Nothing Found
Sorry, no posts matched your criteria
Sorry, no posts matched your criteria
It’s often hard work. It’s often in the face of ingrained habits of anxiety and suspicion. But Australia is steadily building closer links with that place that is in some ways its most natural partner in east Asia: Taiwan.
Rather than ‘place’, I feel tempted to write ‘country’. A few years ago, the embassy of the People’s Republic of China sent a polite and, in the end, slightly puzzled diplomat to explain to me mistakes in articles I’d written.
Foremost was that I’d referred to Taiwan as a country. I explained that readers might be perplexed as to what else to call a place that had its own constitution, elected its own leaders, printed its own money and defended its own borders.
Australians feel comfortable in Taiwan, however it’s described. It has a similarly sized population. It has an effective universal healthcare system. Visitors fly there without needing visas. Its indigenous population is about the same, proportionally—though with closer links culturally to Pacific islanders, who mostly derived from Asia via Taiwan. It was the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage. It’s a comparatively egalitarian, middle-class place and generally the most socially progressive in the region. Its physical beauty mirrors that of New Zealand’s South Island, which it resembles a little topographically.
Of course, there’s a huge economic difference. Australia’s only world-leading industry is to discover, extract and export resources, which we do brilliantly. Taiwan’s is to innovate, develop and market the high-end semi-conductors used in almost every form of advanced activity and product in the world.
But that also means there’s big scope for joint endeavour, including in services, in which trade soared 50 percent in 2023. Overall, Taiwan became Australia’s sixth-biggest goods-and-services export market in 2023, while Australia became Taiwan’s fifth-largest import source. The prospects for further increases are high, with Taiwan’s GDP growth expected to reach about 4 percent for 2024. Mutual investment rose 24 percent in 2023 to $41 billion, split fairly evenly between the two, and with nine Taiwanese banks now operating in Australia, to which they have brought funds of $65 billion.
In early November, 11 Taiwanese biotech companies formed the biggest international delegation to participate in Australia’s largest life sciences conference this year, AusBiotech 2024, in Melbourne. Five of them are located at the Southern Taiwan Science Park, which coordinated the delegation.
In August, the 37th Australia-Taiwan Business Conference was held on Queensland’s Gold Coast, with more than 180 participants, almost a third from Taiwan. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘smart partnerships for a smart future’. It was organised by the Australia Taiwan Business Council, alongside its counterpart the Republic of China Australia Business Council, whose name reflects archaic pieties that Taiwan must retain to avoid being lambasted for seeking independence.
The conference featured major speakers and panels on critical minerals, energy transition, biotech, advanced manufacturing including defence and space, and cyber security. The speakers included Senator Tim Ayres, the assistant minister for trade and for a Future Made in Australia; Cameron Dick, the then deputy premier and treasurer of Queensland; and Donna Gates, the acting mayor of the Gold Coast. Three Queensland state and federal members of parliament participated, as did three parliamentarians from Taiwan.
Emerging business leaders made presentations, and plans are underway for an enhanced four-year program to build on this important network connecting young entrepreneurs and executives of Australia and Taiwan.
Next year’s conference is likely to be held in Taiwan’s lively second city, Kaohsiung, providing further opportunities for Australian businesspeople to deepen and broaden their Taiwan networks and commercial opportunities. The positive trend in the relationship would be enhanced considerably by the participation of Australia’s trade minister; it has been 12 years since a trade minister, then Craig Emerson, went to Taiwan.
Such a visit—especially if the minister is accompanied by a business delegation—would do much to further galvanise economic opportunities. Taiwan’s minister for economic affairs should also visit Australia with a business delegation.
In 2025, Australia will take the chair of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is therefore a strong case for Australia to encourage Taiwan to negotiate membership, and separately to negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement. However, Canberra’s overriding regional priority of stabilisation of the relationship with China makes such moves unlikely. But federally sponsored trade and investment missions—perhaps focused on areas such as biotech or green energy—would be a helpful alternative step.
In addition, a Future Made in Australia program might promisingly feature an agreement to foster the involvement of Taiwan tech companies in the development of critical minerals and rare earths processing in Australia.
Building such policy architecture would provide a helpful framework for the already promising commercial and cultural trends boosting connections between two natural regional partners.
Australia managed the first presidential term of Donald Trump as well as any nation. Now it can also manage the second term well.
In doing so, we must work with friends in our region to ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains the main US strategic focus. That also means stressing to Trump and his team that Ukraine’s survival is an Indo-Pacific priority.
Trump will demand more of allies, and we should revel in doing more to attend to our own security and that of others.
In 2017, Australia quickly understood that invoking its long friendship with the United States was not enough in dealing with the then newly elected Trump. He expected to see ongoing efforts in helping the US with its burdens. And we could show that: we had begun, in the national interest, taking stronger security measures against China and were paying an economic price for them.
It helped, too, that we were increasing our defence budget. Altogether, our relationship with the United States actually strengthened during Trump’s first administration.
In his first term, Trump turned US strategic attention decisively towards China. This was deeply in Australia’s interest. The US focus on the Indo-Pacific has continued through the administration of President Joe Biden, and we want it to continue in the coming Trump term.
It was also in the interests of such friends as India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, and still is. So, we should together send the reminder to Trump and his team that the Indo-Pacific is the main game, particularly because China is the captain of the totalitarian Axis.
