Originally published 27 July 2021.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has just arrived in Singapore, where he’ll deliver a major address on Indo-Pacific security. He’s the first member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet to visit Southeast Asia. Not surprisingly, China is likely to feature prominently in his remarks, but so may climate change.

Though thousands of miles apart, Australia and the United States have shared unenviable climate-change-driven devastation in the past two years. The unprecedented drought, heatwaves and fires currently affecting the US and the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, which laid waste to an area larger than the State of Washington, are an indication of the challenges ahead in a warming climate.

As traumatic and deadly as these events have been for people in both countries, the impact of climate-driven disasters in the broader Indo-Pacific—a region at the core of both countries’ military planning and strategies—is likely to be even more devastating, with spillover effects on the security of both nations and their partners and allies.

Canberra and Washington have recently reaffirmed the importance of their defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, and while China certainly looms large in their thinking, it is increasingly clear that climate change, a threat that will ultimately amplify and eclipse all others on their risk horizons, must feature prominently in the bilateral defence relationship.

The Indo-Pacific is the most exposed region in the world to the hazards climate change is amplifying. Climate risks in the region are clustered around three hotspots. The first is the major transboundary river basins in South and Southeast Asia, where large concentrations of poor people are exposed to the regular and increasing risk of extreme floods and droughts, and already tense cross-border relationships are likely to be further strained by climate shocks. The second is maritime Southeast Asia along the Ring of Fire, where more than 400 million people reside in low-lying island countries exposed to very rapid sea-level rise, stronger cyclones and increasing floods and droughts, compounded by earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. The third hot spot comprises the Pacific small island developing states, many of which face an existential risk from rising seas and intensifying storms.

The pace of climate impacts is now accelerating non-linearly and the world is already committed to significant additional warming (and disruptions) from the greenhouse gases emitted over previous decades. A recent report by the International Military Council on Climate and Security paints a stark picture of the implications:

Militaries will be increasingly overstretched as climate change intensifies. As the pace and intensity of extreme weather events increases, countries are increasing their reliance on military forces as first responders. While direct climate change effects regularly threaten military infrastructure and threaten to reduce readiness, the most pressing security threats will come from climate change-induced disruptions to social systems.

Given these dynamics, incentives are aligning for the US, Australia and their Indo-Pacific allies to cooperate on climate and security matters. In his first few weeks in office, Biden laid out an ambitious climate security strategy in his executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. At the world leaders’ summit on climate convened by Biden in April, Austin described the impact climate-related hazards are having on joint military operations, noting that Typhoon Wutip in February 2019—outside of the typical typhoon season—forced the US to pause exercises with its Australian and Japanese allies. He reiterated the importance of allied cooperation last month at the 8th ASEAN defence ministers’ meeting, where he highlighted climate change as a significant emerging regional challenge for collective action.

For his part, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year for the first time characterised climate change as a national security threat. Australia’s 2020 defence strategic update pointed specifically to climate change as a threat that would compound water and food scarcity, extreme weather events, political instability and friction within and between countries, including in the Indo-Pacific.

The US military is rapidly embedding climate and security in its regional planning and operations. Consistent with the government’s 2020 update, it is in Australia’s interest to engage actively with these US contributions to underwriting security and stability in the Indo-Pacific. But, given the far greater resources available to the US and the larger scale at which it operates, Australia will have to be selective about how it engages from a defence perspective.

Four areas are particularly important for both countries and present opportunities for collaboration.

The first focuses on building a shared understanding of the physical impacts (sea-level rise, flooding and erosion, extreme weather, rising temperatures and so on) climate change will have on regional military facilities, on training (for example, heat stress), on readiness and operations (for example, increased ocean salinity and atmospheric turbulence) and on the civilian infrastructure that supports these activities. The two countries should identify opportunities to learn from one another on adapting their military planning and operations, training and testing, military estates (built and natural infrastructure), and acquisitions and supply chains to address the climate risk.

An example of a best practice to share is the US Defense Department’s development of a climate assessment tool that is designed to measure climate risks to US domestic and overseas military installations. Australia could leverage the lessons learned from this process to build something similar for its own facilities.

The second is to begin identifying scenarios of regional instability that may require US and/or Australian stabilisation responses. These scenarios should incorporate the likelihood of compound shocks and tipping points that have cascading impacts across societies. The priority should be to develop policy and operational responses to mitigate the risks. Australia has distinctive insights to share with the US, stemming from Canberra’s historically close engagement with near neighbours in both the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Key topics should include natural disasters and regional cooperation for humanitarian response; food and water insecurity; population displacement and climate-induced migration; exacerbation of territorial disputes; and improving early warning systems and intelligence capacity to anticipate events triggered by climate change.

The third area of cooperation is to jointly assess the geopolitical effects of climate change, including effects of the global energy transition, which is likely to redraw the region’s power map. Of course, the biggest shared geopolitical concern between Washington and Canberra is China’s trajectory—a trajectory that cannot be understood separately from the risks posed by climate change. It is critical to develop a deep and nuanced understanding of how Chinese actions, for example, are shaped by climate considerations, or, conversely, how climate change may affect US and Australian efforts to compete (or cooperate) with China in the region.

