Tag Archive for: Australia

The lucky country made some if its own luck in 2021

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Australia is ending the year in much better shape than we ended 2020.

That’s so even though our region is still a dangerous place, and an aggressive China under Xi Jinping continues to be the primary driver of this nasty circumstance. Covid-19 too remains a changeable, unpredictable threat to the health and social functioning of the world.

Last year ended with these two nasty truths providing some intrusive and damaging effects for Australia.

Back then, we felt more lonely, with less of a plan, than we do now. It’s worth noticing that a lot has changed in a good way over 2021: on the pandemic, with the economy, and in big strategic and security ways.

On Covid, 2020 ended a bit like now—a new strain from India, Delta, was proliferating globally. Early data showed it was more contagious than the original Covid strain from Wuhan, but also that it caused high hospitalisation rates for the unvaccinated. That was a problem because Australia’s vaccination levels lagged much of the world, meaning most of our population was vulnerable.

In December 2021, Omicron is more contagious than the Delta variant it’s displacing, although we don’t yet know how many hospitalisations it will cause or at what speed. But one big thing that looks like it’s really making a difference from 2020 is that Australia’s national vaccination level of 90% of people over the age of 16 is among the highest in the world (the US and much of Europe are bogged at about 60–70%). On top of this, we’ve got all the tools we had in 2020 for managing Covid—social distancing, masks and contact tracing, along with improving treatments. We also have a ready supply of booster shots to maximise our safety in an Omicron world while we build our own national mRNA vaccine production facility—something that just wasn’t true in late 2020.

It also looks like the public understands that Covid’s now a shared risk nationally and want it managed that way, ending the state-by-state adventure we’ve lived through. It’s up to our federal, state and territory leaders to take this cue and respond accordingly.

Overall, despite the feeling now that we’re all heading back into the Covid tunnel, Australia is as well placed as anywhere to manage the next twists and turns of the pandemic. The main risks are political complacency or parochialism and public weariness, not national capacity.

On economics and China, back in late 2020 Beijing’s $20 billion hit on Australian trade in lobsters, coal, barley, timber and wine was still fresh and echoing around the economy. We’d told ourselves China was indispensable for every export for so long that we seemed ready for the damage from Beijing’s vindictive measures to be huge.

A year on, we know that’s not what happened. Despite Beijing’s deep desires, the Chinese economy can’t do without Australian iron ore or coal, and prices are good. For other exports, the world has other wealthy markets that want quality Australian exports. Only those that had made no plans for a real alternative to China—like lobster exporters and universities—are still taking time to adjust to the new normal of the high-risk China market.

As Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in handing down last week’s mid-year budget update, the Australian economy is in rude health compared with most of the world. Public debt is low relative to most advanced economies and the economy is resilient to the combined shocks of Covid and China. Companies are diversifying their market risks away from the all-in China bet that was the old conventional corporate wisdom, particularly since the now dead parrot that is the China–Australia free-trade agreement came into force in 2015.

In 2022, Australia’s economy is likely to see greater diversification as we take advantage of neglected free-trade agreements with Japan and South Korea, maximise the benefits of the US and new UK agreements and build deeper economic links with India—and, despite the cancellation of the French submarine contract, with the EU. It’s smart to deepen trade and supply chains with partners who won’t use them as economic weapons to bludgeon you.

In the international security realm, 2020 marked five years of largely defensive policy resetting to deal with Xi’s China, instead of the benign China we’d all hoped for—a mutually beneficial trading partner whose different strategic interests didn’t matter because they were quietly resting in the background. Xi’s aggressive use of Chinese power has brought the strategic differences jarringly into the foreground for Australia and for many other nations that are now busily reassessing and resetting their own China policies.

As we ended 2020, Australian domestic policy was in place to cope with an aggressive Xi. Foreign investment laws were strengthened following the 2015 Port of Darwin lease. Rules to counter espionage and foreign interference in Australia’s political and public debate were all in place. Australian cyber capabilities were increased, including through an acknowledged offensive cyber capability to hack back at those who attacked Australia. And we’d excluded high-risk Chinese vendors from our 5G network to protect that key digital backbone’s security and integrity.

Other governments have been looking to Australian policy for guidance in these areas as they reset their own national policies to face the systemic challenge of China.

However, Australia was an outlier in 2020, by virtue of being ahead.

That’s been perhaps the biggest shift. Over the course of 2021, Australia has gone from being the canary in the coalmine on China to being in the centre of the two powerful ‘minilateral’ groups that in combination are doing the most to reset the economic, technological and strategic balance away from China. This is essential to protect the Indo-Pacific from conflict and to not have Beijing dictate others’ choices, including ours.

But maybe we don’t really understand how uniquely positive for Australia’s wellbeing, prosperity and security being in the middle of the Quad partnership with India, Japan and the US and in the middle of the AUKUS technology partnership with Britain and the US is for our nation of 25 million people at the hinge of the Indo-Pacific. And maybe we don’t really get the phenomenal speed with which these two new groupings have come together and started to act with common purpose.

This is an extraordinary development from March 2021 when US President Joe Biden called the impossible, unthinkable leaders’ meeting of the Quad that simply wouldn’t happen but did. And it was only six months later that another rolled-gold ‘unthinkable’ happened: the US and UK agreed to share nuclear submarine technology with us, and we agreed we needed it.

Next year will be one of delivery for these two fast-moving minilaterals, because each nation in each of the two groupings needs this for itself. And they all see the benefit of working with each other at a pace we aren’t used to but which must quickly become standard. We can hear this already with news about the rapid implementation underway in the three months since the announcement. Expect to see UK AUKUS announcements with Australia and the US early in the new year, to demonstrate to any doubters that the UK in AUKUS has substance and value.

There will be more surprises and twists in 2022, so don’t be lulled by anyone telling you they know the future. But Australians should at least notice we remain the lucky country (actually, and not in the snide way this term can be tossed around). That’s because we’ve made a lot of our own luck over 2021 and we’ve got willing partners to face the years ahead.

It’s in Australia’s interests to make things right with France

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This year marks the 80th anniversary of Australia’s war with France. It is largely forgotten, but the facts are simply these. Vichy France, under the leadership of Marshal Philippe Petain, was collaborationist in nature and it remained in control of Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East. In this strategically important position, its cooperation with the Axis increased the threat to Allied positions in the Middle East, from the Suez Canal to Iraq.

