After a distinguished policing career spanning more than 30 years, including five in the top job as Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Andrew Colvin has decided to call it a day.

For the first 25 years of his career, Colvin was an operational police officer who shunned the spotlight. His commitment to his work saw him quickly become one of Australia’s counterterrorism experts—a title he would be uncomfortable with. In 2003, he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for his role in the police investigation of the Bali bombing and the victim-identification process. So in 2014, when he was appointed commissioner, more than a few in Canberra were scratching their heads and asking, ‘Who’s Colvin?’

While there can be little doubt that he achieved much in these years, it’s been the past five years as top cop where he has made a lasting difference. During his time as commissioner, Colvin has proved that he is the first of a new generation of senior law enforcement officials.

That isn’t because he was significantly younger than most Australian police commissioners and Commonwealth law enforcement agency bosses when he was appointed. Neither is it because he was Harvard-educated and is far more cerebral than most of Australia’s operational police.

These are factors that have shaped his thinking and leadership style, but what really set Colvin apart was the energetic honesty he has brought to the office of commissioner and his commitment to challenge those around him to consider ‘How can we be better?’

Colvin’s new school of policing values a strategic approach that focuses on solving problems and working with partners. But he has done more than ponder problems. While many a retired  commissioner has recognised that police can’t arrest themselves out of problems like illicit drug use, Colvin has been working hard to develop innovative policing responses.

By challenging the policing status quo, Colvin has earned wide respect from Canberra’s senior policymakers.

In contrast, getting more traditional-thinking police officers to embrace his new law enforcement approaches has been challenging. Old-school policing has a sharp operational focus on the good ‘pinch’ (arrest) of senior criminals, large drug busts and big cash seizures rather than solving the underlying problems.

There can be no doubt that the AFP has achieved much while Colvin has been at the helm. It has been critical in the disruption of 16 terror plots since 2014. It has consistently broken illicit drug seizure records, and the list of other more operational successes is lengthy.

In 2016, concerned about bullying and harassment, Colvin had former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick undertake an independent review of the AFP. And he then courageously made the damning findings publicly available, before embarking on a comprehensive agenda for change.

While they may not be directly linked to their service, five workplace suicides since February 2017 will leave Colvin reflecting on whether he could have done more.

Then, in March 2018, likely much to the chagrin of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, Colvin told a Senate estimates committee that his 6,500-strong organisation faced a ‘supply and demand’ challenge. The commissioner described a force experiencing greater demand for its services in the face of increasing crime.

But arguably Colvin’s greatest achievements are related to his commitment to developing new law enforcement strategies while maintaining the statutory independence of the AFP.

Despite the formation of the Department of Home Affairs, and Dutton’s ‘old school’ punitive approach to law enforcement, Colvin has vigorously defended in private and public the statutory independence of the AFP.

In two months’ time, when Colvin leaves the AFP, his legacy will be broad and lasting.

The next AFP commissioner will need strength of character, political acumen and tenacity to ensure the AFP remains strategically focused on community safety rather than on delivering on the government’s tough talk. The AFP will also need a commissioner who can proactively defend it against any encroachment by Home Affairs into operational matters.

Finding a suitable replacement for Colvin will be no easy task. The next commissioner will need to resolve several issues.

To start, there’s a growing global surplus of illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, which is driving down wholesale drug prices. Criminal groups in the Golden Triangle and Mexico have shifted their focus to the production and distribution of synthetic drugs. And since 2015, East and Southeast Asia have become the leading subregions for methamphetamine seizures worldwide.

The continued globalisation of Australia’s crime problem is shifting policing responsibilities from the states and territories to the Commonwealth.

The bottom line is that the AFP is facing a widening gap between the amount of crime that’s occurring and its capacity to respond.

At the same time, the AFP’s budget has been in a steady state of decline for several years.

The AFP’s supply-and-demand challenge has had deep impacts on the morale and wellbeing of its workforce.

Conspiracy theories that Colvin had ‘seen the writing on the wall’ or was walking away from the fallout of the media raids don’t stack up. His adroit interview yesterday on the ABC’s 7.30 illustrates his ability to answer the tough questions.

