Last week, the Select Committee on Australia’s Disaster Resilience released its long-awaited report, Boots on the ground: raising resilience. It’s an excellent summary of input from across the disaster-response community in Australia and makes many sensible recommendations for advancing disaster resilience. 

It does not, however, solve the core problem that it identifies: how to displace the ADF’s role in anything but last-resort domestic disaster response. Until that problem is solved, the requirement for ADF support during emergencies will continue to increase—leaving it distracted from its core defence mission amid rising geopolitical uncertainty. 

What Australia needs is a future disaster-response capacity commensurate with rapidly accelerating climate impacts—driven by an intergenerational strategy for climate-amplified disaster response. 

To do so, governments must give emerging generations a seat at the table in designing a future disaster-response force that they will lead. This strategy must be complementary to the forthcoming National Adaptation Plan and ongoing energy transition efforts. Rather than mandating sacrifice through inaction and poor preparation, governments should invest in and give young people hope for a safe climate-resilient future that they can build.

On the select committee’s core finding: this is far from the first time that the ADF’s role in domestic disaster response has been flagged as a challenge. The issue was acknowledged in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and the 2024 National Defence Strategy, both of which pointed out the operational trade-offs involved in the concurrency of the ADF’s increasing engagement in domestic disaster response and its core national defence missions. ASPI commented on this with the DSR’s release last year, but little has changed in public decision-making since then, despite rising disaster intensity and frequency driven by climate change. 

This defence and disaster-response concurrency challenge is also not unique to Australia. The Center for Climate and Security in the US has been tracking the rising number of military responses to climate hazards around the globe. NATO’s latest annual Climate change and security impact assessment report demonstrated how its strategic competitors, Russia and China, face the same climate-amplified disaster-response and adaptation challenges as allied militaries. In large part, the effectiveness of future militaries will depend on their ability to decouple themselves from disaster response. 

Rising disaster-response needs also drive Australia’s support to partners in the Indo-Pacific and further abroad. Australia’s proposal to establish the Pacific Response Group (PRG) reflects this: a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief focused initiative between the militaries of Australia, Fiji, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga. The PRG may play an increasingly important role in the years to come, including by helping to meet Australia’s disaster-response commitments to Tuvalu under the Falepili Union, if Tuvalu were to request a multinational response. 

International responses also eat into domestic non-ADF disaster-response capacity. There’s a longstanding tradition of countries sharing disaster-response capacity. For example, Australian firefighters have recently deployed to help combat Canada’s western wildfires. Such cooperation contributes not only to Australia’s partners’ disaster resilience, but also secures needed capacity in Australia during times of need. While international dynamics were not factored explicitly into the select committee’s report, they are critical to planning and preparing for future disaster-response capacity. 

Of course, the ADF can reduce its involvement in domestic disasters only if our civilian capacity for disaster management is strengthened significantly. As Raymond Whitehead noted in his testimony to the committee, a civilian force will need to be able to 

… provide heavy logistic and tactical support to local frontline services, including such things as: communications and IT support, medical support through deployable hospitals, heavy logistics support. It would also have access to equipment such as helicopters of different sizes, specialist observation and situational awareness aircraft, a fleet of transport planes, and tactical and strategic water bombers ….

It will also need far greater numbers of emergency-response personnel than are available today. While there’s an excellent body of Australian disaster-response experts—including ADF veterans contributing to Disaster Relief Australia—the ADF is facing a recruitment crisis. Beyond needing to limit requests to the ADF for disaster response, Australia will also have dwindling numbers of ADF-trained disaster-response experts available to train and supplement a future civilian force. This necessitates significantly increasing the scope and breadth of trained disaster responders in the near term. 

The obvious solution is to ask emerging generations, who will bear the brunt of climate-amplified disasters, to fill out those ranks—but how governments do that is crucial. 

