While the AUKUS agreement and the defence strategic review have focused strong interest on the massive task of building, crewing and operating Australia’s future nuclear-powered submarines, the government has also agreed in principle to sizeable new defence infrastructure projects, many in Australia’s north. At face value, this is great news for the construction sector, but the industry faces challenges that must be understood by all involved, including the Defence Department.

Construction industry executives in Australia say it has rarely in recent times been more challenging to deliver large projects. Supply chains remain problematic, even beyond the Covid-19 lockdowns. Clients work assiduously to transfer every possible project risk onto their construction partners. And faced with rapidly rising insolvencies, the sector now finds itself reflecting on which clients and projects are best avoided.

Construction companies have a strong interest in identifying hidden costs, particularly those involving risk transfer, to ensure they sit with clients.

Against these changing industry dynamics, the defence review has recommended speeding up delivery of new infrastructure and renewal of existing infrastructure. That call has come at a time when the risk of accelerating infrastructure projects will test everybody involved.

Defence is not alone in this predicament. State and territory governments and private investors face the same issues. It’s undoubtedly more challenging for Defence given the urgent need for new capabilities and their associated infrastructure in a deteriorating strategic situation. The requirement to continue hardening and developing Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, near Katherine, is a case in point.

Much of the new defence infrastructure must be built in the north, where doing business demands a deep understanding of local markets and delivery strategies must be carefully synchronised with other industry activities. We have previously written about the importance of context and mindset to Defence’s success in northern Australia. More than in metropolitan Australia, Defence is a very large client in the north and that brings even more challenges.

Good planning today can improve the chances of success and lessen uncertainty in construction projects. International research has consistently found that most large projects that fail do so for three reasons: they are too complex, it’s often too late to build in efficiencies as a project progresses, and there’s been an insufficient focus on the costs of delays and uncertainty.

It’s critical that Defence get its project designs right early.

Defence must acknowledge that a take-it-or-leave-it approach to industry won’t attract the best contracting teams. Construction industry leaders consider carefully the risks of an inflexible or adversarial client. Construction subcontractors have become very choosy about which projects they bid for. Clients that make the effort to attract the best teams realise genuine delivery benefits. Unsurprisingly, flexibility in procurement and a mature approach to contract risk is cheaper in the long run. Defence, as a large customer in the northern Australian market, needs this flexibility and maturity because a top-down approach will not account for regional capacity.

In these challenging circumstances, Defence needs to revisit some of its contract provisions. In particular, it should consider the utility of provisions that financially punish industry partners for delays that are out of their control, like the weather, or that demand insurance coverage well beyond what’s required in the wider commercial environment. In the current operating environment, such provisions do more harm than good. They make defence work more expensive and less attractive. Let’s not forget, the industry prices project complexity and risk into its tenders, which means taxpayers end up meeting these costs, whether there are delays or not.

Inflation similarly multiplies costs. Conversations with industry associations suggest construction costs have risen by 11–13% in the past year, well ahead of the consumer price index. Meanwhile, clients across the country have been using commercial pressure to hold contractors to prices long after the agreed time. They often do so even though their own processes have delayed progress. While that may save money in the short term, it profoundly increases long-term costs. It also threatens the sector’s viability.

Unfortunately, high inflation will likely be with us for some time. Clients and the industry know that fixed-price contracts are an imperfect tool in this environment, but they’ve become used to it. The current economic and commercial uncertainty means industry must factor these risks into its prices.

Defence will be under incredible pressure to deliver significant infrastructure projects across the north in one of the most challenging periods globally for construction in recent memory. Some in Defence may be tempted to run its requirements even harder to achieve speed. But the context has changed.

Defence has a narrowing opportunity to reflect on how things might be done differently, and it must adopt the proper context and mindset to do so. Defence must avoid, where possible, anything bespoke; work hard to attract the best teams to projects; and review its suite of contract provisions that may turn uncertainty into additional costs.

The most prudent option is to hasten slowly and test ideas with industry for delivering projects on time, on budget and with full capability. As the defence review signals a northern Australia focus, careful planning and a methodical approach will ensure fast and effective action.

The successful export of Australian company DroneShield’s counter-drone technology to Ukraine is testament to the innovative capacity of Australia’s defence industry to fill niche gaps in the global arms market. DroneShield’s success adds its products to the historical list of successful Australian defence exports, like the Ikara ship-launched anti-submarine missile and the Bushmaster protected mobility vehicle. While some exports like Ikara have been given the limelight, many of the past and current successes of smaller companies are largely unknown.