In the face of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea working together, we should heed Edmund Burke’s clarion call of ‘when bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fail one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle’.
Vitally, Australia and its friends, including other Five Eyes members, should ensure Trump’s team knows that what happens to Ukraine matters for all of us. Trump and his future vice president, JD Vance, have campaigned on quickly stopping the war in Ukraine.
Australia cannot be silent on how damaging a victory for Vladimir Putin would be for Indo-Pacific countries, which would lose trust in the US and its allies and fall into fatalistic acceptance that China will dominate the region.
North Korea’s entry into the fight may have been the turning point needed to ensure the Trump team knows that Ukraine cannot be isolated from Indo-Pacific interests and that a victory for Putin would be a victory for his no-limits partner, Xi Jinping. This victory would be a setback for Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, Australia and the US itself.
Trump’s decision in his first term to compete with China included economic action, setting the West on a path away from policies that misjudged trade and financial links with China as proof of stability.
There can be no stability when the Axis regimes’ routine is destabilisation. They sometimes pause their campaigns, not in good faith but to seek compromises from us while they reload for their next phase of attacks on global rules.
So, we should work with the new Trump administration to further reduce economic dependence on China. For that, Trump has the right instincts.
He has the right instincts on China’s exploitation of the information domain, too. Australia should encourage him to continue what he started in applying sanctions and tariffs on the Chinese tech sector.
Australia and the US must strive together to counteract China’s abuse of the information domain to divide our nations, turn them against each other, undermine our democratic institutions and shift the global order. The tech sector and digital world should be high on the Australian list for engagement with the Trump team.
Both AUKUS and NATO are vital and must be strengthened. The US’s partners within those groupings will need to show Trump they are pulling their weight.
AUKUS should thrive, since Britain and especially Australia are already spending on it and will spend more, deepening their cooperation with the US. NATO members will likely start with a lesser goal of just keeping their alliance together. Most will have to prove they will not fall back into military slumber, leaving the US to do everyone’s job.
For them, Australia and other US friends in the Western Pacific, Trump’s expectations will mean, above all, that they must spend more on defence. They should do so willingly.
Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s foreign policy adviser, Takashi Kawakami, said recently that an America that demands more from allies could be an opportunity for Japan to become a ‘truly independent country … and create an environment that allows Japan to defend its sovereignty with its own strategy against foreign forces.’
It’s an argument that Australia should consider. It doesn’t mean isolation and terminating alliances with the US but, rather, strengthening ourselves to strengthen those alliances. We become stronger individually and collectively.
A new element of strategic competition is emerging in the Southern Ocean—in Australia’s backyard—in the form of Beijing’s push to control and exploit fisheries. The situation demands that we bolster capability while also cultivating consensus on the need to revise agreements to match the strategic realities of today.
Last week, the 43rd meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to establish either new fisheries agreements, or new protected marine zones in the Southern Ocean. CCAMLR hasn’t established a new marine conservation area since 2016. Worse, the meeting failed even to renew management agreements already in place.
CCAMLR was established in 1982 with an objective to conserve Antarctic and Southern Ocean marine life. It isa central component of the Antarctic Treaty system. Australia proudly publicises its role, beyond hosting the CCAMLR secretariat, as chasing the ‘important related goal [of enhancing] Australia’s influence in the Antarctic Treaty system [and maintaining] Australia’s reputation as a responsible manager of marine resources’.
But with food security a rising strategic priority for Beijing, it is looking to more fully exploit the waters of the Southern Ocean. Recent court rulings in China underscore the central role so-called ‘distant water fisheries’ (DWF) have in Beijing’s long-term security strategy. Earlier this year, China’s highest court awarded subsidies to one DWF enterprise ‘on the grounds that fishing in international waters is a strategic national priority’.
Krill is at the heart of a resource race in the Southern Ocean. The tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans are foundational to Antarctic and Southern Ocean marine life, and indeed are a key component of the global food chain. In recent years, the economic value of krill has been (re)discovered thanks to the boom in the global health supplement sector.
China has the largest distant water fishing fleet on earth. According to its own 2022 white paper on the Development of Distant Water Fisheries, China has 177 approved enterprises and 2551 vessels in the DWF sector operating on the high seas around the world. And that’s just what Beijing tells us about.
China is also working to popularise the notion of ‘sustainable use’ of fishery resources. Deployment of research vessels to map resource deposits is normalised daily business, often branded as an activity to help understand any protective requirements of the Southern Ocean. Untangling the strategies of resource use from efforts of resource protection is onerous.
Significantly, last week’s CCAMLR meeting was the first since Beijing inked new laws for China’s Coast Guard (CCG). Revisions to CCG law came into effect in June 2024, including new powers to arrest and detain foreigners undertaking ‘illegal violation in waters under China’s jurisdiction’ for up to 60 days without trial. But strikingly it does not define waters under China’s jurisdiction. Would the Southern Ocean fall under the expanded notion of CCG jurisdiction as part of China’s ‘national security interests’?
Furthermore, CCG law supports the creation of ‘temporary maritime security zones’ for its military’s use of the sea. Relevant to recent CCAMLR developments, it codifies Beijing’s intent to protect ‘important fishery waters’ and ‘fishery production operations’.
For decades, China has worked to lay foundations—indeed its own definitions of precedents—for its claims in the South China Sea. The potential for China to apply its CCG law to the Southern Ocean is obvious.