Young generations know they face a burden of higher global temperatures and climate impacts: up to 75 percent of Australians aged 16 to 25 years are concerned about climate change, according to a YouGov report last year. That’s understandable: global temperatures may breach the Paris Agreement’s lower ‘safe’ threshold of 1.5°C by the 2030s and reach catastrophic levels of warming by the end of this century without further action by governments. Youths’ commitment to tackle this head on has been clear through their climate activism and protests, demonstrating their desire to effect change rather than be paralysed by climate anxiety. 

The federal government should leverage that concern and energy, but its efforts will be rightly met with cynicism if they’re not matched by far more ambitious emissions-reduction and climate-adaptation action. What basis should youth have for a sense of voluntary disaster-response duty when past governments and generations have failed to take on the costs of emissions reductions? Failing that voluntary sense of duty, given the strength of protests against insufficient climate action, how will they react to being drafted into a pathway of complicated (and arguably ineffective) mandatory national service? 

The path forward should begin with a genuine process to engage Australia’s young and emerging generations about how they want to build their future. Success will also depend on how much the participants develop a genuine sense of ownership and agency. 

Governments at all levels in Australia should seize this as an opportunity: our climate trajectory is dire, but not hopeless, as long as many required changes are made. Emissions must be reduced rapidly as part of an equitable energy transition that grows future economic opportunity. Climate-adaptation funding and resilience building must be scaled significantly to minimise the extent of future risk. The considerable disaster-response expertise and resilience among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities should also be sought and supported, as the committee notes, including by funding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community response units. 

At the federal level, bold commitment is needed to devise what should become an intergenerational strategy for climate-amplified disaster response. Heavily informed by younger generations, this would be complementary to Australia’s forthcoming National Adaptation Plan, while laying out a roadmap to train, equip and organise young and future generations to meet rising disaster risks at the local and national levels. 

To be clear: enhancing Australia’s disaster-response capacity alone will be insufficient. While the ADF’s involvement in disaster response must be limited, the much greater task here is getting buy-in from emerging generations for future disaster-response capacity. If that can be done right, future generations can be given a meaningful way to build a safer and more resilient future for themselves, while freeing the ADF to focus on its core missions. 

Australia should seek a more comprehensive peacekeeping partnership with Indonesia, a country that has become highly experienced in the field.

Through frequent joint training exercises, the Australian Defence Force can learn from the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) and play a key role in containing growing unrest in the region. Eventually, the ADF and TNI should together conduct peacekeeping operations, not just training.

Joint efforts in peacekeeping would also strengthen the relationship between the two-armed forces.

In the 2020–2024 Plan of Action for the Australia–Indonesia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), the two countries committed to strengthening cooperation in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations. But they did not specify how this would work in practice.

Expiry of the plan of action this year presents an opportunity for Canberra to advocate for a more substantive Australia–Indonesia peacekeeping relationship under a renewed CSP.

The renewed CSP should establish regular joint peacekeeping exercises between forces of the two countries. Peacekeeping training centres in each country should frequently host defence personnel and cadets from the other. This should be possible, since both the ADF Peace Operation Training Centre (ADF POTC) and the TNI’s Peacekeeping Centre (PMPP Sentul) already host defence cadets from other countries. Canberra and Jakarta made a start when they agreed to establish a permanent Indonesian instructor position at the ADF POTC.

In such places as the Philippines, Georgia and Nepal, the TNI has gained much more experience in peacekeeping than the ADF, whose peacekeeping efforts have dwindled. At present, the TNI’s Garuda Contingent (Konga) has more than 2000 peacekeepers in eight conflict zones, including Lebanon and Mali.

There is already recognition of the value to Australia of cooperating with Indonesia in this area. Last year at PMPP Sentul the Australian Army’s Major Matthew Breckenridge said, ‘Australia doesn’t have large contingents on UN peacekeeping missions, so working with the Indonesians, who send thousands of people yearly, provides the ADF valuable knowledge.’ Breckenridge teaches and provides mentoring to up to 1200 Konga members at a time in the PMPP training centre.