In June–July 1941, British strategists decided to deal with this threat and a combined force of British, Indian and Free French troops was assigned the task. But the greatest share of the fighting was borne by two brigades of the 7th Australian Division, including Roden Cutler, who won a Victoria Cross for bravery in an action, which saw him gravely wounded in fighting in Syria. About 400 other Australians died in the fighting, which, despite early optimistic British assessments, witnessed determined French resistance, including by its colonial troops.

Though the battle was won, the question that arises is how long did it take Australia to recover its pre-war friendly relationship with Paris? The answer is hardly any time at all as democratic France revived to begin building the Common Market.

This surely raises the question of whether or not Australia should begin to rebuild a bridge to Paris in the aftermath of the diplomatic contretemps over AUKUS and the replacement of French conventional submarines with Anglo-American nuclear boats. (Full disclosure: I serve as the deputy chair of Thales Australia, which is a significant shareholder in Naval Group, which was originally commissioned to build Australia’s new submarines. I also serve on the board of the European Australian Business Council.)

Rebuilding the relationship with France is very much in the Australian national interest.

Three issues immediately arise with crystal clarity. France is a critically important member of the EU, especially in the light of Brexit and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s retirement. A free-trade agreement with Europe is very much in the interests of both parties. This is the record of trade liberalisation internationally from the latter part of the 20th century.

Precisely the same point can be made about NATO, where the French contribution is serious and sustained. Continuing animosity between Canberra and Paris serves no purpose other than to make the strategic ambitions of the dictators more readily achieved.

For let us be in no doubt that at this point in terms of the geostrategic shifts that are occurring, whether it be in the Indo-Pacific or in Europe, the dictators are winning. They act with impunity and serve only their own interests in terms of maintaining monopolies on power and further enriching their elites.

Any schism in the Western system of democratic partnerships is only there to be exploited by those states best described as malicious and malign.

Finally, France is an Indo-Pacific power in its own right and one which is active.

Japanese sources of serious credibility maintain that of recent times China sent certain of its nuclear boats into the Sea of Okhotsk. This body of water is normally regarded as the preserve of Russian nuclear submarines. The French Navy was on station observing.

So, as with the level of real cooperation between the Five Eyes intelligence grouping and France, there is every reason for Australia to seek to reconstruct a strategic direction in which France’s interests and our own are again in alignment.

But this requires Australia to take initiatives. The animosity in Paris about the Australian submarine decision has not diminished and has become more widespread in the French general public. This is simply because the original Australian decision to purchase 12 French conventional submarines was very big news throughout the country. The decision not to proceed with the contract has become even bigger news. So, while it’s not necessary for Australia to take the knee, it is necessary for Australia to make overtures. In the short term this will be difficult given that official contacts between France and Australia are severely limited. But it can be done and needs to be done.

Consider the alternative for just a moment. Does anyone suggest former Australian senator Mathias Cormann would be secretary-general of the OECD over French opposition?

The complicating factor is, of course, that there will be a general election in Australia by May and a presidential election in France in April. France is more than happy to wait to see if the Morrison government survives, but Australian interests are best served if we act promptly and effectively now. Populism needs to give way.

This is made more pressing because of the danger of the AUKUS decision becoming a part of the electoral contest in either Australia or France, or both. This can only set relations back further. There are any number of projects where Australian and French cooperation can gradually restore an element of trust. Projects are to be found in the South Pacific in particular, where both our interests and our capacities coincide. The same is true everywhere in just about every field of endeavour, from the arts and environment to science and technology.

But on the broader diplomatic canvas, Canberra should be bold and embrace major change.

Britain has suggested that it wishes to become a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. That is something which Australia can readily support, but we need also to make it clear that we would support France’s interest in this regard. This would involve eventually the EU as a whole, but few geopolitical shifts would have greater impact in terms of trade and investment, not to mention the strategic lattice work, than the EU and the CPTPP becoming a cooperative economic zone. France may reject the offer, but that is of less consequence than the alternative of doing nothing.

The great French prime minister Georges Clemenceau addressed Australian troops in July 1918, after the Battle of Hamel. He told them that they had astonished the world. Australian aspirations and ambition need to be of similar stuff again.

ASPI’S decades: Japan and Australia go from tri to Quad

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ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

Australia built a triangular security relationship with Japan and the US in the first decade of the 21st century.

In the second decade, at the second attempt, the triangle became the Quad with India. China’s anger helped sink Quad 1.0, while China’s actions revived Quad 2.0.

Japan was the most cautious in accepting the trilateral, but became the cheerleader for the Quad.

The shape of Australia’s trilateral with Japan and the US was prematurely revealed in the main committee room of the Australian Parliament in July 2001.

Concluding the annual AUSMIN with a press conference, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was lobbed a final question about linking the separate US alliances in Asia: Could the US join together its bilateral alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia? Powell delighted and surprised the journalists by giving a revealing answer:

Interesting, we were talking about this subject earlier in the day, as to whether or not we might find ways of talking more in that kind of a forum. I don’t think it would lead to any formal arrangement of the kind you suggest. But there might be a need for us to seek opportunities to come together and talk more often. So yes, we’ve talked about that, but not in the form of some formal kind of new organization. We just began speaking about that today.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, sitting beside Powell, glimpsed a diplomatic flashing light.

Downer confirmed that Australia had held informal discussions with Japan while issuing a caution: ‘So as not to allow a hare to rush away here, we obviously—I think it must be obvious—wouldn’t want new architecture in East Asia which would be an attempt to kind of replicate NATO or something like that. We are talking here just about an informal dialogue.’

Downer walked back to his office telling staff he’d headed off a diplomatic explosion.

On the contrary, his denial of an Asian version of NATO created an instant label that has echoed ever since in China’s strategic community.

The foreign minister had triggered the Henry Kissinger rule on denials. Kissinger said that when a state denies it intends to do something it sends two signals. One message is that, for the moment, the country will not do something. But the second is that the denial is a statement that the country has the capacity to take such action if it chooses.

NATO was about opposing the Soviet Union, just as Asia’s non-NATO is about China. At every stage of the process that created a trilateral—and then the Quad—Canberra has denied that it’s about China. The ‘doth protest too much’ line works as well from Hamlet as Kissinger.