The truth is that, on several occasions leading up to his appointment as AFP commissioner, Colvin clearly stated that he would only ever do one term as Australia’s top cop. So, if this week’s announcement shows anything, it’s that, as always, Colvin is a man of his word.

There are still some weeks to go, but, unfortunately, Colvin’s departure on 1 October will leave a gaping hole in Australia’s law enforcement community that will be difficult to fill at a time when the AFP’s independence is under sustained threat.

Australia’s climate is projected to become harsher, putting more stress on our living conditions. Arguably, we need to adapt the design, use and maintenance of infrastructure and building stocks in response to a changing climate and more disruptive climatic impacts.

Our national prosperity, and future economy, will increasingly depend on how well infrastructure and buildings can cope with heatwaves and more frequent extreme weather.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change defines climate adaptation as ‘adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts’.

Climate adaptation strategies and plans do exist in Australia. The Victorian government has described adaptation as ‘changes in natural or human systems to prepare for actual or expected changes in the climate in order to minimise harm, act on opportunities or cope with the consequences.’ All other states have similar policy frameworks in place. A question that comes to mind is about whether a framework or strategy is enough.

Canada is changing its building code regime to adapt to projected climate-related impacts. While those changes will be rolled out over time, evidence is surfacing that the rate of change in climate variables may be escalating.

A 2019 study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada’s changing climate report, indicates that Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, and that northern Canada is heating up at almost three times the global average rate. Internal Canadian government reports have suggested that unmitigated infrastructure failure relatable to climate impacts could amount to losses in the vicinity of C$300 billion.

Concern has also been raised in the UK by the Committee on Climate Change (an independent statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008) that efforts to adapt the country’s housing stock to the impacts of higher average temperatures, flooding and water scarcity are also lagging far behind what’s needed to keep Britons safe and comfortable, even as those factors grow more likely.

Australia’s National Construction Code (NCC) doesn’t include any specific reference to climate change adaptation. As the code provides the minimum standard for the construction and liveability of new buildings, work needs to be done now to include climate change provisions in the next iteration of the NCC, which will be reviewed in 2022.

In many parts of the country, we’re already starting to see the effects of climate change. In January, Australians endured a record-breaking heatwave, which was partly responsible for the deaths of millions of fish in the Darling River.

As noted in an insightful Arup report on rethinking the adaptation of cities to an arid climate, there may be resilient-design lessons to learn from modern and historical experiences in the Arabian Gulf and other locations in arid or desert-like settings.

The logic of complementary learning from other designs for Australia is simple. Our climate will become drier and much warmer. It will also include persistently higher-than-average temperatures, increasing requirements for more energy-efficient buildings and widespread environmental health exposures that we haven’t experienced before.

Climate change adaptation isn’t a new concept in Australia. It’s an issue that’s already received strong government attention. In the early 2000s, millions of dollars were invested in climate adaptation research, most notably in Victoria and Queensland. Queensland’s National Climate Change Adaptation Facility (NCCARF) at Griffith University was established in 2008. The Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research (VCCCAR) was created in 2009. These university research centres, alongside the CSIRO, led the research effort in what seemed to be a very promising and stimulating line of work that could radically change the way we build infrastructure and organise our cities.

Since 2014, however, the federal government’s interest in this research seems to have faded, and Australia’s research efforts look to have stalled. CSIRO, NCCARF and VCCCAR have faced a slew of funding cuts. In 2014, federal funding for VCCCAR and NCCARF was cut, and CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, set up in 2007, was shut down. CSIRO continued to conduct adaptation research, but the research effort ended up being redirected to other divisions.

As Dr Rod Keenan, a professor at the University of Melbourne and an expert on Australian climate science, pointed out in February, ‘climate adaptation has become almost invisible in the national research landscape’. At a time when climate adaptation is becoming more pressing than ever, government leadership is somewhat ephemeral.