A strengthened peacekeeping capability in cooperation with Indonesia would serve Australia well if unrest broke out in, for example, a Pacific island country, and demanded military intervention—which China might be all too keen to provide if others didn’t.

The Australia–Indonesia partnership should extend eventually to co-deployment of peacekeeping operations, in which one of the two countries, usually Indonesia, would take the lead on the ground while the other played a supporting role. For this, they would need to set up an Australia-Indonesia Peacekeeping Taskforce, which would assess the benefits of cooperation in conflict zones on a case-by-case basis. Priority should be given to current or future conflict zones in the Indo-Pacific. Mutual support would likely be welcomed by both the ADF and the TNI, as peacekeeping operations are often undertaken in extremely challenging and complex environments.

The two countries did announce their intention for co-deployment on a UN peacekeeping mission in 2019, with the aim of strengthening military training cooperation. However, they provided no further information on how such a deployment would be managed and coordinated nor even where they would be keeping the peace. Nevertheless, in 2021 Australia gave Indonesia 15 Bushmaster armoured vehicles for peacekeeping.

Indonesia and Australia have experience working alongside each other in conflict zones, as regular contributors to the UN Department of Peace Operations, but the deployments have not been integrated with each other. Australian and Indonesian UN peacekeeping deployments have overlapped in places like Cambodia (1991 to 1993) and Namibia (1989 to 1990). Peacekeepers from both countries are currently operating in South Sudan.

Australia is the 12th-largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping. ADF personnel have taken part in over 50 peacekeeping operations around the world. In fact, Australians were among the first peacekeepers to be deployed under UN auspices when they monitored the ceasefire between Dutch and Indonesian forces in 1947.

Together, Australia and Indonesia already conduct around 20 exercises a year. The two neighbours also work closely together to prevent people smuggling and human trafficking. However, there is still great potential for bilateral security ties to grow and deepen. Close cooperation in peacekeeping would help.

In Indonesia, Australia has a giant neighbour that now knows a great deal more about this aspect of military capability. It should not lose the opportunity to learn from it.

In 2024, Australian security relies on maintaining a resilient democracy and an underlying strong civil society as much as it does on secrecy to protect sensitive information from foreign or domestic threat actors. For two decades, our public discourse has focused on balancing national security and our freedoms, but that doesn’t need to be a perfect marriage. Our focus should just be on making it work.

The first review conducted by the new Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) Jake Blight, Secrecy offences—Review of Part 5.6 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, provides important recommendations for improving our secrecy legislation and laying the foundations for a better relationship between the national intelligence community (NIC) and the media.

The relationship is not always amicable, as shown by the 2019 AFP raids on Annika Smethurst and the ABC, and last year’s reporting on former secretary of home affairs Mike Pezzullo’s proposal to reinstitute a system for issuing D-notices—official requests not to publish.

This is not a new problem. As argued by Melanie Brand in a paper for Australian Historical Studies, Australia’s D-notice system fell into disuse by 1982 as trust and mutual respect between the NIC and journalists eroded. New policies are needed to re-establish trust and reinforce our national security in a threat environment defined by foreign espionage, disinformation and limited public awareness. As Director-General of Security Mike Burgess put it in his 2024 annual threat assessment, ‘Australians need to know that the threat is real. The threat is now. And the threat is deeper and broader than you might think.’

Although national security announcements often grab headlines, Blight’s detailed 300-plus page review of Australia’s secrecy legislation (perhaps unsurprisingly) did not. Nevertheless, it vows a commitment to both national security and democratic freedoms and makes important recommendations to better protect journalistic freedoms.

Many of the INSLM’s recommendations should allay media concerns when reporting on matters of national security. Blight principally assesses whether Australia’s secrecy laws are proportionate, clear, and align with the rule of law. The report makes 15 recommendations, including: removing the classification system as an element of the offence (rec. 1); narrowing the scope of offences to sensitive information (recs. 3, 4); focusing expressly on the communication of sensitive information (recs. 7, 8); and better clarifying an existing legal defence that a reasonable belief in the public interest can be relied upon to avoid conviction when disclosing information, without introducing a general public-interest test (rec. 13).