This anonymity is primarily the result of public information on Australian defence exports being reliant on sporadic self-reporting and occasional media attention. There is no official information on actual Australian defence exports, even from the Australian Defence Export Office (ADEO). The ADEO was established in 2018 to help support the previous government’s defence export strategy and to help the local defence industry win export contracts.

However, an Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report reviewing the strategy in 2020 stated that it wasn’t possible to assess whether the strategy was working because even the Department of Defence didn’t know what was being exported since there was no obligation for companies to report exports or for the department to collect that data.

This isn’t because companies are breaking the rules and simply exporting whatever they want. In order to export, a company has to request an export permit from the Defence Export Controls unit within the Defence Department for any items on the defence and strategic goods list, which includes not only defence materiel but also explosives and other items used in civilian industries such as mining. Dual-use technologies and weapons of mass destruction also require permits. An applicant is required to include estimates of the total value of the export over the life of the permit and multi-year permits, like repair contracts.

The ADEO publishes aggregated data by measuring defence exports through export applications received and through the estimated total value of all permits issued. The statistics include the total number of applications received, finalised, processed, assessed, denied, approved and the number of certifications and permits issued by end users’ geographic region.

The ADEO statistics do not, however, equate to actual exports because the export activity under the permits is not tracked. Furthermore, ADEO statistics do not list the individual selling company, nor do they differentiate between complete platforms, subsystems, components provided to global supply chains, intangibles and service categories. For example, it’s not entirely clear whether Australia’s $2.7 billion in F-35 global supply chain contracts for more than 50 local companies are treated as military exports by the ADEO.

Overall, however, it’s reasonable to assume that the ADEO statistics significantly overestimate the value of exports because not all permits translate into actual sales.

Other government agencies also publish some data on defence exports, but they use different methodologies which produce very different assessments of the nature and value of exports. This includes the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT’s) annual reporting to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), an international agreement created in 2013 to establish global standards for the international trade of conventional arms.

ATT transparency reporting provides information on the category of conventional weapon, the number of category items, the permits granted, the purchasing entity, the items’ valuations and item descriptions. Like the ADEO, however, ATT reports don’t include data on the selling company or on services, global supply chain inputs and other intangibles.

While DFAT uses permit data for its ATT transparency reports, for its domestic publications it uses other information sources. DFAT uses its own estimates, as well as unpublished and tailored information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), to track Australian defence exports. DFAT uses major conventional weapon categories, including warships, tanks and other traditional capabilities. But that means it also ‘misses’ other exports.

The ABS lists the value of the statistical category of ‘arms and ammunition’, which also covers only a small part of Australia’s defence exports.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) publishes data on global defence exports. This is a very valuable source of international data. But it is reliant on national disclosure regimes and also focuses on traditional major systems and doesn’t track components and services.

Australian authorities’ use of broad, different categories results in widely divergent estimates of the value of defence exports. For example, in 2020–21, the ADEO estimated Australian defence exports at $2.69 billion, the ABS at $165 million and DFAT at (AHECC) $139.31 million. SIPRI lists the value at 413 ‘trend indicator values’ (TIVs; very roughly analogous to US dollars) in 2020 and 173 TIVs in 2021—but those were largely the sale of retired frigates and Hornet fighter planes rather than exports of goods and services.

This large discrepancy illustrates the lack of baseline data either at the level of individual contract or at the aggregated top level.

Without export data, it’s difficult to understand the capabilities of the Australian defence industry or evaluate the success of an export strategy designed to help domestic companies export more through tailored support, funding, promotion and market advice. More accurate data would provide greater clarity for the industry and help it promote products to future, or prospective, customers.

Defence acknowledged the absence of data identified by the ANAO and has said it has begun engaging the government and defence industry to address the issue. But as noted in the 2020 ANAO report, establishing a reliable dataset on defence exports is a complex undertaking and would also require explicit changes to the government’s policy settings on disclosure.

This isn’t the place to advocate for a particular solution. We believe that transparency is in principle a good thing but acknowledge that stakeholders have a broad range of concerns about full disclosure. For example, Defence has repeatedly stated at Senate estimates hearings that once an export permit is granted, any export is essentially a commercial matter, and requiring companies to disclose exports would impinge on commercial confidentiality.