In this context, it seems logical to ensure that the NCC and, by extension, state-based building guides provide clarity by embedding guidance on how to design and construct in ways that allow adaptation to a changing environment. And it seems like it would be relatively easy to do so.

Of course, there’ll need to be a more consistent and stronger government effort to re-emphasise the importance of climate adaptation. While local governments, industry groups and civil society can work towards developing a more resilient Australia, success will ultimately come down to how much the government is able, and seriously willing, to tackle this issue. Adaptation will require input from multiple government departments and cooperation between them to succeed.

Australia wouldn’t be alone in recognising a need to update and change the facility of building codes. The Canadian and UK governments have recognised specific gaps in their regulatory coverage: we should also consider our exposures to climate impacts.

Climate adaptation isn’t an insurmountable challenge, but the government’s lethargy and seeming lack of commitment need to change. Adapting the NCC to address climate change would be a great start.

The idea of the north of Australia being central to the new concept of the defence of Australia in the 1970s derived from the key strategic fact that the only country in the region with the conventional military capabilities to threaten Australia was Indonesia.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Indonesia had the world’s third-largest communist party and was armed by the Soviet Union with modern submarines and long-range bombers. Australia’s response was to acquire F-111 fighter-bombers and Oberon-class submarines.

However, by the 1980s, much of Indonesia’s military equipment was either out of date or suffering from a chronic lack of maintenance. Hence, the 1986 Dibb review and the 1987 defence white paper focused on the potential threat of low-level conflict, which could conceivably be escalated to the use by Indonesia of its deteriorating Soviet military equipment.

The 1972 defence review and the 1976 defence white paper had both emphasised the relevance of the defence of the north of Australia in such contingencies. But successive governments had done little about it, even though President Richard Nixon’s Guam doctrine in 1968 had made it clear that—short of nuclear war—America’s allies were expected to be able to defend themselves in credible conventional contingencies.

It is not generally known that the real reason why Defence Minister Kim Beazley asked me in 1985 to undertake the review of Australia’s defence capabilities was the entrenched differences of opinion between the senior military and civilian hierarchies in the defence organisation and their inability, after 12 months, to come to even a preliminary agreement on force structure priorities for the defence of Australia. The then secretary of defence, William Cole, advised Beazley that he should consider recruiting an independent expert.

The secretary and the chief of the defence force had got bogged down in exchanging 130 classified memos about the theology of defence policy on such concepts as defence warning time; low-level conflict; more substantial conflict; and whether Australia’s unique geography should basically determine its force structure, as distinct from expeditionary forces for operations at great distance from Australia. Most of the ensuing debate was not constructive: it was hostile with little agreement on even basic principles for force structure priorities.

My main policy aim was to arrive at a workable compromise between these bitterly held positions. But, at the same time, I argued strongly for the priority to be given to the defence of Australia and, in that context, to stress the relevance of Australia’s northern approaches. The focus of the review’s recommendations about the north was as follows:

• The army should locate a regular infantry battalion in the Darwin area expandable to a three-battalion brigade group, as well as establish a joint force headquarters (Northern Command, or NORCOM).
• The navy’s submarine base should be relocated from Sydney to Cockburn Sound near Fremantle. The review also proposed the acquisition of a light patrol frigate, which became the Anzac ships, and recommended that the navy take mining and mine countermeasures much more seriously.
• The air force should complete the chain of strategically important military bare bases across the north by building an airfield on the Cape York Peninsula in addition to the bases at Tindal, Learmonth and Derby.

There were other recommendations relevant to the defence of northern Australia, with priorities to be given to army reserves, including Norforce; the protection of northern ports such as Dampier, Port Hedland, Darwin, Gove and Weipa against mining; the requirement for a significant presence of surface patrol assets in offshore focal areas such as Dampier, the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea, the Torres Strait, Christmas Island, and the Indian Ocean approaches.

The strongest resistance came from the army, which without the leadership of the chief of the general staff, Peter Gration, would never have agreed to transfer the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Holsworthy in Sydney to Darwin. We were fortunate when Gration became chief of the defence force and gave strong support for the 1987 defence white paper. Later, when General John Baker became CDF, he made clear his views to me about the defence of Australia by stating, ‘It was inevitable that the idea of the independent defence of Australia should be taken seriously.’