More simply, Blight provides four general principles for secrecy offences by non-officials (such as journalists, NGOs and members of the public): offences should relate to the communication of information, focus on actual harms, apply only to serious harms and be narrower than offences for officials.

While the INSLM’s review is thorough and commendable, the government should not accept all its recommendations. The proposed change from ‘deemed harms’ to ‘actual harms’ is impracticable. ‘Actual harms’ might not be apparent for a long time (if ever), particularly where foreign intelligence services actively conceal the impact of leaks, or Australian agencies may highly classify ‘actual harms’ to maintain ongoing operational security. The current legislation focuses on risks to operations, capabilities, lives and national security, and creating a severe risk must still be an offence.

Blight also briefly touches upon the introduction of an Australian Defence Security Media Advisory (DSMA) notice system (otherwise known as a ‘D-notice’). As last year’s reporting indicated, and as Blight surmised, ‘there is not a level of trust that would enable a DSMA Notice System to work well in Australia.’

Instead, we need a unique Australian alternative: a consultive body to build a closer working relationship between the media and the national-security community. Policymakers should not be estranged from the fourth estate, particularly when our security environment calls for improved public awareness, discourse and democratic resilience. Experienced national security journalists already demonstrate the utility of collaboration, but an accessible engagement mechanism would further expand journalists’ access to the NIC, boost transparency and improve public perception.

The consultative body would provide journalists with the opportunity to voluntarily discuss received classified information directly with national security and intelligence officials. It should consist of representatives from each NIC agency, overseen by a representative from the Office of National Intelligence.

As opposed to a D-notice system, this body cannot become just a potential source of injunctions. Journalists and relevant NIC representatives could liaise on impending reporting across a range of national security matters, and the NIC representatives could advise of potential risks or provide backgrounding.

It would be incumbent on the NIC representatives to be persuasive, should they believe that reporting needs adjusting. Should this mechanism start to lead towards a series of injunctions journalists would simply—and quite understandably—stop engaging with it.

The NIC is increasingly engaging with journalism, led by Burgess’s annual threat assessment and media appearances. Failure to create a workable mechanism and build a closer relationship between the NIC and the media may come with real national security risks. As noted by former ASIS director-general Paul Symon, national security policy without social licence exposes Australia to disinformation attacks designed to divide and dislocate us.

In such an environment, necessary security policies could be spun into a controversial wedge by foreign actors, or misinterpreted by domestic actors, and ultimately diminish our national security.

A member of the Pacific family is in crisis, and how Australia responds next will shape its partnerships for years to come.

Following unrest among pro-independence Kanaks in New Caledonia, Australia needs to back the diplomatic intervention of other members of the Blue Pacific. And it should tell France, for France’s own good, to hold a replacement for a discredited referendum that overwhelmingly rejected independence in 2021.

Australia faces a choice between, on one hand, demonstrating its attentiveness and commitment to its Pacific family and, on the other, staying silent for the sake of preserving relations with France and hoping to offend no one.

Violence broke out in New Caledonia on 13 May as the French parliament was about to vote on a constitutional amendment that would have reshaped the electoral roll in the French overseas territory. Pro-independence Kanaks saw it as an attempt to water down their voting power. New Caledonian society remains tense, and violence threatens to erupt again.

Other Pacific island countries have put New Caledonia firmly on the agenda for an upcoming summit of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). Australia should step up and support the PIF in its calls for a visiting mission and a resolution to the crisis. It should also privately lobby Paris not to block such a visit.

A Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting that Japan held in mid-July became a perfect opportunity for Pacific leaders to discuss issues in person. The most pressing one was the evolving crisis in New Caledonia.

While their leaders were in Tokyo on 17 July, the members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group issued a statement declaring the referendum ‘illegitimate and null and void’, opposed the militarisation of New Caledonia and called for a series of international missions. The group is formed by Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the New Caledonian independence movement FLNKS.