In sum, establishing a more comprehensive system of export disclosure will require engagement between the government, parliament, defence industry and civil society.

Having undertaken a wide survey of export disclosure regimes in Western democracies, we would note that there are a very wide range of approaches. Perhaps the most comprehensive disclosure is conducted by the US’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency, but few regimes come close to that gold standard. We would also note, however, that Australia’s system sits at the lower end of the disclosure spectrum.

As a first step to filling the data gap, we have attempted to aggregate any data we could find on Australian defence exports. This includes sources such as company media releases, annual reports and media reports.

We have taken a very broad view of defence exports; we include not just traditional ‘platforms’ and major systems, but also subsystems, components and services. We regard providing training facilities to foreign militaries as an export.

The dataset provides (where we could identify it) information on the selling company, the recipient, the export, the year of order, the year of delivery and the value, as well as the source of information. Where possible, the dataset also tracks whether an export has seen prior or subsequent service in the Australian Defence Force.

While this is not comprehensive or complete dataset, we hope this new resource will help provide a better understanding of Australia’s defence export industry. We think it will show that Australia has a robust, internationally competitive defence industry that has won export success far beyond the headline stories that many of us are familiar with.

The dataset can be accessed in section 9 of APSI’s Cost of Defence public database.

Allan Hawke stayed the Queanbeyan boy he was born, while also becoming one of the most respected, connected and insightful public servants of our time.

For a man of such achievement and prominence, it’s probably unusual to say that he was prevented from delivering on his real potential.

A partial list of the powerful roles he filled tells part of the story: secretary of three commonwealth departments, chief of staff to prime minister Paul Keating and high commissioner to New Zealand, complemented by his time as chairman of the Canberra Raiders rugby league club and the ‘go-to’ head for multiple radioactive issues that needed sane, insightful review.

Why, with such a record, could he not have achieved his full potential? Because the role he was purpose-built for and had begun was cut short when he was sacked as the secretary of the Department of Defence in September 2002, some three years into a role that could—and should—have lasted for a decade.

It’s an alternate history, however. The directions and changes Allan Hawke had begun but not completed as secretary hold up well in 2022, 20 years on, as the things that still need to be done in and to Defence. They are the issues that high-flown reforms have re-identified and sought to change with mixed results since then, as we saw with the 2012 Pathway to Change cultural reform program, the 2016 First Principles Review and the 2020 Defence Transformation Agenda.

Perhaps that’s because Allan was that unusual beast—an ‘outside insider’. He had spent enough time inside the Defence machine to know it deeply and well, but had gained a critical and different perspective from time spent in other places and types of organisation, some that looked back on and interacted with the cumbersome Defence machine.

He brought knowledge, enthusiasm and purpose to the role, instead of having to learn about the complexities and proclivities of the place as he began his time as its leader. I have heard another former secretary without such a deep prior knowledge of Defence describe it as like a foreign posting where the natives seem friendly but might be out to kill you. Allan knew the natives better than that.

Unusually for a secretary, he was interested in the planning and business process of the organisation as well as its strategy and achievements. He wasn’t primarily focused on managing the minister and advice to the minister, with a side interest in organisational leadership and management. These were complementary and reinforcing priorities, with his role as the leader of the civilian element of Defence and, with the chief of the defence force, of the whole defence organisation, being his core understanding of what he was there to do. He used the fashionable language of corporate planning but was really centred in clarity of purpose, understanding of, and improving performance and achievement of clear outcomes.

That doesn’t sound unusual, but two things made it so: Allan’s passionate commitment to the purpose of Defence—to defend Australia and its national interests—and his focus on investing in the people in Defence to make their performance matter and their sense of purpose a driver to do much more than ‘turn the handle’ in the various roles they had.

The ‘learned helplessness’ speech he gave on 17 February 2000, 100 days into his time as secretary, is widely quoted and still holds a light up to Defence. ‘Learned helplessness’ as the catchphrase for what he said is probably the most misleading thing about it. Yes, he did say, ‘There are certainly elements of what I would call a culture of learned helplessness among some defence senior managers—both military and civilian.’ And he did note that ‘not to put too fine a point on it, too many of our people lack confidence in many of Defence’s senior leaders. Justified or not, Defence’s leadership is seen as lacking coherence, as failing to accept responsibility and as reactive.’