I would note here that the army has recently detached a battalion from 1 Brigade in Darwin to be relocated 2,600 kilometres to the south at Edinburgh, apparently so it can benefit from the all-weather training area at Cultana.

The navy resisted the move to shift its submarine base from Sydney to Fremantle because it allegedly would be difficult to recruit enough numbers of submariners from eastern Australia to live in such a remote location. The air force strongly resisted the review’s recommendation that ground force tactical helicopters and their crews become operationally part of the army. In retrospect, that was a mistake given the army’s subsequent operational record.

So, we now come to today’s deteriorating strategic environment for Australia. As Richard Brabin-Smith and I argued in Australia’s management of strategic risk in the new era: ‘[F]or the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect of threat from a major power.’ We noted that the expansion of China’s military capabilities will mean that the warning time for potential contingencies will become shorter.

China is already using coercion to challenge the presence of other countries—including Australia—in the waters of Southeast Asia. We cannot afford to have our strategic space constricted in this way. China’s military presence in the South China Sea has brought its capacity to project military power 1,200–1,400 kilometres closer to Australia’s northern approaches.

None of this is to argue that China is necessarily going to become a direct military threat. But the simple fact is that China will increasingly have the military capability to mount high-intensity operations against us. We must now develop our military capabilities to deny any such threat, including access to bases and facilities in our neighbourhood.

These radical changes to our strategic circumstances will require a fundamental review of our force structure and readiness and the expansion base of the Australian Defence Force. The problem is that there’s a yawning gap between the growing concerns of many defence experts in this country and the relaxed views of the general population and business community.

According to the vice chief of the defence force, David Johnston, during the Q&A following his keynote speech at ASPI’s ‘War in 2025’ conference on 13 June 2019, Defence is now undertaking a mobilisation review. It is to be hoped that such a review will include some or all the following: a review of readiness and the expansion base to include numbers of combat pilots and submariners; proposals for greatly expanded stocks of war-shot missiles and munitions; recognition of the need to guarantee the ADF’s fuel supplies in the north of Australia; attention to the hardening of northern bases against strikes and electronic-warfare attacks; and the sustainability planning required for round-the-clock military operations against a capable modern adversary.

There is an urgent need to review Australia’s long-range air and maritime strike capabilities and the delivery of adequate numbers of platforms in a time frame relevant to Australia’s deteriorating strategic circumstances.

Unlike in the Cold War, Australia’s strategic geography as the pivot between the Pacific and Indian oceans is now assuming much more strategic relevance. This means that we will have to revisit the disposition of our forces and their capabilities in the north and west of our continent. The most vulnerable geographic approaches to our continent are still in the north. But, unlike at the time of the Dibb review, we will now have to prepare for high-intensity contingencies against a major power with which we don’t share national security values.

Straight-line extrapolations from the comfortable past—including the 2016 defence white paper—will not be good enough because time is no longer on our side.

President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017 embracing a ‘transactional’ outlook towards alliance politics. US alliances would be managed less on traditional friendship and more on assessments of how the United States would gain alliance affiliation. For America’s longstanding Southeast Asian regional treaty allies as Thailand and the Philippines, the implications of the new US administration’s transactional posture for future relations with Washington were unclear. Both of these allies had already moved far towards hedging against the US by substantially upgrading their economic—and, in Thailand’s case, military—ties with China.

More than halfway through his elected term of office, however, Trump has drifted back towards implementing a strategy for the Indo-Pacific that’s more in tune with those of previous US administrations. He announced his support for a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ during a November 2017 trip to Asia and confirmed it the following month with his release of a new national security strategy. The fundamental precepts included the principles of freedom of navigation and overflight, the rule of law, freedom from coercion, respect for sovereignty, private enterprise and open markets, and freedom of independence of all nations.