The denial of a NATO-style unification of forces and single command is patently true. That bit of denial fits the facts. The demurral about responding to China, though, became increasingly disingenuous. What were once barbed questions about China’s real intentions in the trilateral became responses to China’s actions in the second version of the Quad.

The absence of South Korea from the joined-up alliance structure mooted in 2001 points to China’s magnetic abilities, as well as the continuing schism between Seoul and Tokyo.

Looking back at the triangle creation, Downer said China ‘objected right from the word go when we started the diplomacy of trying to set up the trilateral strategic dialogue’. The US was interested in the trilateral, but he got a dismissive response from Japan’s foreign minister (presumably Yohei Kono). Downer recalled:

I took it up with the then Japanese Foreign Minister, very unsuccessfully initially. He said to me, ‘Minister, why would we bother to have a trilateral security dialogue with a country like Australia. You’re not a very significant country compared to the US.’ I thought this was not terribly diplomatic. I remember when I am crossed. He passed as the Foreign Minister and others came. The Japanese Foreign Ministry was pretty supportive.

By 2005, John Howard was hailing the coming together of three great Pacific democracies to work ‘more closely than ever’ on shared security challenges:

Our Trilateral Security Dialogue has added a new dimension to the value all sides place on alliance relationships … This quiet revolution in Japan’s external policy—one which Australia has long encouraged—is a welcome sign of a more confident Japan assuming its rightful place in the world and in our region.

After the lost decade of the 1990s, Japan began to redefine its regional role and itself, with the idea that it would become a ‘normal nation’.

‘Towards being a more normal nation’ was the title of the speech by the director of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Makio Miyagawa, at ASPI’s 2005 Global Forces conference: ‘Anxiety about China’s military build-up has heightened the sense of urgency inside Japan for re-evaluating its defence strategy and addressing new security realities.’

What started as dialogue between senior officials in 2002 shifted up in 2006 to the foreign ministers of Japan and Australia and the US secretary of state.

In 2007, Howard flew to Tokyo to sign the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation with Japan’s Shinzo Abe.

Howard said the agreement meant Japan would have a closer security relationship with Australia than with any other country except the US. The briefing line to Canberra correspondents was that Howard was willing for a more ambitious alliance treaty, but Tokyo was cautious.

Australia would have preferred to sign a formal defence treaty, Aurelia George Mulgan wrote, but ‘settled for the declaration in the hope of moving to a formal pact at some time in the future. The end game is, therefore, potentially much more momentous: a profound shift in the security architecture of the Asia Pacific.’

Whatever the spirit Howard intended, the agreement had no provisions for the parties to come to each other’s aid if attacked, instead stating that ‘Japan and Australia will, as appropriate, strengthen practical cooperation’ between defence and security forces.

Howard said the declaration built a ‘strategic dimension’ to the partnership: ‘Japan had become, to most Australians, a key partner, economically, and now strategically.’ In his memoir, Howard wrote that ‘China’s great power ambitions’ meant that ‘one of the shrewdest foreign policy thrusts of the Bush Administration was to encourage the trilateral security dialogue between the United States, Japan and Australia. The possibility of extending it to include India, thus creating a quadrilateral dialogue, was raised during the Bush presidency.’

The trilateral was ‘an unexceptional way of providing a democratic counterbalance to China’, Howard said, and was a ‘democratic riposte’ quietly welcomed by some of the smaller nations of the region.

ASPI’s Rod Lyon said the 2007 Australia–Japan declaration confirmed that the Asian security order was moving into a new phase:

Although the pact is limited in its scope, it heralds an age when Asian great powers will be more engaged in the regional security architecture, both as players in their own right and as ‘partners’ to other regional countries. This phase of Asian security will probably take ten to twenty years to run its course. But when it has finished, the age of US hegemony in Asia will have ended. The US might well still be the strongest player, even then, but Asian security arrangements will have taken on many more of the characteristics of multipolarity.

The security agreement and the start of negotiations for an Australia–Japan free trade agreement were both surprises, according to George Mulgan. Since the 1970s, this had been a relationship of ‘rather dull predictability’. Much, though, was shifting. In May 2007, she noted, China had assumed Japan’s position as Australia’s largest trading partner.

Japan was hedging against China, George Mulgan said, but also the danger that the US would swing towards China and downgrade the importance of Japan:

Japan fears being isolated by the US and China on East Asian strategic issues. Hence, it wants to create a Japan‑centred economic and security system in which it can exercise influence independently of both China and the United States. Building a direct security link with Australia (and India) provides a convenient vehicle for Japan to exercise greater strategic autonomy.

In December 2007, the 1.5-track dialogue conducted by ASPI and the Japan Institute of International Affairs discussed a ‘maritime coalition centred on the Japan–Australia–US trilateral alliance’, how to respond to ‘strategic shocks in Asia’, the ‘impacts of China’s rise on the Asian international system’, the role of the two nations in the emerging Asia–Pacific security architecture, and prospects for the Australia–Japan security relationship.

Apart from Japan and Australia, speakers at the two-day conference mentioned the US 62 times, India and the Indian Ocean 116 times, and China or the East China Sea got 466 mentions.

Drawn from the book on the institute’s first 20 years: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001–2021.

ASPI’s decades: South Pacific breaches and beaches

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ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

The strategic jolts and jumps in Australia’s South Pacific policy during ASPI’s first two decades alliterate as the Bainimarama breach and Beijing’s arrival on island beaches.

The big breach in Australia’s relations with the Pacific islands was with Fiji, after the 2006 military coup by Frank Bainimarama. Criticism and then sanctions on members of the regime by Australia and New Zealand met angry pushback from Suva, becoming an argument about whose vision of Pacific regionalism should prevail.

The contest went to a new level in 2009 when Fiji’s Court of Appeal ruled the 2006 coup illegal. In response, the constitution was abolished and all judicial appointments revoked, so all power stayed with Bainimarama. Fiji was ejected from the Pacific Islands Forum. The punishment was taken as insult by Fiji—a nation that sees itself as the creator of the forum—and hosts the forum secretariat in Suva.

Australia should condemn Bainimarama but ‘keep this in proportion’, Anthony Bergin said; ‘Fiji isn’t Zimbabwe.’ Even if Canberra–Suva dialogue was difficult, Canberra needed to offer rewards not rancor, Bergin wrote in 2009:

[W]e must be realistic about our ability to influence developments within Fiji: we learnt to live with a military dominated government in Indonesia for thirty years. Thailand, with its history of coups, is one of our closest regional partners. The road back to democracy will not be easy. The military in Fiji will remain highly influential even after it returns to barracks.