When it comes to international cooperation, we can blame certain states for frustrating consensus, but this does not mean we should walk away from such bodies as CCAMLR. There is merit in engaging even for performative reasons—that is, showing up and looking interested—as many other states do, so long as we are building our capacity to defend and deter with credible naval presence in the background. Or perhaps more aptly for maritime capability stretched Australia—pooling our kit with like-minded states.
Beijing is deliberately blurring the lines between using and protecting living resources in the Southern Ocean. It is consistently vetoing or blocking new marine protection efforts in CCAMLR by stating it needs to undertake more research. Want to protect a stretch of the Southern Ocean? Beijing needs to see or undertake scientific research supporting the call for protection.
Then there are questions as to the identity of personnel on China’s super-trawlers already active in the Southern Ocean. While we know China’s Coast Guard is mandated to protect these assets and their operations, could these fishermen also don military uniforms to execute the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic endeavours? This is surely not implausible.
Consensus bodies like CCAMLR are failing because international dynamics have evolved beyond the 1980s when they were established. Therefore our thinking must also evolve. Considering our AUKUS partners share a litany of strategic interests in the Southern Ocean, perhaps it is time to plan a ‘polar pillar’ for AUKUS. This could deliver technological enhancements from next-gen extreme-weather remote sensors to unmanned aerial vehicles and, of course, enhanced geospatial intelligence cooperation. Hopefully we can get creative and have some viable solutions to act on before the China’s first ‘temporary maritime security zone’ pops up in the Southern Ocean.
China is testing Prabowo Subianto’s new administration, with three successive incursions by China Coast Guard vessels into Indonesia’s exclusive maritime jurisdiction—the first occurring on the new president’s inaugural day in office.
Jakarta urgently needs to recalibrate its South China Sea diplomacy and to revisit its basic assumptions about China. China’s move south should also be a wake-up call to Canberra that its pursuit of supposed bilateral ‘stabilisation’ with Beijing is irrelevant to China’s strategic intentions.
These incursions are more than a test of Prabowo’s mettle. They are hard evidence that the economics-first, neutrality-based approach of Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo, fundamentally failed to temper China’s maritime expansionism in the southernmost reaches of the South China Sea. China is making it crystal clear to Prabowo that it still claims ownership over all waters and seabed resources within the dashed-line claim, including part of Indonesia’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the Natuna Islands.
This is despite Jakarta’s longstanding official position that it has no jurisdictional dispute with China, given the legally baseless nature of the Chinese ambit claim. However, under Prabowo, Indonesia’s maritime authorities appear to be implementing greater transparency about China’s activities near the Natuna Islands, quickly releasing video and audio of the Chinese Coast Guard’s challenges to Indonesian vessels in the area.
If Jakarta thought it had obtained a diplomatic modus vivendi with Beijing despite their differences in the South China Sea, China’s leadership clearly has other ideas. One prominent Indonesian analyst has argued that Philippines-China relations deteriorated because Manila’s diplomacy was out of kilter with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) holistic and non-confrontational approach towards Beijing. In fact, China’s incursions near the Natuna Islands should prompt Jakarta to question its own diplomatic settings towards China, ASEAN and the South China Sea. By failing to support the Philippines diplomatically, the previous Indonesian administration only emboldened China’s divide-and-conquer tactics, now seen on Indonesia’s maritime doorstep.
Under Widodo, Jakarta prioritised economic benefits in its relations with Beijing, contributing to China becoming Indonesia’s largest source of inward investment. Indonesia remained party to the intractable negotiations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a code of conduct in the South China Sea. But it did not invest real energy behind the effort, with the result that the process has drifted aimlessly from one ASEAN chairmanship to another, weakening the organisation’s collective resolve.
Indonesia must now belatedly put its full weight behind those negotiations, either to secure a meaningful outcome or terminate the talks if Beijing continues to stall. Jakarta should meanwhile muster diplomatic support within Southeast Asia for the Philippines, a fellow ASEAN founder member facing a clear external threat, as Indonesia did for Thailand in the 1980s. Southeast Asia’s collective security must come ahead of any single member’s economic benefit, in conformity with ASEAN’s foundational spirit and diplomatic purpose.
China has unfortunately received the message that Southeast Asia can easily be splintered by working bilaterally and exploiting its greater leverage relative to any one of the countries. Malaysia’s supplicatory position towards China under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has only fanned Beijing’s confidence that it can divide-and-rule ASEAN with ease.
One of China’s follow-up objectives is to persuade Indonesia that it should ‘properly handle maritime issues’, contingent on broader factors in their relationship. Jakarta should be alert to China’s bad-faith intentions, including offers of dialogue, and double down instead on the code-of-conduct negotiations. In doing so, it would return to its traditional leading-from-behind role within ASEAN.
Indonesia must vocally support the Philippines and Vietnam whenever they face Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. Jakarta should prioritise efforts to reach an EEZ boundary agreement with Vietnam, building on Indonesia’s successful maritime boundary delimitation with the Philippines. This will make it harder for Beijing to exploit differences among the Southeast Asian littoral states. Prabowo’s decision to send military assets to assist the Philippines as part of a four-nation ASEAN disaster relief mission was a commendable signal of solidarity and good will.
China may justifiably feel that Southeast Asia is tipping its way overall, and that the Philippines appears isolated within ASEAN. But poking Indonesia is never an advisable strategy. By overbearingly doing so, China reveals its hubris.