As I explain in a new ASPI report, released today, the national security strategy’s obvious emphasis on maritime and commercial interests dovetailed naturally with a renewed US focus on the ‘southern flank’ component of its Indo-Pacific alliance network and on greater Southeast Asia. The southern-flank portion of the US regional alliance network—also known as the ‘San Francisco system’—includes formal bilateral defence treaties with Thailand and the Philippines and the ANZUS Treaty with Australia. It also involves substantial American strategic partnerships with such ASEAN states as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam that complement the more formal components of US alliance networking in the region.

ASEAN’s geographical location places it squarely in the centre of two key sea lanes of communication through which much of the world’s maritime commerce flows—the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea. If the US were denied access to—and the ability to control—such conduits during war or high crises, its influence within, and its ability to traverse and trade throughout, the entire Indo-Pacific region would be critically impeded. To preclude such outcomes, various Southeast Asian states must, combined with their ANZUS counterparts, work to sustain an enduring balance of power in the region.

Trump has worked visibly to modify the tensions with both the Philippines and Thailand that intensified under the Obama administration. He repeatedly praised Rodrigo Duterte when attending the 2017 ASEAN summit which the Philippines leader hosted, downplayed the human rights issue and emphasised continued US support for Philippine counterterrorism operations.

In March 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Philippines and outlined a significant shift in Washington’s traditional interpretation of the US–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty by explicitly warning that ‘[a]ny armed attack on Philippine forces, aircraft or public vessels in the South China Sea will trigger mutual defence obligations’.

Trump hosted Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha at the White House in October 2017. The visit partially modified Thai–American tensions over human rights and facilitated increased US–Thai security cooperation. Bilateral Thai–US military exercises were also accelerated.

In the broader Indo-Pacific, the US has, for well over a decade, cultivated upgraded defence ties with India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Indonesia’s strong legacy of non-alignment, and its self-appointed role as ASEAN’s guardian against external great-power competition, still render Indonesia’s partnership with both Australia and the US, however, as qualified. Closer US–Malaysian defence ties are being developed as a counterweight to the ‘China factor’. For example, the Cope Taufan 18 bilateral tactical airlift exercise held in July 2018 focused on air superiority, airborne command and control, interdiction, air refuelling, and tactical airlift and airdrop.

Despite its relatively small size and population (approximately 5.7 million), Singapore is viewed by many in Washington and Canberra as a de facto ally with its own highly modernised military underpinned by a comparatively high defence spending rate and motivated by common threat perceptions, including fears of an unstable South China Sea. Australia and Singapore signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement in 2015.

The US–Vietnam Bilateral Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding in 2011 initiated collaboration in maritime security. US assistance in developing the Vietnam Coast Guard’s participation in the Rim of the Pacific maritime exercise, and the lifting of a long-term American ban on arms sales to Vietnam in 2016, have been reciprocated by at least tacit Vietnamese support for US naval activities in the South China Sea. This positive momentum is tempered, however, by Vietnam’s still constrained posture that precludes alienating the more geographically proximate and economically crucial China relationship.

US regional allies and partners remain uncertain about American staying power in their neighbourhood. The slow development of the Australia–India–Japan–United States Quadrilateral Defence Initiative, the relatively modest US funding to promote Southeast Asia’s regional security (US$300 million) and China’s determined efforts to cultivate enhanced regional influence have reinforced ASEAN’s propensity to apply hedging strategies designed to preclude either American or Chinese dominance over their region. But America’s continued presence is supported throughout Southeast Asia.

In these circumstances, applying the ANZUS alliance to breathe new life into the San Francisco system’s southern flank and its peripheries may well be worth pursuing. Three such measures immediately come to mind and are offered as policy recommendations here. One is upgrading joint policy planning between the ANZUS allies and Manila on how to respond forcefully and credibly to Chinese challenges of Philippines-claimed territories in the South China Sea. A second is for the US and Australia to extend their already well-established diplomatic posture of ceding the political destiny of Vietnam to the Vietnamese people to both the Philippines and Thailand. Finally, any Australian government, of whatever persuasion, must remain steadfast in encouraging US policy consistency in its alliance politics in the Indo-Pacific.