His central message and purpose was much bigger than this criticism, though. He wanted to instil confidence and motivation in the people across the organisation—in senior and junior roles— about the work they did and he wanted to do that by giving them a much more personal stake in the organisation’s success. He called this getting ‘results through people’.

And, against the run of play, instead of large-scale, top-down or external reviews and change plans, he had an alternative path. ‘Macro change can be awfully seductive. In my opinion, enabling people through an organisation to improve the processes in which they are intimately involved is far more powerful.’

That meant delegation of authority to people across Defence, not over-centralisation in the secretary and CDF. As Allan put it, ‘If I have a dog, why would I bark myself?’ This clashed with then-ministerial expectations that the secretary would personally have the micro details of every issue.

Allan refused to lead or operate this way as it undercut his basic conception of leadership—using and empowering all the brain power and talent he had available to him. That’s something micromanagement can never do. His model was to understand the totality of the organisation and its operations, and to bring the detail experts he needed when engaging with ministers. That still seems healthy and right to me.

Allan was also a principled public servant, deeply committed to serving the ministers and government of the day. He showed that through frank and fearless advice combined with a deep respect for his own role.

As secretary, he knew he had a place to stand and he felt the responsibilities and obligations of that role, knowing them to include—but be more than—serving the minister of the day. He understood he was a steward of a key institution in our system of government and society, and that its health and future were in his care.

While many leaders in the government and corporate worlds say ‘people are our most important resource’, Allan did much more than talk to make this real. He invested in his people, and the biggest investment he made was by giving them his own time. That continued well beyond when direct working relationships had ended, with Allan checking in at key moments in many of our careers and lives, usually at just the right time and in just the right way. I received a text from Allan a few months ago at just such a moment and its wisdom made me travel back in time to when I had the pleasure of working directly for him in the office of the secretary in 2001.

Back to the proud Queanbeyan boy he stayed throughout his life. The football-loving, inquisitive family man who was the twinkling ball of energy and drive that everyone mourning his death knows well. Former ABC sports journalist Tim Gavel has captured much of this in his obituary of Allan. I am sure others will add their own memories and thoughts over the coming days and weeks.

I’ll end this short note with one symbolic thing from his first day as secretary of Defence. The day before his arrival, an alarming thing was discovered. Allan Hawke didn’t drive the standard white sedan that was the essential hallmark of a departmental secretary. He had a bright red Holden Special Vehicles V8 that was so low slung it’d have got hung up on the first of several speed bumps on its way to the secretary’s special spot deep in the Russell Defence complex.

The speed bumps were removed the evening before and the Summernats-style machine burbled into its spot for the secretary’s first day. Allan bounced out and got to work. The Queanbeyan boy had arrived and change was afoot.

The Labor government’s election platform contained a commitment to conduct a ‘defence force posture review’. Historically, Australia’s defence posture reviews have mainly considered where Australian Defence Force assets are based. Different stakeholders have inconsistent goals: the Department of Defence wants to consolidate in fewer, larger bases to save money; regional towns want to hang on to what they have; and boosters in the north and west push for more ADF assets to be at the ‘pointy end’ in—no prizes for guessing—the north and west.

The result is generally only a slow change in posture, although occasionally there are large-muscle movements, such as the relocation of the heaviest of the army’s three combat brigades from Holsworthy near Sydney to Darwin or moving the submarine force from Sydney Harbour to Garden Island near Perth.

But in defence terminology, force posture reviews are not about what capabilities should be in the ADF; that’s the role of force structure reviews. In recent decades, capability reviews have been conducted as part of a white paper process to work out what the ADF needs and how much of that it can reasonably afford.

Labor started off with talking about a force posture review. Its election policy stated that ‘force posture is about adapting to the evolving security and strategic environment, its impact on where the ADF is based and on facilities, and how the ADF is affected by domestic and demographic issues’.

But it also stated that the review needed to consider ‘whether Australian defence units, assets and facilities are prepared for the military to take action in a timely way amid a deteriorating strategic situation’. And that takes us down the path of a force structure review—namely, determining what should be in the ADF. It also hints at the really big, difficult issue of mobilisation—how you quickly create a wartime military out of a peacetime one.

As the new government finds its feet, its force posture review is looking increasingly like a force structure review, or even a white paper—with potential big policy, structure and budget challenges to consider. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles said in India last month:

I come to the position conscious of a profound responsibility: to ensure Australia has the capability necessary to defend itself in the toughest strategic environment we’ve encountered in over 70 years. It will involve a generational reinvestment in the size, capability and structure of the Australian Defence Force. In service of this goal, I have instructed my Department to commence a new Force Posture Review to inform decisions I expect to make in the months ahead.