Prabowo may be a mercurial figure, but he’s unlikely to be a pushover. An axis of cooperation among Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam could still obstruct Beijing’s path towards dominance in the South China Sea. But Jakarta must draw its own clear-eyed conclusions about China’s strategic intent from first principles.
Australia should take note. Beijing’s direct challenge to Indonesia’s maritime sovereign rights, despite years of favourable treatment by Widodo, calls into question the meaning of what Canberra is calling ‘stabilisation’ with China.
Beijing’s strategic behaviour continues to be deeply inimical to Australia’s security within the immediate region. China is steadily marching south, while Australia’s government seemingly obsesses over lobsters and wine exports.
There is a glaring disconnect between policy and practical action in the Northern Territory.
Focusing the Australian Defence Force on Northern Australia is a straightforward decision. The Defence Strategic Review, National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Plan all highlight the necessity of deterring potential adversaries from projecting power against Australia through our northern approaches. These documents also emphasise the need for a well-connected and resilient network of bases to enhance the ADF’s operational capabilities in the north.
But transport and port infrastructure still look inadequate, ADF forces in the Northern Territory are decreasing, not building up, and it’s not clear that the area has Defence and civilian capacity to cope with demanding military contingencies. This needs to be tested.
Australia and the United States have made significant investments in the Royal Australian Air Force’s Tindal base, near Katherine in the Northern Territory, recognising its strategic importance in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has committed to further upgrading infrastructure and enhancing capabilities at Tindal, including for airfield operations and logistics support. Meanwhile, the US has bolstered its presence through initiatives such as increased deployment of aircraft and personnel, consolidating Tindal as a critical hub for regional security operations.
Despite these investments, questions remain about whether the base and connective transport and logistical infrastructure are sufficiently networked to ensure a robust response capability in the face of evolving geopolitical challenges. For example, it’s uncertain whether there are enough suitable trucks available to move fuels from Darwin to Tindal during periods of high operational tempo, or, without a rail link to the base, how munitions and other items can be brought from Adelaide to Tindal.
The ADF has recognised the need for enhanced training areas in the Northern Territory, spending significantly to ensure personnel are prepared for diverse operational scenarios. This includes expanding existing training facilities and developing new sites that exploit the region’s unique geographical features, allowing for more effective live-fire exercises and joint operations. However, the challenge remains that fewer, not more, Australian soldiers will be in the Northern Territory to fully use these enhanced training areas.
The Darwin-based 1st Brigade was once the most lethal formation in the Australian Army. In 2019, it was stripped of its tanks, armoured vehicles and mechanised designation as part of the army’s restructuring efforts.
All Darwin-based helicopters will have left by the end of 2024. The army is concentrating helicopters in Townsville.
In September 2023, the government announced army restructuring. The 1st Brigade was designated as a light combat brigade focussed on agility and deployment in the littoral environment. The Townsville-based 3rd Brigade was designated as an armoured brigade suiting amphibious operations with the Royal Australian Navy. Most of the army’s new amphibious vessels will be based in Townsville. The 1st Brigade’s amphibious vessels will be based in the already crowded HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin.
The army’s long-range fire capability, deterring potential adversaries from projecting power against Australia through our northern approaches, will confusingly be based in Adelaide. This is despite road and rail infrastructure between Adelaide and Darwin remaining unacceptably vulnerable to weather disruption. Moving by air is hardly an answer since airlift capacity never seems sufficient even in exercises, and Australia barely has any merchant shipping to call on.
The Royal Australian Navy has several vessels based in Darwin, including the Armidale-class patrol boats and the soon to commissioned Arafura-class patrol ships. The versatile Arafuras will bolster the navy’s capabilities in northern waters. However, the navy has limited moorings and options for supporting and rearming vessels in Darwin, Australia’s most northern deep port. Thus, the ships would all have to travel great distances from likely combat zones just to be combat ready once more.
There is a clear gap between the Northern Territory policy in the National Defence Strategy and action. While the US strengthens its presence and capabilities in the Northern Territory as part of its force posture initiative, Australia’s action is spending on bases and training areas.
There can be no doubt that Defence faces logistical and workforce challenges in the Northern Territory, and policy to address these comes with a price tag. Arguably, this is why, during a meeting in Hawaii earlier this year, a senior Australian defence official told US Army Pacific representatives that there was neither room nor industry-support capacity for them to preposition equipment in the Northern Territory.
For years, Defence has suffered from cultural resistance to being in the Northern Territory. It’s time to move beyond that.
The next step in continued implementation of the National Defence Strategy should be to hold a nationally coordinated, simulated stress test of the region’s Defence and civilian capacity to withstand a range of contingencies. The simulations should involve desktop exercises that access datasets from industry, state and the territory government. In addition to testing legal frameworks, strategic reserves, logistics and transport infrastructure, and force posture, attention should be directed to questions of time and space for responses.
While I’m wary of joining the chorus of defence commentators yelling at clouds, our government has boxed itself into a corner. We must spend more on defence, but creeping suppression of informed public debate coupled with dire cost-of-living realities make this an unlikely option for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Australia’s defence and foreign policy is entrenched in short-term domestic political considerations, devoid of strategic imagination. The idea of nearing an inflection point in international security is routinely trotted out but misses the fact that Australia passed that point long ago. Perhaps the Cold War never ended; it just mutated and incorporated multipolar elements.