Cook Islands prime minister and current PIF chair Mark Brown on the same day that the results of the referendum were ‘not really valid’ as a result of the boycott by the Kanak population due to COVID-19 and cultural mourning periods. Only 3.5 percent of voters supported independence, but turnout was very low. Then on 22 July the PIF said it would send representatives from Fiji, Tonga and Cook Islands to New Caledonia; they would report back to a PIF Summit to be held from 26 to 30 August.

With New Caledonia firmly on the Pacific agenda and momentum building into the PIF summit, those without a clear position are being pushed to declare one. Brown said: ‘New Caledonia is a PIF member, and we have a responsibility to take care of our family in a time of need.’

Australia’s response to the PIF’s calls to help a family member in need will shape perceptions of its true commitment to the region. Currently, Australia is increasingly isolated in its silence, as New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has joined Pacific partners in questioning the legitimacy of the independence referendum.

Despite France’s poor handling of the 2021 referendum, two held in 2018 and 2020, in which majorities rejected independence fairly narrowly, were viewed as free and fair. This should be reason for hope that France can act responsibly and negotiate a peaceful political settlement.

Yet France has not responded to requests for a mission by the PIF, preoccupied by the Paris Olympic games being held right now and by political wrangling that has followed an inconclusive snap election. If France fails to allow the PIF mission to New Caledonia before the PIF summit takes place, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a temporary change in status as a dialogue partner.

Australia should support the PIF in its calls for a resolution of the crisis and work to bring France around. If Australia doesn’t actively support the PIF, it too may find friends a little more hostile at the upcoming forum. Eight civilians and two gendarmes died in the in the first few weeks of the riots. Action must be taken to de-escalate the situation, promote understanding and dialogue and find a path forward.

There are concerns that an independent New Caledonia will face economic and political instability and that Australia will be burdened with the significant cost of being the primary supporter of a new, poor country. Another consideration is the potential influence and presence of China in any newly independent state in the region; that will remain a factor in long-term strategic planning.

France’s presence does contribute to upholding the region’s security, in many ways and France is a particularly important Western partner to Australia. But these issues are secondary to the immediate calls to address the current crisis, and Australia cannot let itself be driven by a fear of the region losing French support.

If Australia wants to back France, it should do so by encouraging France to negotiate. Ideally, France would agree to hold another referendum to account for the complaints about the previous one and use an electoral roll that, as far as possible, matches that of the third referendum. That, at least, would be a starting point.

Another referendum, even another ‘no’ result, would at least address the primary concern around the third referendum’s legitimacy. This would remove some immediate tension and require all parties to reassess their positions and focus on a fair political settlement. Another referendum would also make Australia’s choice easier: Canberra would endorse either the peaceful implementation of a ‘yes’ vote or the necessary political (re)negotiations that would follow another democratically endorsed ‘no’.

A definitive solution in New Caledonia is highly unlikely in the short term. If Australia is serious about its place in the Pacific family, it should be preparing for eventualities where France doesn’t contribute to the region in the ways which it currently does through development aid and security.

Even if the crisis in New Caledonia is resolved or de-escalates again to a slow burn, France’s position in the region is irreversibly stained. Local leaders will likely be more willing to push back against France’s influence and presence. Australia needs to put priority on its own relationship with the region and back the PIF. This means it is time for Australia to take a firmer stance on the New Caledonian issue and be ready to tackle the region’s security issues with less help from France.

Australia differs from most other countries whose governance is based on Western precepts, because the nations that are most central to our external focus have historical, ethnic and religious backgrounds different to our own.

Their level of economic development is in the main much lower than ours.  Most have been subjected to colonialism.

All  these factors colour their outlook and expectations.

This feature of our external environment presents Australia with two sets of tension as determinants of foreign policy—between interests and values, and between geography and history.

At bedrock, our national interests are defined by security interests—our safety, territory, society and way of life—and our economic interests or prosperity.