In 2010, Richard Herr called for a fresh Canberra approach to eliminate festering irritants with Suva: ‘The degraded state of relations between Australia and Fiji cannot be restored to their pre-coup status without addressing the profound distrust between the two governments.’ Australia should look beyond the defiant language from Fiji, Herr said, and re-engage.

Shunned by the forum, Suva turned to Beijing and sought new expressions of regionalism that excluded Australia and New Zealand. Fiji remained a member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and China joined in seeking a more active role for the MSG. Ron May thought it unlikely that the MSG could pose a serious threat to the Forum, but China was now a big aid donor, set to play a larger role in the islands: ‘A unified MSG, backed by China, could provide a counterweight to the strong influences exerted by Australia and New Zealand through the Pacific Islands Forum.’

Australia was losing influence over collective decision-making in the South Pacific, Richard Herr and Anthony Bergin judged in 2011. The islands were displaying an increasingly independent fascination with Asia, and preferred regional representation at the United Nations that excluded Australia:

The Pacific islands region has been undergoing a substantial and dynamic change in its geopolitics, with profound consequences for Australia. The changing tectonics of the Asian century, the dramatic rise of China and a bitter intra-regional dispute with Fiji are amongst the most visible developments. Although Australia is the largest donor in the region as well as its most influential political actor, these geopolitical shifts have raised serious questions about the contemporary effectiveness of our regional relationships.

Time and unsettled times offered the chance for a patch-up with Fiji.

On a visit to Suva in 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s talk of Australia and the ‘Pacific family’ got a Bainimarama blessing.

Proclaiming a reset and an open and candid future, Fiji’s prime minister embraced the family concept: ‘I am proud to say that Prime Minister Morrison and I have dubbed a new Fiji–Australia Vuvale Partnership aiming to consolidate our two countries’ relations in order to leverage new opportunities and address common challenges.’

In Fiji’s indigenous i-Taukei language, vuvale means family. Here was a significant political gift from a leader who had spent a decade waging diplomatic war against Canberra. Bainimarama decided Australia had things Fiji needed, even if only to balance ties with China.

In Securing the Pacific, Karl Claxton wrote of the serious security challenges—mainly internal—facing all of Australia’s Melanesian partners and most of Polynesia and Micronesia.

Having concentrated on the Middle East and North Asia, Australian defence thinking was swinging back to stability and security in the South Pacific and Timor-Leste. Every defence white paper since 1976 had included the South Pacific as a main focus, Claxton noted, and the 2013 white paper had made the islands the principal task after preventing attacks on Australia:

Canberra’s renewed attention mainly reflects concerns that security in the near neighbourhood could deteriorate quickly in the face of persistent development and security challenges, requiring the ADF to conduct stabilisation missions. The challenges include fast-growing populations, youth bulges, high unemployment, periodic political instability and poor governance.

The regional focus, Claxton judged, reflected ‘anxieties about local ripples from China’s rise’.

The 2016 defence white paper repeated that after defending Australia, the second ‘strategic defence interest’ was a secure nearer region, encompassing maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific:

Australia cannot be secure if our immediate neighbourhood including Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Pacific Island Countries becomes a source of threat to Australia. This includes the threat of a foreign military power seeking influence in ways that could challenge the security of our maritime approaches or transnational crime targeting Australian interests.

The 2020 defence strategic update described an era of state fragility, marked by coercion, competition, grey-zone activities and increased potential for conflict.

Part of the update’s response to what was on the horizon was the expansion of the over-the-horizon radar. The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) would be extended ‘to provide wide area surveillance of Australia’s eastern approaches’.

‘Eastern approaches’ was a polite way of saying ‘Melanesia’.

Australia wanted a constant view of every ship and plane operating in the South Pacific arc. What JORN did for Australia’s northern and western approaches was to be extended to the east.

The strategic update announced that the JORN site at Longreach in central Queensland would be expanded to look east as well as north. The existing Longreach transmission station covered most of Papua New Guinea and further north to the Bismarck Sea. A new eastern array will sweep around from PNG to cover Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, probably reaching out as far as Fiji.

Canberra confronts a grave new fact: our strategic interests in the South Pacific are directly challenged by China. That stark fact casts a deeply different light on Australia’s desire to be the preferred security partner of the islands. It’s a thought about China at the heart of the third paragraph of chapter 1 of the 2020 strategic update:

Since 2016, major powers have become more assertive in advancing their strategic preferences and seeking to exert influence, including China’s active pursuit of greater influence in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is concerned by the potential for actions, such as the establishment of military bases, which could undermine stability in the Indo-Pacific and our immediate region.

Link those thoughts about ‘establishment of military bases’ and ‘our immediate region’ to express this conclusion: Australia thinks China wants a base in Melanesia. The worry about a foreign military power has become a fear of China seeking a base in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu or Solomon Islands.

Australia had not had to worry about a security threat from the east since the battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Now it did.

Drawn from the book on the institute’s first 20 years: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001–2021.

Morrison says AUKUS will strengthen cooperation on critical technologies

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Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has used a keynote address at ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue to add important detail to what’s known about Australia’s AUKUS agreement with the United States and Britain.

In his speech delivered online today, the prime minister makes it clear that AUKUS is intended to enable the three allies to develop and share advanced technology to give them an edge in an uncertain future.

‘AUKUS is a broad and adaptable partnership that will drive our technology and capability cooperation to meet the challenges of the 21st century in the Indo-Pacific region,’ he says.

‘Our trilateral efforts in AUKUS will enhance our joint capabilities and interoperability, with an initial focus on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities.’

Morrison says nations at the leading edge of technology have greater economic, political and military power and greater capacity to influence the norms and values that will shape technological development in the years to come. Nowhere is this more powerfully illustrated than in the Indo-Pacific region, which Morrison says is the world’s strategic centre of gravity.

The agreement is about much more than nuclear submarines, Morrison says. ‘AUKUS will see Australia, the United Kingdom and the US promote deeper information sharing, foster greater integration of security- and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains, and strengthen our cooperation in advanced and critical technologies and capabilities.’