In short, the review’s remit will be about a lot more than deciding whether to move more ships up north.

In one sense, a lot of the underpinning work has been done already; the government has endorsed the key assessments of its predecessor’s 2020 defence strategic update. That includes the focus on our (very large) near region, the need for capabilities to impose costs on an adversary at greater range from Australia, and the pressing requirement to do more faster since we can no longer rely on a decade of warning time before a major conflict.

But there is still much to do—including how to make any of this a reality rather than a policy aspiration given Defence’s current timelines. Quite properly, the new government has said it isn’t assuming that the previous investment plan is perfect. There will of course be stakeholders suggesting there’s no need for major changes, and that, even if the government might for some reason have some new ideas, there’s no sensible alternative to what it has inherited. That would be the wrong approach. The government needs to make the investment plan its own.

Of course, that won’t be easy, for several reasons.

Defence always plans on spending every cent of the budget the government has said it can, in this case the 10-year funding line set out in the 2020 update. Putting anything new in means that something already in the plan has to be delayed (which just moves the problem down the line), shrunk or cancelled. That means unhappiness for some stakeholders. We saw that recently with the previous government’s cancellation of the SkyGuardian armed drone to free up cash for the REDSPICE cyber program.

But the growing defence budget is already under strain. The new AUKUS agenda that’s about bringing new digital and high-technology capabilities into the military fast (cyber, artificial intelligence, uncrewed underwater systems, hypersonic missiles—and, of course, the eye-wateringly expensive nuclear submarines) is bringing funding pressure. Add to the mix the growth already planned for the ADF of 18,500 personnel by 2040, and it’s looking like more money will be needed to afford it all. That’s all without any new ideas to deal with our worsening security environment—like ways to deter China from its clear ambition to have its military operate in and around the South Pacific, and close to Australia.

The government has said it supports the 10-year funding model set out in the 2016 defence white paper and reconfirmed in the 2020 update, including the $270 billion in funding for new capability, but it isn’t just facing the kinds of internal defence budget pressures discussed above. It’s also dealing with a broader range of pressures, including deficits extending well into the future and the threat of economic recession. Given this, it may be tempting for the folk in the Finance Department and Treasury to advise their ministers to give Defence a straight 2% of GDP, which has become a sort of benchmark for credible levels of spending. But that would actually represent a cut of many billions of dollars compared to the funding line in the 2020 update, inevitably resulting in reductions to defence capability and delays to programs.

Even if the government adheres to the update’s funding line, inflation is eating away at its buying power. When actual inflation is running nearly 5% higher than the rate built into the 2020 update’s assumptions, Defence is likely losing billions in buying power per year. And those losses compound. The defence budget needs more money just to tread water.

And then there’s the additional cost of nuclear-powered submarines. In the long term, they will cost a lot more than the now-cancelled Attack-class program. In the short term, the cash freed up by the cancellation has already been put to other purposes such as missiles, helicopters and cyber, further tying the new government’s hands.

That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless; there is $270 billion to put to use, after all. But it will require active prioritisation and decision-making. The sunk-cost fallacy has to be rigorously exposed. And everything truly has to be on the table. How the new government handles the $25-billion infantry fighting vehicle decision, which is scheduled to be made in the third quarter of this year, will say a lot about its thinking. Will it simply press on with the previous government’s plan? Or will it reconsider the scale of opportunity cost and invest a chunk of that funding in capabilities suited for a maritime theatre?

Finding the money for big, new acquisitions in the short to medium term will be hard. With no cash sitting around, freeing up the resources needed for things such as a new conventional submarine to fill the capability gap will create tsunami-sized ripples across the investment program.

To perfectly align capability with funding, Defence would normally aim to conduct a white-paper-scale exercise that spends 18 months considering every aspect of expenditure and resourcing over the next two or three decades and sets a capability target sometime off in the 2040s. That would be a mistake. We don’t have the time for that.

Distant targets allow people to admire problems at leisure and plan for ultimate yet unachievable perfection. Consider our sorry history of submarines since the 2009 white paper that has left us even further away from having any new ones than we were 13 years ago. Fortunately, the government looks like setting a tight deadline, with the review to report back at the same time as the nuclear submarine taskforce in March next year.