The durability of the San Francisco system remains one of the democratic community’s most valued security frameworks. ANZUS policymakers could do far worse than to assist in ensuring that it stays that way.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that more Royal Australian Navy vessels will be built at the Henderson shipyard south of Perth, and the plan appears to have bipartisan support. The 2016 defence white paper and the associated integrated investment program have already committed to decades of continuous submarine and frigate building in South Australia.

Of course, there’s never been any doubt about the implementation of defence policies in southern Australia. In contrast, changes in defence investment patterns in Australia’s north seem to have flown under the political radar.

Both the government and the opposition have declared their support for defence and national security initiatives in northern Australia. However, they might be surprised to learn that the current level of commitment to the north isn’t what Labor set out in its 2009 and 2013 defence white papers or what the Coalition said in its 2016 white paper.

The 2015 white paper on developing northern Australia pledged to strengthen the Department of Defence’s presence in the region. And the 2016 defence white paper stated: ‘Investment in our national defence infrastructure—including the Army, Navy and Air Force bases in northern Australia, including in Townsville and Darwin, as well as the Air Force bases Tindal, Curtin, Scherger and Learmonth—will be a focus.’ It also predicted that Defence’s presence and investment in northern Australia would gradually increase.

However, there’s a growing body of evidence indicating that the gap is widening between strategic policy and Defence’s actual activities and presence in the north.

To begin with, Defence annual reports reveal that the number of personnel in the Northern Territory is already at an 11-year low.

In 2016, Defence sent a brigadier to Darwin to brief the local government and industry on its plans. The headline was that it was going to significantly increase expenditure on facilities and infrastructure to the tune of $7.7 billion over 10 years. In the almost three years since that visit, it’s estimated that Defence’s spend on facilities and infrastructure development and maintenance in the Northern Territory has fallen to under $1 billion.

In March 2018, Defence sent a colonel, to brief the same people, this time with a revised figure: $3.1 billion to be spent over six years. While Defence might be planning to spend another $3.6 billion right after the six-year commitment ends, that seems unlikely.

Defence intimated to those at this briefing that the US government would be investing in infrastructure development in support of the Marine Rotational Force—Darwin (MRF-D) initiative, which aspires to establish a marine air–ground taskforce of up to 2,500 personnel in Australia’s north.

While the MRF-D has been present since 2012, only one Northern Territory business has succeeded in obtaining a contract to supply the Americans. Local construction firms in the Northern Territory have reported challenges meeting the US government’s Miller Act bond requirements. The US requires Australian businesses to provide performance and payment bonds each equal to 100% of the original contract price—a level of bonding significantly higher than that used in the Australian market.

Then, in February this year, the US government’s plan to spend US$76 million on bulk fuel storage in Darwin was ‘earmarked’ as a cost saving to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall.

‘Earmarks’ don’t always become budget realities in the US, but it’s a reminder to Australia that we need to actively support the US Marines’ presence in the north, maximising the benefits that they get from engaging with the Australian Defence Force. A Marine Corps that values the training experience will protect the deployment and resist pressures to make savings to fund other political objectives.

Defence’s dwindling northern presence and opaque investment strategy come at a time of great strategic uncertainty.

The defence of Australia isn’t just about troop numbers and infrastructure development in the north. But it gets very hard to project force to defend Australia’s northern approaches on short notice if neither the personnel nor the infrastructure is there.

If that isn’t enough justification, the development of industry capacity in Australia’s strategically important north is critical for defence and national security.

The strategic defence and security outlook for the Indo-Pacific has deteriorated substantially since the MRF-D initiative was developed. And this change makes the presence of the Marine Corps in Darwin all the more important as an expression of America’s strategic commitment to the security of the region.

Australia has an integral role to play here by ensuring we fund our part of the cost of developing shared facilities in the north.

Both sides of politics should commit to strengthening an amphibious capability in the ADF that’s able to work with the marines and other partners in the region.

Now is the time for a renewed bipartisan commitment to the importance of a strong security presence in the north, including the US Marines presence.