Morrison used the event to release a ‘blueprint for critical technologies’ designed to balance the economic opportunities of critical technologies with their national security risks.

Its goals are to:

  • ensure Australia has access to, and choice in, critical technologies and systems that are secure, reliable and cost-effective
  • promote Australia as a trusted and secure partner for investment, research, innovation, collaboration and adoption of critical technologies
  • maintain the integrity of research, science, ideas, information and capabilities so that local industries can thrive and maximise sovereign intellectual property
  • support regional resilience and shape an international environment that enables open, diverse and competitive markets and secure and trusted technological innovation.

At the event conceived by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, the prime minister notes that ASPI has written perceptively: ‘The real potential of AUKUS lies in how the new grouping can be leveraged in the long term to help Australia deal with the profound technological disruption about to sweep the world.’

He says officials will soon report back to leaders with a proposed AUKUS work plan involving exchanges of information, personnel, and advanced technologies and capabilities; joint planning; capability development and acquisitions; collaboration in science and technology; and development of common and complementary security- and defence-related science and industrial bases.

Morrison says Australia is also deepening its technology relationships with its Quad partners, India, Japan and the US, to develop resilient supply chains and foster an open, accessible and secure technology ecosystem. That will include development of advanced communications and harnessing artificial intelligence, deploying and diversifying 5G technology, and ‘horizon scanning’ for advanced ideas and ways to bolster critical infrastructure resilience against cyber threats.

He will be joined at the dialogue by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe, and former Australian prime minister John Howard.

Morrison says there’s much to be done with India in this area under the Quad partnership and the two countries are already cooperating on cybersecurity, critical and emerging technologies, critical minerals, the digital economy, and much more. There will be an immediate focus on supplies of semiconductors and their vital components, and on exploring opportunities for cooperation on advanced biotechnologies.

The Office of Supply Chain Resilience is working to ensure access to essential goods. ‘As a country of around 25 million people in a world of some 7.8 billion people, most of our technology is, and will continue to be, imported,’ Morrison says.

With the blueprint comes a critical technologies list to signal to governments, industry and academia the technologies slated as critical for Australia today and those expected to become so within the next decade.

There are 63 critical technologies on the list, with an initial focus on nine, says Morrison.

A key one is quantum technologies, applying quantum physics to explore ways to acquire, transmit and process vast quantities of information. ‘Quantum science and technology has the potential to revolutionise a whole range of industries, including finance, communications, energy, health, agriculture, manufacturing, transport and mining,’ Morrison says.

‘Quantum sensors, for example, could improve the discovery of valuable ore deposits and make groundwater monitoring more efficient; and quantum communications could provide for secure exchange of information to better secure financial transactions.

‘Quantum technologies will also have major defence applications, as in enabling navigation in GPS‑denied environments and helping to protect Australia from advanced cyberattacks.’

Morrison says Australia is already a global leader in several areas of quantum technology, and that needs to be taken to the next level.

Chief Scientist Cathy Foley will lead the development of a national quantum strategy to better integrate industry and government activities, building on the recommendations of CSIRO’s quantum technology roadmap. She will chair a national committee on quantum with commercial, research and national-security expertise.

The government will invest $70 million over the next decade in a quantum commercialisation hub to guide this research into global markets and supply chains. The first step is an agreement with the US, and more will come with other nations.

‘We cannot shy away from the ethical implications of new technologies,’ Morrison says. ‘We need to be asking ourselves what should be done with technology, not just what can be done.’

In the face of great challenges, Morrison says, Australia’s goals are clear: ‘to uphold our liberal democratic traditions, to keep Australia prosperous and to keep it strong and safe’.

AUKUS partners must play catch-up to repair relations with France

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison is embroiled in a tussle with both French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden which, given the power asymmetries, risks leaving Australia exposed and vulnerable in a major-power league above its paygrade. Across Africa and Asia, variants can be found of the folklore that the grass is trampled both when elephants fight and when they mate. In the Melian Dialogue of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Melos is sternly admonished by Athens that questions of right and justice apply only to relations among equals in power. For others, ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’.

The cancellation of a deal that should never have been signed in the first place was the correct call. Reverse-engineering an advanced nuclear-fuelled submarine into a technologically inferior version with less range, at-sea endurance, stealth and overall lethality, requiring Australia-based workers and facilities, increased the cost and lengthened the timeframe. Morrison has overturned the baffling call to build the Attack-class submarine, aligned the most significant defence acquisition with Australia’s rapidly changed strategic circumstances, and returned to the comforting embrace of tried and trusted allies.

The national-security folly is not therefore in the cancellation of a suboptimal submarine contract, but in the legal void of no existing contract and the operational void of no new submarines for another two decades. The diplomatic folly lay in the transfer of the full burden of the cost and embarrassment of the original error by Australia to France, in the process wrecking a centrepiece of French engagement with the Indo-Pacific region. This cannot but weaken the collective unity and cohesion of the democratic alliance against the multi-faceted challenge posed by China.

That’s the test of diplomacy the AUKUS allies have failed and they must play catch-up to repair the damage. An upgraded Royal Australian Navy can better build back Western military muscle in the Indo-Pacific but the European Union can contribute much more to global finance, trade, infrastructure, health, artificial intelligence and green technologies in a rewired rules-based liberal international order whose control circuits are located mainly in Western capitals. The critically greater importance of France to both the US and the UK means Australia could become the sacrificial lamb in efforts to mollify Macron.

Paul Kelly’s front-page analysis in the print version of The Australian on 3 November was headlined ‘Of course Macron was misled, our PM had no choice’. Kelly frames his argument in terms of two ‘unpalatable’ and irreconcilable ‘realities’: ‘Macron was misled; and Morrison had every reason not to inform him.’ However, in her magisterial account of the outbreak of the World War I, The war that ended peace, Canadian historian Margaret Macmillan ended with the conclusion: ‘there are always choices’. While former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s statement that Morrison has a ‘reputation for telling lies’ is a reflection on Turnbull’s unsated bitterness, the measured criticisms from former foreign minister Julie Bishop, former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese and onetime deputy secretary John McCarthy are more cutting. With foreign policy decisions ‘more than usually being framed through the prism of domestic politics’ (Varghese), critical relationships risk being badly damaged. Australia’s reputation for reliability and trustworthiness has taken a hit in Europe beyond France.