As for our values, there is no real doubt. They are Western. We don’t need to apologise for that. Indeed, as others have noted, there are things about Australia that Asia would like to emulate.

That said, some of our most tricky regional problems have derived from values-related issues. For example, over the years, the question of capital punishment of Australian citizens has caused ructions in our dealings with Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

While there is a wealth of debate about which carries more weight in international dealings—interests or values—both count.

The second major determinant of our external policy direction is the contest between our geography and history.

We understand our geography pretty well. But we look at it through the prism of our history. Australian external policy has historically placed greatest emphasis on close alliances with powerful like-minded friends. Our hallmark is being on the team.

As a country—not just as a government—we think like the team. Our focus is inevitably on the team itself: essentially the United States and others in the West; to some degree on Japan and India; and, on the opposition, China and Russia.

Our own region sees our place on the Western team not just as a vital aspect of Australian foreign policy—and let us agree it should be—but as its paramount feature, which is questionable.

We are also a nation that has crushes on others in our region—Indonesia, India, China—and then allows the romance to fade; and one that mounts mighty studies on our place in the region, then runs out of puff, or changes governments and doesn’t follow through.

You entitled to ask: ‘This is all well and good, but what are we supposed to do?’

First, and this is from a member of a profession supposed to worry about upsetting foreigners, we must not water down for overseas consumption, advocacy of our cardinal national values.

Indeed, we must make clear our aversion to conduct contrary to the norms that most of the world claims it espouses—essentially, those set out in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

This is  a different thing to allowing our Western political culture indiscriminately to impact our foreign policy discourse. For example, Paul Keating’s description in 1993 of Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad as a ‘recalcitrant’ or Tony Abbott’s reference to Australia’s $1billion gift to Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami when seeking to prevent the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Second, still on values, the shadow of our historical attitudes on race—both on aspects of immigration policy and treatment of indigenous Australians—continues to hover over us.

Particularly when you have form, episodes such as the One Nation saga, the Indian student crisis or the fate of the Voice, reverberate abroad. The colonial experience of most of our neighbours has left some neuralgic on questions of race. We need to get our own house in better order—and keep it that way.

Third, soft power—the ability to persuade and influence without coercion—is one determinant of international outcomes. However, soft power cannot be engendered by government fiat. And we cannot just tell the US and other Western countries to lift their game and behave better.

The deterioration in political mores in the US, and arguably elsewhere in the West, underlines that such Western soft power as still exists will not have the same positive impact in the current Western competition with China and Russia as it did in the Cold War.

Fourth, if, with the diminution of Western soft power, we want to maintain a global order even partly akin to the one that has prevailed over the past 80 years, we and others in the West must realise we are not cutting it with the Global South.

It is in the Global South that competition for global influence will be most pronounced. It is the West’s interest that it addresses the issues that hound the Global South—debt, climate, people movements and so on.

We have a part to play in that global context.

For a start, we could raise our official development assistance to 0.32 percent of gross national income, the average for member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, from our current level of less than 0.2 percent.

Fifth, we must focus not just more on the Global South but on our own region within it—and not just on those who share our worries about China, but on those who might not.

Australia started late as a serious regional actor, arguably after the fall of Singapore.

My cohort in the foreign service reported to those who had been present at its creation.

Australia engaged the region in a spirit of enquiry and zest and a sense that our destiny lay there.

The Colombo Plan contributed to the development of our neighbours. Our main universities were centres of excellence on the region. And crucially we dismantled the White Australia policy—opening the door to the multicultural country of today.

Despite this, our earlier sense that Australia’s destiny is in the region has dissipated. We must redress this.

This is about re-educating ourselves about the region. It is about all-of-nation heft.

We will always have to deal with a neighbourhood comprising systems different to our own.

In my lifetime we have come a long way. But we have a way to go—in educating ourselves, in economic engagement and the patient and persistent work of diplomacy. We must keep our own house is in order. We must do better—a lot better.