There are two sets of external changes shaping Australia’s defence problem. First, new groupings of states are emerging—with some firepower to boot—that prioritise different values to us. On values we share—say, the continued survival of the state—they are often interpreted differently. Australia might look to the multilateral rules-based order to shore up support for our right to exist. Another state might view this order as a legacy system that is not willing to facilitate the transfer of power to rising states. Problems ensue.
It is getting harder to tackle these problems thanks to the second set of changes influencing Australian security. There are new approaches to navigating the international system. Where alliances and shared interests are central to Australia’s international engagement, the new grouping of powers has normalised a sense of transactional statecraft in international relations. Security ties are not infused with a liberal-west dose of morality. Interests are king.
Government has failed to grasp at a strategic level these two sets of changes. Lazy conceptual frameworks have been tabled without adequate funds to deliver. Capabilities needed yesterday are earmarked for two decades’ time. Word-soup statements of ‘unprecedented unpredictability’ feature heavily, disingenuously attempting to engage Australians. We know the international environment has always been unpredictable, to a point, and contestation has never not been a feature of international security.
In a word, Australia is lost – lost in reviews, lost in rhetoric and lost to a government fixated on complicating a rather straightforward problem set. Australia is unprepared and unserious about our position in the emerging international strategic environment.
We must be willing to have this discussion publicly. Government needs to come to the party and rapidly enhance its appetite for risk. Canberra should rediscover the agility of a relatively smart population and urgently craft a sustainable defence footing for the nation. This requires a strategic culture overhaul, which must come from the top.
We can’t do all the things, and a realistic plan for the defence of Australia need not be gold-plated. Of course, the inability of government to articulate in basic terms our vital national interests will continue to stupefy our debate. Where is our national discourse on the costs of Australian prosperity and security? Where is the funding for foresight analysis of strategic trends. Sure, China is a challenge, but what of India?
I offer the tale of Australia’s Bangladesh strategy. We continue to pump millions of dollars of humanitarian aid each year into Bangladesh. Yet, by the end of this year, two of the four planned units at Bangladesh’s Rooppur nuclear power station will be operational. Nuclear power will continue to lift Bangladesh towards prosperity; its economy has just become the second-largest in South Asia.
Built by Russia on a site where ground was broken in 2017, the plant will have sanctioned fuses that China stepped in to provide. In late 2023, Bangladesh settled the final payments to Russia in Chinese yuan. The point is, Australia has a surface-level grasp of the intricate regional relationships on our doorstep. This continues to undercut adequate manoeuvring of our international political environment. We must know our environment if we want to prosper and compete within it.
Australia is part of a group of states, in a club, of minority power in the international system. Humbling ourselves to accept this strategic reality will allow for hard but necessary discussion of our plan to adequately defend Australia. Australia has a middle-power ego on a small-power budget. Canberra must be creative.
A sense of strategic culture can’t reside in the halls of departments—nor can it remain a job of government. National security is every Australian citizen’s duty. Education therefore becomes paramount. As the saying goes, ‘if one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.’ If we don’t know what we are competing for, and why, how can we possibly begin to chart success?
The Albanese government’s legacy may well be that it failed to discern between the concepts of intent and capability. Intent is the thing that can change overnight. Capability, not so much. From platitudes to policy, our strategic narrative is narrowly fixed in terms of intent. It is time to focus on capability—or at least craft a viable concept of a plan to do so.
Building public trust is vital to creating effective artificial intelligence (AI) regulation in Australia—not sovereign large-scale datasets. The assertion that AI regulation would be ineffective without the existence of large-scale sovereign datasets—as recently argued in the Strategist—is flawed.
Public trust in AI systems is low in Australia. Only 34 percent of Australians are willing to trust AI systems, according to research by the University of Queensland and KPMG. For AI to flourish, Australians need confidence that their data will be safe in the hands of those who will use it to build and improve AI systems, and that these systems will be deployed safely, securely and responsibly. Regulations function to protect users’ rights, and to apply standards and boundaries that encourage responsible innovation. If well crafted, they should be adaptable to the evolving nature of AI. This assurance of trustworthiness is what will pave the way for greater AI development and adoption by businesses and consumers alike.
The recent Strategist article, ‘Sovereign data: Australia’s AI shield against disinformation’, argues that large sovereign datasets are essential for combating disinformation and ensuring trustworthy AI, and that AI regulation in Australia would be ineffective without first establishing such datasets. There are several problematic assumptions underlying this argument and assertions that deserve greater scrutiny.
An assertion that the success of AI regulations is dependent on the data used in particular AI models overestimates the influence of dataset control on regulatory success. Even the highest quality source data can’t stop an AI being misused—but strong and enforceable regulatory frameworks can. Effective AI governance focuses not just on the source of data but also on how AI systems are deployed and managed.
National sovereignty of data is neither appropriate nor desirable for all AI. Sovereign control of data can be beneficial in specific contexts such as national security and critical infrastructure. But the idea that datasets—whether Australian-generated or otherwise—need always be kept, owned and controlled within Australia overlooks the many cases in which higher-quality data and AI expertise are better sourced from abroad. For example, if developing an AI model for semiconductor chip design, it would be unwise not to collaborate with Taiwan, a global leader in chip manufacturing.