Cameron Stewart, The Australian’s former correspondent in Washington, has parsed a 15-page confidential record of discussions among the top AUKUS negotiators that outlined in precise detail the sequence of events that would announce the new pact to the world. France was to be informed on the same day, that is, on 16 September, that the existing $90 billion Attack-class deal was being scuttled in favour of nuclear-powered submarines from either the UK or the US. The officials anticipated French surprise and anger but the AUKUS allies badly misjudged the depth of resentment in Macron personally and France nationally. Asked on 31 October if he thought Morrison had been untruthful, Macron replied: ‘I don’t think, I know.’

France matters more to the US than Australia does, by a lot. Hence Biden’s grovelling remarks to Macron at the G20 summit in Rome. ‘We have no older or no more loyal, no more decent ally than France,’ Biden assured Macron while apologising for a graceless and clumsy handling of the issue and saying he thought Paris had been kept informed by Canberra.

It’s possible but unlikely that Biden was not kept fully in the loop or that he has simply forgotten being kept abreast of the need for secrecy to close the deal. The most likely explanation is a cold calculation that France is genuinely affronted. While France is not US-dependent, it’s a critical partner and a lynchpin of US engagement with and in Europe. Australia will have little choice but to swallow hard and accept Washington’s logic.

Major powers like the US, China and France pursue imperial foreign policies, not ethical ones. Australia is being targeted by Xi Jinping, mocked by Macron and been thrown under the bus by Biden.

Repeated reminders from Australians about the soldiers who gave their lives to liberate France are frankly tiresome. Australia did not join World War I to liberate France but to fight alongside Britain, just as the US did not enter World War II to save Australia but because it was attacked by Japan. Lord Palmerston famously said that nations have no permanent enemies and allies, only permanent interests. That is simultaneously the justification for Australia’s change of mind on nuclear submarines and of US attempts to appease France. Australia needs the maturity to understand that this is how the world operates and to work around the realpolitik instead of sulking over it.

Japan ‘more than willing’ to help ensure AUKUS success

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Japan’s ambassador in Canberra has indicated his country will provide assistance to Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to ensure the AUKUS agreement is a successful one.

In an interview with ASPI Executive Director Peter Jennings, Shingo Yamagami said while AUKUS’s initial focus would be Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, Japan could help in other areas flagged in the agreement such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum technologies.

‘We have been told there are some instances or areas where AUKUS members may need Japanese cooperation and participation and we are more than willing to do our contribution.’

The ambassador said his country’s welcoming of AUKUS at the highest levels has come because it will help to bolster deterrence and therefore stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

‘The key message is deterrence; here Australia and Japan can do a lot more in terms of contributing to peace and stability in our region.’

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia and Japan as well as the US and India is also important in this respect, and Yamagami said it was heartening to see the Quad had now reached a commitment at the level of an annual leaders’ meeting when not long ago it was restricted to officials.

The countries have made pledges beyond traditional security, including to provide a billion Covid-19 vaccine does by the end of 2022.

He said the Quad was a vehicle for promoting a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ and that there was a lot of room for cooperation with like-minded countries in Southeast Asia and Europe.

‘Quad is not an exclusive club, Quad is not an Asian NATO.

‘Quad is more than China. We are looking at the bigger picture, we are looking at the regional order—how to maintain the rules-based order, how to maintain peace and prosperity and security for all in the region.’

Deterrence is necessary to uphold that order when it’s challenged by emerging powers like China undertaking unilateral attempts to change the status quo.

It was expected that China would abide by the rules of the World Trade Organization and not engage in a campaign of economic coercion against Australia, for example, as well as accept the rulings of the UN tribunal that in 2016 rejected China’s claims on the South China Sea.

‘So it’s fair to say many observers are so disappointed and we have to ask were our expectations satisfied? If not, how can we achieve it?

‘We would like to welcome them into the rules-based order, but at the same time if rules are not observed then we have to resort to deterrence in order to maintain prosperity and stability. That’s the route we have to take from now on.’

He said both Australia and Japan needed to put their best efforts into maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait not only to support a fellow democracy of almost the same population as Australia but also to safeguard an economy that is a key part of global supply chains, and a vital one when it comes to semiconductors.

On Australia–Japan security ties, Yamagami said he was looking to the ‘near future’ for the conclusion of long-running negotiations on the reciprocal access agreement that would allow much closer cooperation between Australian and Japanese forces.

‘This will constitute a game-changer,’ he said.

‘There will be an institutionalisation of a framework so that we can conduct more frequent joint exercises and drills both in Australia and in Japan.’

Despite the growing focus on the security aspects of the relationship, there is also substantial growth on the economic front.

Yamagami pointed out that for the 40 years from 1968 to 2008, Japan was Australia’s largest trading partner and that hydrogen, infrastructure development and space cooperation are likely to take economic ties to new levels.

Australian renewable energy can power the metaverse

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Facebook’s decision to announce its rebrand to Meta last month was no doubt accelerated by its latest controversies. But, decoys and diversions aside, it also provided insight into Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future—one seemingly shared by much of Silicon Valley—in which we will work, study and socialise in an entirely digital environment.

Online community-building is already a big business. There are more than 250 million people working together on Microsoft Teams, 500 million language students on Duolingo, and 140 million gamers building the Minecraft metaverse.

As more and more emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality—become part of our daily lives, and with COP26 underway, it’s a good time to consider how we will actually power this new digital landscape.

Australia has a unique opportunity to make use of its abundant sustainable energy. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many Australian businesses shifted to online operations as remote work became a necessity.

Covid-19 hugely accelerated the digitisation of business and revealed the many benefits of the digital workplace—such as no commuting, no business travel, more family time, and flexible working hours and locations.

However, it also made collaboration and interpersonal engagement with colleagues and customers more challenging. Virtual reality and other collaborative technologies have the potential to make remote working a more seamless and immersive experience for a truly online workplace, but it could also come at a cost for users, hosting services and, ultimately, the environment.

Australian power consumption has dramatically increased over the past decade. Many Australians felt the sting of this when their power and utilities bills increased significantly while they were working and studying from home during lockdowns.

Google estimates that a single search costs it about 0.0003 kilowatts or 1 kilojoule of energy, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of energy the human body burns in 10 seconds. The true energy cost of certain online services, such as Microsoft’s and Amazon’s cloud-based platforms, as well as open-source software and cryptocurrency, can be difficult to quantify. Even small power increases on a per-machine basis add up to an enormous energy load when used at scale across the population.