Whatever the government calls its review, it needs it to deliver a plan quickly that can provide capability quickly. That means a focus on priorities and implementation, not just crisp policy statements and ambitions. And that almost certainly means breaking with some of Defence’s long-cherished capability ambitions and forging a different path from the previous government. Marles’s approach of appointing external figures to lead the review already signals a break with precedent. But they and the teams supporting them in Defence, Finance and Treasury have got their work cut out for them if the ‘force posture review’ is to do what Australia’s security demands.

The Australian government’s 2020 defence strategic update was released with a catchy tagline: ‘Shape. Deter. Respond.’

The second two of these strategic objectives are incontrovertibly part of the traditional role of the military: to deter actions against Australia’s interests and respond with force as required. The first encompasses a wider role.

At the time, I wondered how much thought had been given to how this role interacts with the other arms of statecraft tasked with shaping the international environment—that is, diplomacy and development. But it opens an interesting discussion about how Australia’s defence organisation can contribute in innovative ways.

A recent report from the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) offers some intriguing ideas for how the Defence Department and the Australian Defence Force can help shape the region in Australia’s interest.

For example, Defence potentially has a significant role in supporting a positive vision for Australia as a climate change leader with Southeast Asia. Of course, Australian and Southeast Asian defence forces will continue to enhance their disaster relief coordination to build interoperability and trust.

Beyond that, Defence could integrate a climate perspective into its bilateral defence cooperation, ASEAN defence dialogues and defence diplomacy, raising awareness of how climate risks manifest and a preventive approach. As a consumer of energy, Defence can contribute to the emergence of sectors such as green fuel by building renewables into its supply chains. And Australia can follow other countries in developing a defence policy response to the risks and challenges of climate change.

Another area in which Defence can be an exemplar of positive behaviour is civil–military cooperation. While Australia has sometimes been cautious about emphasising liberal values of democracy and human rights in its foreign policy, its strong civil–military collaboration and governance framework represents an avenue through which it can enhance and expand its engagement in Southeast Asia to strengthen effective whole-of-nation responses to humanitarian and security issues. This is particularly relevant against the backdrop of rising authoritarianism in the region.

One pathway to model effective civil–military engagement would be to implement a regional framework for collaboration between civil society and military on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Australia’s significant role in providing HADR in Southeast Asia through the ADF could be enhanced by co-resourcing the development of an integrated framework to better manage HADR across the region. The ADF has well-developed, up-to-date policy and operational guidance for military assistance to civil authorities domestically and would be well placed to work with partners to develop a regional framework of national, bilateral and multilateral policies, operational guidelines and capabilities.

Perhaps moving further out of its comfort zone, Defence could play a role in Southeast Asia’s post-Covid-19 recovery and growth. A region that has economic inequity and instability will be detrimental to Australia’s national security. For example, low or unequal economic growth could create a breeding ground for fundamentalist movements and terrorism. Increasing strain from humanitarian crises, authoritarianism, social unrest and ethnic tension may contribute to further regional instability. These are significant factors affecting nations’ resilience to respond to challenges and resist coercion from others.

This means growth is a goal that shouldn’t be understood as only about development cooperation: it also has implications for defence and diplomacy. Defence cooperation that supports stability, resilience and sovereignty in the region contributes to economic growth and development, and Defence should see itself as having a place at the table when it comes to recovery and growth in the region.

Defence can play a role in championing human security—talking about it publicly, and explaining how insecurity at the individual level undermines national stability and how fragility and conflict at the state level undermine security for individuals. Australia’s national security and international engagement strategy in Southeast Asia should treat investing in human security and state security as complementary and mutually reinforcing endeavours, not competing paradigms.

The AP4D process suggests that Defence should challenge itself to see the national security and defence implications of a range of regional challenges. It also shows the value for Defence of Australia’s development and diplomacy program. There can sometimes be a tendency to place more and more burdens on the ADF—both because of its competence and because it enjoys a high level of public trust. We should be careful of this tendency and be clear on what Defence is optimised to achieve. Defence should play a leadership role in advocating for development and diplomacy as important elements of foreign policy, recognising that it is in Defence’s self-interest for Australia to use a range of tools to shape its international environment.

Coordinating each arm of statecraft to maximise its impact requires understanding that all agencies have a role to play. Defence should be alive to the responses it can bring to an integrated series of interventions—and the value of working with strong diplomacy and development programs.