, Australia risks losing gravitas and strength. That’s to the detriment of all—not least our democracy and the future of every citizen in our nation.

For all that these indicators raise issues for AUKUS, it remains key to reversing an increasingly parlous situation for Australia and for the West. It is not too late for AUKUS to realise its ambition. But it needs better purchase and stronger foundations on the broad elements of statecraft.

That means, first and foremost, a truly bipartisan approach to uplifting national capability. It is too important to be used for partisan populist politics—an admittedly tough call during an election campaign, but that’s exactly when restraint is needed.

Second, civilian capability needs to be considerably uplifted across the board, including in central agencies. It cannot be subordinated to defence.

DFAT needs not simply rebuilding but development into a capability fit for the demands of a disrupted, technology-driven environment characterised by hybrid activity, with deep knowledge of its host nations. Scaling DFAT up to meet those demands won’t be easy and nor can the thinking, skills or capacity simply be outsourced to consultancies.

Third, a clear vision of Australia as a technologically enabled and creative state is necessary to realise the intent of AUKUS. The government needs better scaffolding for how research is funded, how the research endeavour works, and how technologies are realised.

Again, this is not a solely defence matter. Building a technologically adept nation is more than national security and the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Australia needs the depth of engineering capabilities found in the US national labs and an open, freewheeling approach that encourages creativity.

AUKUS can assist with each of these, helping Australia to be better placed to deliver on its part of the agreement.

But admitting that we need to do much more heavy lifting at a national level is the necessary first step and will help us get the enablers we need. There’s little point winning the technological contests of the 2040s if we lose the geopolitical contests of the 2020s.

In the new cold war, Southeast Asia is becoming a contested zone where China, the US and its allies are fighting to sustain their access and influence.

This matters deeply to Australia because the superpower that dominates Southeast Asia controls our northern approaches.

The Obama administration dismissed Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea as a third-order issue over claims to ‘rocks and shoals’.

It’s clearer now that these new, large, fortified airbases and ports extend China’s military power south to the Indonesian archipelago.

When, in February, Beijing sent two of its most modern navy vessels through the Torres Strait and down the east coast, the message was clear: the People’s Liberation Army intends to project force whenever and wherever it can.

Beijing signed an arrangement with Cambodia last week promoting closer military cooperation. Chinese work to expand a naval base at Ream will sustain a PLA presence in the Gulf of Thailand.

This sets the context for the disturbing discovery of a secret Chinese deal with Solomon Islands, offering a blank slate to ‘make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands’.

China’s military planners are making a sustained drive to position forces around the Indo-Pacific. This damages everyone else, complicates American defence planning and forces smaller countries to either acquiesce or resist.

The outcome of the Philippines’ presidential elections in May could be crucial to the strategic balance in Southeast Asia. The outgoing president, Rodrigo Duterte, sought a closer relationship with Beijing, although more recently he has distanced himself from that stance, which is widely unpopular in his country.

Most of the Philippines’ presidential candidates are disavowing pro-China policies except for the frontrunner, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr, who promises a conciliatory approach to Beijing.

A Philippines that chooses to rebuild closer defence ties with the US would seriously complicate China’s plan to dominate the region. Beijing will be doing its best to shape the political outcome it wants in Manila.

Disturbingly, the outline of Chinese strategic thinking in the region is more observable than our own policy approaches. Defence Minister Peter Dutton is right to openly discuss Beijing’s malign behaviour, but what are Australia’s defence policy responses?

The Defence Department knows we face a strategic crisis of 1930s proportions, but its effort is overwhelmingly pitched to delivering a renewed force structure in the late 2030s.

Acquiring nuclear-propelled submarines and growing the Australian Defence Force by 20,000 people are good initiatives, but they will take two decades to deliver. Meantime, budget estimates hearings last week revealed that Defence is inexplicably cancelling a $1.3 billion project that would have delivered armed and remotely piloted MQ-9B Reaper drones in the mid-2020s.

This is, to use a strategic term, mind-bogglingly stupid. A rare Defence project that was going to deliver new combat capability in just a few years is shelved after a decade’s worth of planning and investment.

Defence’s description of this project was that it would ‘provide Defence with a persistent airborne intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and precision strike capability for the land and littoral environments’.

It would be hard to think of a more timely and relevant capability for the ADF when the PLA is sending more ships around our coast and potentially operating out of Honiara. Why was the project cancelled? I understand it was on a list of potential cost-saving ‘sacrifices’ put to government, but Defence thought no one would touch it.

The Reaper deal, moreover, had been approved by the US Congress. Our decision to cancel it at the last moment makes us look like clueless amateurs while we try to persuade Washington that we have the smarts to use their closely guarded nuclear-propulsion technology.

Ukraine has shown how much damage even simple armed drones can deliver to armoured vehicles. Everyone from Azerbaijan to the Yemeni Houthi rebels has adopted drones and shown how effective they can be, but the ADF has not a single armed drone in service and, with this cancellation, no plan to have one.

While Defence fixates on building the perfect ‘networked and integrated’ force structure for the 2030s, we are losing the opportunity to build a stronger ADF for the mid-2020s, the likely time of greatest strategic risk to the region since World War II.

When there’s no time left to change the structure of the military, the need is to look instead at force posture; that is, what we do with the equipment and units we have. There are clearly some big changes afoot concerning northern Australia.

In the budget papers is a plan for ‘$1.5 billion to build new port infrastructure, such as a wharf, an offloading facility and dredging of the shipping channel, to boost the region’s importing and exporting ability’.

While this is being discussed as an initiative to boost exports, the strongest use case for a new port in Darwin is military. There are some important dots to join here. In 2020 the government cancelled Defence plans for a roll-on, roll-off wharf in Darwin, saying it would be compensated for ‘with the US Force Posture Initiative commitments’.

In 2021 the AUSMIN communiqué agreed to ‘establish a combined logistics, sustainment, and maintenance enterprise to support high-end warfighting and combined military operations in the region’. The location wasn’t specified, but look at a map. It won’t be Hobart.

Just south of Darwin the US is installing a fuel farm planned by September 2023 to hold over 300 million litres of military jet fuel. Although the government is reluctant to say what is in prospect, it’s obvious the Americans are going to be here in much larger numbers soon.

This all points to a need for a radical rethink about Darwin’s role in the defence of Australia and what we need to do to rebuild our threadbare military infrastructure across the north. The PLA threat is pushing south, and we need a response to it.

I understand the prime minister doesn’t want a new defence white paper or a national security strategy. There’s a view that written policies constrain freewheeling decision-making. So be it, but something must be done to instil a disciplined focus around Defence’s strategic planning, jolting it away from its fantasies about the late 2030s and towards the tough realities of today.