Power consumption will continue to rise as emerging and critical technologies come online, such as 5G and 6G mobile networks and autonomous vehicles. The increased load on the backend high-performance computing, data analytics and data storage architectures that underpin research and development (including computational modelling for medicine and novel vaccine development) will also be energy-intensive.

However, the current investment in non-renewable energy sources won’t scale. Small initiatives such as rebates for solar panels on domestic roofs may offset household use, but not energy-hungry cities or entire industries.

The technological revolution will add to the already high cost of city living and further encourage the exodus from large metropolitan centres that was stimulated during the pandemic by safety fears and the availability of remote working arrangements—a trend that is likely to continue.

While it may revitalise regional areas, it will also necessitate changes to regional planning and backbone ICT infrastructure. It will also have repercussions for the travel, transportation and petroleum industries as cities empty and telecommuting thrives.

Australia has a long history of economic prosperity based on harnessing natural resources. It has an opportunity now that primarily requires what we have in abundance, and what our neighbours lack: space.

As sea levels rise and nearby islands lose valuable ground, the Indo-Pacific region will increasingly depend on land-rich countries to power the digital world. Australia has all the natural advantages it could ask for: empty spaces, sunny skies and an enormous ocean coastline for hydro and wind power.

Australia could become the energy bank for the region, powering the fourth industrial revolution.

We also have an opportunity to stimulate the technology industry. Data centres, the cloud and other ICT infrastructure all require stable and reliable power and cooling. Regional Australia is an ideal location to host a large solar-powered technology hub for the region.

Industry interest is already present, with companies such as NextDC planning to build a data centre in Darwin and Sun Cable planning to power Singapore from a solar farm in the Northern Territory.

Repurposing arid farmland, desert and fire-prone regions for wind and solar, developing robotic and drone-based maintenance systems and investing in improved telecommunications infrastructure for business locations would all encourage technology investors to seriously consider Australia for their long-term base of operations.

Moreover, as a free and democratic society with strong privacy and security protections, Australia could provide a critical link in a trusted technology supply chain through its geopolitical partnerships, such as AUKUS and the Quad.

Under both partnerships, Australia has committed to collaborating on advanced technology development including AI, quantum computing and cybersecurity, and enticing partners to operate in Australia would bolster our existing industries and help grow and retain domestic talent.

Renewable power to provide security for emerging technologies must be part of Australia’s energy planning. Net zero is an unambitious and short-sighted view of what could be a game-changer for the Australian technology industry, the economy and our role in the Indo-Pacific.

If Australia acts, and acts well, it has much to gain. If it fails to act, it steps into a very uncertain future.

AUKUS and Australian grand strategy

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Having a coherent strategy matters. It allows the effective allocation of scarce resources. It provides a framework against which events and trends can be assessed, helping to guide bureaucratic action, diplomatic activity and military posture. It’s essential to statecraft. So, what does AUKUS agreement with the United States and United Kingdom say about Australian grand strategy?

Former intelligence boss Allan Gyngell makes the case that Australian foreign and defence policy has traditionally rested on three planks: alliances, regional engagement and support for a rules-based order. When these work well, as under a grand strategy, they mutually reinforce each other, strengthening Australia’s security and posture.

While alliances are a strategic multiplier enabling Australia to act and influence events, they come at a cost to independence. It’s unsurprising that Australian decision-makers value cultural bonds and exclusivity—better to sacrifice independence to few and the familiar. As former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese has put it, Australia has traditionally felt more comfortable in the slipstream of others in the projection of power.

A reasonable question is why Australia has not done more in the region, particularly given our traditional focus on engagement in it. The reality is that the region has not offered firm ground for deep foundations.

Regional nations are much more comfortable with comparatively non-challenging if worthy activities—one- and two-track dialogues, humanitarian assistance, counterterrorism training and multilateral forums that offer a chance to exchange pleasantries. They are much less inclined to engage in activities emblematic of deepening relationships such as intelligence exchanges, mutual defence pacts or cooperation in capability development.

There have been successes, but their infrequency makes the point—the 1995 Australian–Indonesian Security Agreement is one such case. Australia is hardly blameless: Tony Abbott’s effort to engage the Japanese in the submarine program when he was prime minister showed the right instinct but poor delivery. The Quad has a way to go: it has a team and has taken a stance but has yet to open the batting.

Regional engagement is proving a long-term endeavour, requiring sophistication and constant attention, but with uncertain progress. Australia will continue to reach extra-regionally for its alliance relationships.

The longer term result has been a bifurcated approach to Australia’s strategic posture. The 1987 defence-of-Australia doctrine—emphasising the air–sea gap as a determinant of force structure—has morphed over time into a more isolationist set of border policies, a militarised customs agency, now the Australian Border Force, a worrying focus on internal security, and military assets that fit well into distant US commitments.

That takes us to the rules-based order. Australia, like other smaller powers, has long been a beneficiary of the liberal-democratic, free-market order shaped by US dominance.

That order, however, has been noticeably fraying. By 2017, the foreign policy white paper recognised direct challenges to international rules, particularly by authoritarian models. The 2020 defence strategic update identified a commensurate increase in ‘grey-zone’ activities, typically enabled by digital technologies, that skirt accepted behaviours.

The rules-based order has become a clash of norms. The remedies traditionally pursued by the Australian government—supporting the US, enhancing existing force structures and heightening our own walls—no longer suffice. The US position is contested in the region and weakened at home. Conventional military assets are not well suited to grey-zone activities and other tools of state, including the diplomatic service, have been depreciated over the years. Australia, highly dependent on trade, immigration and foreign technologies and capital, cannot afford isolation.

AUKUS is a recognition that that the planks of strategic posture as they have evolved no longer meet Australian needs and that geostrategic change demands more than incremental improvement. It implies a worldview and a purpose larger than simply retaining the status quo, dilating the strategic lens of Australian foreign and defence policy.

It draws attention to other elements—regional relations, international order—and the tools of state. Arguing that one wants to do more, or even offset China, in technological competition alone will not suffice in a clash of norms or contest of ideologies.

If, as author and scholar Hal Brands argues, grand strategy is a ‘purposeful and coherent set of ideas about what a nation seeks to accomplish in the world, and how it should go about doing so’, then there is much more yet to be done.