Global datasets are critical in the many cases in which Australia does not have a representative dataset to call upon, cannot generate one that aligns well to the function, or is simply working on projects that require global data analysis—such as climate research. For example, translating foreign languages into English requires datasets from native speakers abroad, as Australia’s multilingual data is limited.
Likewise, there are many cases where the international community has more advanced capabilities than Australia—a fact we can’t ignore. Image datasets such as CIFAR-* and Imagenet for computer vision, object and facial recognition have already undergone intense public scrutiny and bias analysis by researchers and activists online that make it difficult to hide potential manipulation. But there is no such thing as unbiased data. The trick is identifying the degree to which biases have been introduced in datasets and determining whether there are any risks that need to be managed to make it appropriate for Australian uses. This is best done by building trusted international partnerships with shared standards for quality and accountability.
It’s also incorrect to assume that bigger datasets are inherently better. In fact, better is better when it comes to data—cleaner, truthful, secure, appropriate and representative for the purpose. Viral mis- and disinformation and uneducated opinion can generate large amounts of data—scale can dilute good data rather than protect it. And such disinformation can just as easily be created from AI using large, sovereign datasets as it can from non-sovereign datasets.
Not all AI systems rely on data that raises privacy concerns. For instance, AI models that use meteorological data to investigate air quality trends or to predict rain, use data that is neither personal nor inherently sensitive. The regulatory focus in such cases should be on ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the data rather than its geographic origin, if regulation is even needed at all.
In an effort to support domestic AI innovation and manage the risk of overregulation, the Australian Government is taking a risk-based approach in its AI regulation. The Department of Industry, Science, and Resources has done commendable work gripping up the issues, laying a solid foundation that addresses key concerns such as safety, rights protection and alignment with international regulations in its proposed mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI settings. However, refining certain aspects will further strengthen this framework.
The current definition of ‘high-risk AI’ is too broad, risking overregulation of low-risk systems, which could stifle innovation. A clear, tiered regulatory approach that distinguishes between different levels of risk will promote AI adoption without burdening businesses unnecessarily.
Regulations must also account for the global nature of AI development. Foreign developers of products used in Australia should be held to the same standards as domestic developers to prevent unfair advantages, while AI systems—whether developed locally or abroad—must meet high standards for safety, transparency and accountability. Failure to comply should result in enforcement, to build public and business trust in the regulatory system.
Overall, Australian regulation must be responsive, evolving alongside the technology itself. Regulating a field as dynamic and wide-ranging as AI will require ongoing adaptation, and iterative updates that learn from past experience.
Sovereign datasets may have limited roles in specific sectors, but they are far from the cornerstone of effective AI regulation. In shaping its AI future, Australia must prioritise trust over territorial control of data. The real key to effective AI regulation lies in building public confidence through clear, consistent rules that keep pace with technological change globally. They should protect rights, promote transparency and foster responsible innovation—regardless of geographical location of the data or the developer.
For two countries so geographically far apart, Australia and Norway have surprisingly aligned strategic perspectives. This has underpinned a burgeoning defence industry partnership and unprecedented reciprocal visits by defence ministers last month. ASPI hosted Norway’s defence minister, Bjorn Gram, during his time in Canberra to exchange views on the security outlook and the development of an integrated defence industrial base.
Gram shares the view once espoused by Arthur Tange, the public servant who transformed Australia’s security settings during the Cold War, that ‘a map of one’s own country is the most fundamental of all defence documentation’.
For Norway, geography dictates a perennial focus on what Gram called the ‘high north’, around the Arctic, Barents and North Atlantic regions. This has long meant maintaining a watchful but, where possible, nonconfrontational relationship with Russia, with which Norway shares a border and agreements over fisheries and access to the Norwegian island of Svalbard.
But the geopolitical map of the high north is transforming at the same time as climate change reshapes its topography. As sea ice recedes, Chinese and Russian fleets could start moving more easily between the Pacific and Atlantic. Gram expressed concern that China might try to exploit the whip hand it holds over Russia in their ‘no limits’ partnership to acquire military technologies and access that Moscow has withheld. This raises particular concerns in the Arctic, given its vital role in undersea warfare and nuclear stability—topics that Canberra has a direct interest in, too.
Gram’s time in Australia coincided with his prime minister’s visit to China to mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations. In words familiar to Australian ears, Gram also stressed the importance of maintaining cooperation with China on global issues, such as trade and climate change, while remaining vigilant to security threats and always putting the national interest first.
Detailing some of those threats, Gram criticised China’s economic and technological support for Russian aggression against Ukraine, as well as North Korea’s direct transfer of arms. He also noted the public warning by Norway’s intelligence and security services that China was among the countries targeting Norway with cyber-attacks and other malign activities.
The rhyming tones of Oslo’s and Canberra’s statecraft include recent defence reviews in both countries that reached remarkedly similar conclusions and enjoy similarly broad-based political and public support. Like Australia, Norway is increasing defence spending, which will reach 2 percent of GDP this year and more than double in the next decade. And, like Australia, Norway will skew spending, at least initially towards growing the navy as part of a wider program of force expansion and integration. In the same vein, Norway is increasing its commitments to NATO, just as Australia is strengthening its core alliances and wider security and technology partnerships.