The government needs to craft a coherent purpose, a narrative, for Australia in the world. That won’t come easily: Australians are pragmatists, uncomfortable with soaring statements of aspirations and values. Yet an absence of tested motivating principles, of ambitions, of values in Australian strategic thinking is an Achilles’ heel. It leaves decision-makers open to mistaking group-think for the ‘conceptual centre of gravity’ needed to shape and maintain a coherent strategy and opens the way to ever more illiberal measures taken in the name of security—something that’s dangerous in a contest with authoritarian states.

Even allowing for time to deepen the Quad, Australia needs to do more with the region. That requires more of the tools of statecraft and institutions than the military and intelligence community. AUKUS has a technology focus: investment in ideas, education, research, and social and community ties—evident in other Western democracies and institutions—will also have broader value in supporting liberal democracy and prosperity.

During such a period of change and turmoil, a strategy based on a coherent set of principles, values and aspirations, backed by investment, is needed more than ever. Shiny new kit, grand announcements and promises are no substitute for the hard work of building and sustaining a national consensus and broad capability for the future we want.

AUKUS and France: awkward lessons for Australia

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It’s not yet two months old, but our AUKUS partnership with the United States and Britain is already showering us with lessons about statecraft, strategy, politics and how to buy submarines. Here is my take on what the past seven weeks have shown us.

First, strategic partnerships are built on common interests and explicitly shared understandings. These links cannot be faked.

France’s ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, stressed at the National Press Club this week that the failure of the submarine project was the result of ‘the breach of trust caused by the attitude of the Australian government’.

This has a slightly Chinese ‘wolf warrior’ tone to it. Is it solely Australia’s fault? In truth, it takes two to fall out of love.

When it comes to submarines, Australia and France were never on the same page. For Paris, as Thebault says, ‘The Attack-class program was always far more than a contract.’ From the start, the French saw it as an unprecedented act of generosity to build a strategic partnership based on access to their most secret military technology.

Australia never saw it that way. We treated the submarine project like any other defence procurement—a negotiation over price, time frames and specifications.

We ran the project in the bowels of the Department of Defence with officials reluctantly surfacing every few months, hoping to avoid questions at Senate committees. For years, our political leadership had almost nothing to say about submarines other than talking up jobs in South Australia.

By contrast, France saw this as a grand political deal. An Australian military contingent marched at the head of the Bastille Day parade through Paris in July 2016. France saw the Australian connection as the centrepiece of a new strategy to emphasise the Indo-Pacific, which President Emmanuel Macron announced in Sydney in May 2018.

Neither country ever came to grips with this flawed reading of each other’s intentions.

The second lesson is that AUKUS has a better chance of working because it gathers three countries with a far closer connection around interests and shared strategic understandings.

The Anglosphere works—to the annoyance of not just the French but also a generation of Australian public servants brainwashed with the myth that claiming we are part of Asia means we should shun ties of history and kinship.

That’s not to say the AUKUS partners might not disappoint each other. Indeed, the third lesson is that, in international diplomacy, Australia, the US, Britain and even France all have a great deal to be modest and apologetic about.

In the 1980s, France was hardly a model neighbour in the Pacific—think of nuclear testing and sinking the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour. What about Britain’s withdrawal from east of the Suez Canal in the 1950s or joining the EU in the 1960s at a cost to Australian exports? Then we have the US withdrawal from the forever war in Afghanistan a nine-week eternity ago. And don’t forget our chronic underinvestment in defence, enabled by American military might.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is surely right to say that national leaders should ‘move on’. It’s time to stop the recriminations, which unchecked could ricochet for years. We all have more than enough, to use President Joe Biden’s word, ‘clumsy’ foreign policy moments to live down.

Lesson four: we have more insight into Biden. A careful reading of his comments at that meeting with Macron in Rome last Friday shows that Biden did not completely throw Australia under the bus.

Biden said, ‘What we did was clumsy. It was not done with a lot of grace.’ Note the emphasis on ‘we’. The rest of Biden’s comments stressed the importance of America’s relations with France, but there was no backward step on the purpose or priority of AUKUS. Why? Because the Anglosphere works.

On the other hand, it’s remarkable that Biden—‘honest to God’—seemed astounded by the French annoyance at losing a $90 billion deal. While Donald Trump never read his briefing papers, it seems that Biden reads his but can’t remember them. We need a strategy for Biden management.

Lesson five: we need to lock in AUKUS outcomes at warp speed. We shouldn’t take a luxurious 18 months to decide between a maxed-out US or maxed-out UK submarine production line.

Australia should opt to buy in to the US Virginia-class production line; we need to find a way to bring the UK into that, but let’s stick to the US design with no costly Australian modifications.

My sixth lesson is that strategy is at its best when it’s written down. A flaw in the Australian approach on submarines is that both the French design and its nuclear-propelled successor were the results of policy made by press conference.

Governments need to get back to the discipline of thinking through complex policy on paper and using ministerial statements and policy documents to explain them to the Australian public.

Morrison should use the next parliamentary sitting to make a detailed statement about the purpose of and plan for AUKUS. He should articulate an agenda for the 18-month pathway to a design decision and allow the broadest parliamentary debate to get everyone on record as to where they stand. The PM should then regularly report progress to parliament.

Lesson seven: Plan Bs are good. We would never have been given the opportunity to develop nuclear propulsion if Morrison hadn’t forced Defence to ask questions that had previously been undiscussable.

The search for Plan B reflects a type of policy leadership now all too rare at the political level. Up to that moment, the government had surrendered the public management of the submarine program to the worst bovine instincts of the Defence Department. Never again.

It’s desperately important that AUKUS succeeds and that after 18 months—or, hopefully, earlier—we have that defined pathway to nuclear propulsion. But what if the project fails? We need a Plan C, which will be the plan for how we strengthen the deterrent capability and hitting power of our military without nuclear-powered submarines.

Plan C must strengthen our defences as we wait potentially 20 years (hopefully less) for the nuclear boats to arrive. The Australian Defence Force of 2022 is much more important to us than the ADF of 2042.

Finally, lesson eight: if we run AUKUS like we ran the Attack-class project, it too will fail. AUKUS cannot be left to the admirals, fine people though they are. The government must fund and run this project like the security of our nation hangs on the outcome. As indeed it does.