This alignment in strategic perspectives underpins an uptick in bilateral defence cooperation, which is presently focused on expanding the manufacturing of precision munitions. Norwegian company Kongsberg is establishing maintenance and production facilities in New South Wales for the Joint Strike Missile, which will be used by the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Naval Strike Missile for surface warships. Both are vital components of Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) program. Kongsberg has already opened a facility in South Australia for maintaining missiles and NASAMS air defence systems. Gram said the door was now open for other areas of potential collaboration under GWEO, perhaps including production of rocket motors.
Gram stressed that Norway–Australia defence industry cooperation ‘is not one way only’. Kongsberg has many Australian subcontractors in its supply chain, and he foresaw more such opportunities. Another example is the contract of South Australian company PMB Defence regarding supply of batteries for Norway’s diesel submarines.
Raising horizons, Gram hoped Norway and Australia could explore cooperation in space capabilities. Kongsberg Satellite Services is establishing ground facilities in South Australia as part of a global satellite telemetry, tracking and control network. Over time, this could help the ADF in operating sovereign intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites.
Looking ahead, the Nordic model of total defence, which Norway shares with Denmark, Sweden and Finland, could be a helpful guide for Australia to accelerate preparedness, build resilience and mobilise industry and the population behind the concept of national defence. There are parallels worth exploring in the transformation of the Australian Army to support littoral manoeuvre and the expansion of the Norwegian Army from one mechanised brigade to three flexible brigades.
Both Gram and his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, have emphasised that bilateral defence industry cooperation is underpinned by growing strategic linkages between the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions.
As a tangible demonstration of these links, a Norwegian frigate will join a British-led carrier strike group on deployment to the Indo-Pacific next year. Moreover, like Australia, Norway is deepening defence partnerships with Japan and South Korea, both of which Gram visited on his way to Australia. Gram also supports NATO playing a greater role in this region in such areas as strategic communication and countering hybrid threats.
Tange’s map reminds us that the tyranny of distance will always circumscribe the bonds between two distant friends, but the defence interests of Australia and Norway have arguably never been closer.
An unacceptable pattern is emerging in the way the Department of Home Affairs deals with visa applications for vulnerable Afghan women.
The Taliban celebrated the three-year anniversary of its takeover of Afghanistan in August with a military parade and a new set of vice and virtue laws making it illegal for women to speak outside the family home. The extremist group has been progressively cracking down on defenders of women’s human rights.
But Home Affairs has been requesting Afghan families remove their vulnerable female relatives from humanitarian visa applications. It also recently denied the application of a women’s human rights defender whose application was proposed by an Australian citizen more than two years ago.
When the Australian Federal Police was moved out of the Home Affairs portfolio, the department seems to have considered its responsibilities under Australia’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security were transferred as well. They were not. The National Action Plan (NAP) prioritises the rights of women and girls in situations of armed conflict, including through humanitarian protection.
On their Afghanistan Update webpage, Home Affairs says that ‘members of identified minority groups (such as women and girls, ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+) who are referred by the UNHCR or proposed by a close family member in Australia’ will be given priority processing.
A locally engaged employee (LEE) of the Australia government, who spent 14 years working on the multinational base in Tarin Kowt and at the Australian Embassy in Kabul, shared correspondence with me showing Home Affairs asking his family to remove his mother from their humanitarian visa application in July.
The 68-year-old woman has depended financially and psychologically on her son for years. Rental agreements from Afghanistan and Pakistan—where she is living in limbo, having fled her home in Afghanistan—have been provided to the department, as have receipts for medical care.
The woman also depends on her son for her physical security. Her only son still residing in Afghanistan was imprisoned by the Taliban because of his brother’s links to Australia. If she were forced to return to Afghanistan, she would have no mahram (male relative or guardian) to accompany her and no one able to rent a house and pay her expenses.
Still, according to communication between Home Affairs and the LEE’s local member of parliament, the department determined that his mother did not meet the dependency criteria for the visa application. These criteria have not changed in the past three years.
Similarly, the department asked a Hazara family to remove their 23-year-old unmarried daughter from their family reunion application that was proposed by a family member residing in regional Australia.
Under the current gender apartheid regime of the Taliban, an unmarried 23-year-old faces many specific challenges in addition to the threats posed against her family. She also faces different threats than those faced by older women. Without the presence, protection and support of her family, this woman faces the increasing and serious threat of forced marriage and sexual abuse if imprisoned for breaking the laws restricting the movement and rights of women. She will not be allowed to work, rent a house or even use her voice in any public space.
Australia’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security is designed to ensure that all relevant government departments implement the suite of UN Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, as well as General Recommendation 30 of the Committee on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other international legal obligations relating to conflict and insecurity.
In General Recommendation 30, CEDAW reinforced and complemented the international legal protection regime for refugees, articulating the obligation to ensure responses to conflict and instability are gender sensitive. UN Security Council resolution 2122 recognises the need to better respond to analysis of the ‘impact of armed conflict on women and girls’. But it is CEDAW that specifically call for states parties, including Australia, to provide durable solutions for women and girls who are displaced.
General Recommendation 30 has an entire section dedicated to the unique vulnerabilities women and girls face when they are forcibly displaced, obliging states parties to ‘address the specific risks and particular needs of different groups of internally displaced and refugee women, subjected to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including women with disabilities, older women, girls, widows, women who head households … women belonging to ethnic, national, sexual or religious minorities, and women human rights defenders.’
Despite Australia’s current representation at CEDAW, Home Affairs last month denied a humanitarian visa application to a woman who was the co-founder and program director of an Afghan woman’s rights organisation. She and her organisation received threats from the Taliban because of the work they did advancing women’s rights, and women in similar circumstances have been disappeared.
The woman ran a range of women’s rights programs including a tertiary education scholarship for young Afghan women that was supported by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations. She has been in exile in Pakistan for three years facing increasingly dire living circumstances and is no longer able to renew her Pakistani visa.
Yet, Home Affairs denied her on the basis that she was not facing sufficient persecution in her country of origin, or she had somewhere else to go, among other things. This is simply not true.
Home Affairs has faced multiple crises since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, and it is important it provides visas to address humanitarian issues in the Middle East, too. However, there is no excuse for such flagrant denial of Australia’s obligations to protect vulnerable Afghan women and girls through our humanitarian migration program.
The women of Afghanistan are now profoundly vulnerable—financially, psychologically and physically. This issue must be at the forefront as the department processes visa applications.
The Australian government needs to lead the narrative on AUKUS. If it doesn’t, others will.
More and better-informed discussion about AUKUS is a good thing. The Australian public deserves continued healthy debates about what AUKUS, and the significant increase in defence spending outlined in the National Defence Strategy, mean for them, their communities, the economy and the Indo-Pacific region.
AUKUS leaders have described the partnership as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote peace and security throughout the Indo-Pacific. The subtext of which is to deter China from unilaterally altering the status quo in its favour. For AUKUS to deliver on its big promise, and for the Australian people to accept AUKUS’ price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars, the government needs to clearly explain what AUKUS will deliver, and why it’s important. And they will need to do so continuously because the stakes are too high if they fail.
A case in point is the recent sharp disagreement between lauded Australian Labor Party elders and advocates of AUKUS. The latest episode emerged around the security agreement’s three-year mark last week.
The debate reflects careful strategic thinking and decades of public service on both sides. These significant divergences in opinion should not be dismissed. There is value in discussing the issue of capability gaps, Australia’s sovereignty, the fiscal weight of the agreement, and the difficult trade-offs it will require, including around acquisition of other capabilities or other public goods. Momentous policy decisions like such as AUKUS demand rich and even heated discussions because no individual or group can claim a monopoly over what’s best for Australia’s national interests. To claim otherwise would be a disservice and an act of hubris that would be damaging to the tradition of Australia’s democratic discourse.
The government can play a powerful role before intellectual divergences could harden into political factions. Should the government vacate its responsibilities to promote the agreement, an environment that risks disenfranchising the very people essential for AUKUS’ success can emerge. At worst, an information vacuum would be ripe for exploitation by Chinese and Russian influence operations. Australia has already suffered from such tactics in the past.
AUKUS has an estimated 30-year time horizon to achieve a fully operational sovereign nuclear powered submarine capability, with eight boats in service. This equates to at least 10 election cycles in Australia, eight in the US, and six in Britain, during which AUKUS will be on voters’ minds. No policy is immune to political change, and neither is AUKUS. Support for the partnership will need to withstand competing priorities including housing, climate, health, education, unemployment and immigration.
The good news is the government has a positive story to tell about how AUKUS will benefit Australia including notable progress to date.
The AUKUS Optimal Pathway was announced just 564 days ago, on 13 March 2023. Since then, Australian Defence Force and Australian defence contractors have started studying at US and British submarine training schools and are embedded in their shipyards. Other Australians are training on visiting US nuclear-powered attack submarines. This will continue to expand over coming years, providing the backbone of Australia’s sovereign AUKUS workforce.
The Australian government has also established over 4000 science and technology university placements at 16 institutions across the country to build out this capability. Each country has agreed to personnel exchanges to support this growth. This transfer of knowledge and expertise will provide advances in education, technology and business competitiveness for the Australian community.
Australian industry will benefit from the reforms brought to streamline defence trade, information and technology sharing. These steps will enable co-development, co-manufacturing and co-delivering of advanced capabilities. The resultant path from groundbreaking research to commercialisation will help ensure our most innovative researchers and companies won’t have to leave Australia to grow.
A prime example of what is possible is the government’s bold entry into the quantum technology industry. Separate to the AUKUS endeavour, but sure to benefit from reduced barriers to cooperation, the government announced earlier this year an almost $1 billion investment in PsiQuantum to build the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer in Brisbane. This investment, which demonstrates Australia’s commitment to drive innovation and boost economic growth, will create 400 highly skilled local jobs, establish partnerships with local industries and fund university placements, transforming the industry.
The US has quickly followed suit with its own US$500 million investment in PsiQuantum, building a quantum campus in Chicago. Likewise, Britain announced £100 million for five new quantum research hubs. AUKUS partners are investing in groundbreaking quantum technologies that will support national security and directly benefit people’s lives through better healthcare and clean energy.
The issues that demand discussion will not be settled anytime soon. The domestic debate over AUKUS and Australia’s increased investment in advanced defence capability will intensify and change, shaped by domestic and international issues. The government’s preferred approach of limited public discussion is not suitable for the scale of this venture.
AUKUS is an immense undertaking that will reshape Australia’s strategic calculus, lethal capabilities and defence industrial base for decades to come. There is an immutable responsibility on the current government to take the public into its confidence and openly discuss the costs and benefits of the endeavour.
Sorry, no posts matched your criteria