The fourth area of focus should be on strengthening relationships with key countries in the region (such as Indonesia and Vietnam) and with the key regional organisations (such as ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum) to strengthen their capacity to understand and address climate impacts. This should include scaling up joint planning, training, interoperability and exchange programs focused on reducing climate and security risks.

Australia and the US have a long tradition of defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region underpinned by a shared commitment to building a more stable, secure and rules-based order. Achieving that objective is about to become more difficult because of climate change. It will undermine US and Australian national interests in the Indo-Pacific as never before. As historian J.R. McNeill recently observed, ‘There is no precedent in human history for a global disaster that affects whole societies in multiple ways at many different locations at once.’ For Australia, the US and their partners and allies, this unprecedented event requires an unprecedented response.

Australia’s decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines—and the decisions by the UK and US to support that endeavour—is momentous. If we’re looking for reliable and considered judgements about why and how it came about, we need to await the work of future historians.

Looking just a few years into the past can help us understand some of the equally momentous changes that likely played a role, some more obvious than others. When I last examined the acquisition of nuclear submarines on this forum in 2016, I thought that a marked deterioration of the strategic environment and a marked improvement in allied confidence in Australia’s technical and organisational competence as an operator of submarines would be necessary conditions. Public commentary on the AUKUS deal has focused on the former. No doubt, however, the low-key but real personnel links that have been built between Australia’s submarine (and wider shipbuilding) enterprise and the US Navy since the 2012 Coles review played a significant role in the latter.

In the long term, what the decision means for the role of our alliance with the US and the way we approach developing and sustaining the Australian Defence Force will be as crucial as the political symbolism. What, then, are the implications for Australia’s long-term policies on self-reliance and the ANZUS alliance?

‘Self-reliance’ remains a key Australian policy dating back to the Fraser government’s 1976 defence white paper, if not the 1959 strategic basis paper. Laden with political significance as Australia’s emancipation from its ‘great and powerful friends’ under Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s, it made a return to Australian strategic policy in the current government’s 2020 defence strategic update.

Prominent criticism of the nuclear submarine decision, notably by former prime minister Paul Keating, focuses on perceived costs in terms of ‘sovereignty’, ‘material dependency on the US’ and loss of ‘freedom of choice’. And, indeed, whether it represents continuity or a departure from the policies that Keating himself espoused in government is a legitimate question.

The focus on self-reliance arose from the realisation, born from experience in repeated crises between Australia and Indonesia over West Papua, Confrontation and East Timor, that a priority interest for Australia is not necessarily one for the US, and that Australia wouldn’t want to have to ask for (politically) costly US military support for a conflict that mattered little to Washington.

At its core, then, self-reliance was about Australia’s desire not to rely on US combat forces in regional crises. However, our ability to do so was in fact enabled by our reliance on US support in almost every other respect, including intelligence, technology and resupply. Self-reliance was never self-sufficiency; it was ‘self-reliance in alliance’.

The decision to acquire nuclear submarines, which will no doubt require far greater reliance on ongoing US (and UK) assistance in the maintenance of Australia’s submarine fleet, is therefore consistent with self-reliance—and the fact that many of our military aircraft are also directly supported from US stores.

In some areas, we had to develop our own technology because we couldn’t obtain it from allies. But naval reactors, while no doubt sensitive technology, are less directly crucial for operational advantage than, for example, certain stealth or electronic warfare technologies that are locked within the impenetrable inner sanctums of US technology secrets. While the 18-month trilateral study period that has now commenced will no doubt give all three governments, if not necessarily their publics, a much greater understanding of the technological dependencies that will result, there’s little reason to suppose that Washington and London didn’t do their own due diligence about complete show stoppers before the very public and prominent announcement of the AUKUS arrangement.

Often mingled in discussions of self-reliance, but quite separate, is the question of freedom of action in cases where Australia might not want to support the US in a conflict. Keating and others are no doubt correct that the decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines is a sign of a much greater confidence in Canberra that US and Australian interests in the competition with China closely coincide.

However, the argument here must be with this underlying judgement, rather than with the decision itself—for history shows how difficult Washington has found it to cajole allies into joint action if they didn’t see it as in their own interest, regardless of how closely they were integrated with, and depended on, the US. Washington’s exasperation about the European abstinence from the war in Vietnam, NATO allies’ refusal to open their airspace for US strikes on Libya in 1986, German and French active opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and indeed Australia’s refusal to participate in the Libya intervention in 2011 are prominent examples.

True, none of these events touched on the strategic essence of the respective alliances in the way that a conflict with Beijing would do for the US–Australia alliance—but ultimately that’s an argument for the soundness of current policy rather than against further integration. And should a future US administration be determined to reduce the burden of its alliance commitments, Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines with US assistance would likely stand out as a far more congenial  arrangement than those of allies whose policies remain based on integrating US forces into their own defence.

A second, separate issue arises insofar as references to ‘sovereignty’, ‘freedom of action’ and ‘self-reliance’ imply being able to use military force against Washington’s wishes. Throwing the UK and France under the proverbial bus at Suez in 1956 was just one example of US ruthlessness in this regard. In fact, no country has experienced US power plays more than its close friend Israel, which Washington imposed arms embargoes on in 1967 and withheld crucial supplies from in wars in 1973 and 1982.

But a dose of realism about (industrial) ‘sovereignty’ is in order. Britain couldn’t maintain its nuclear weapons without the US for more than a few months. While France has a genuinely sovereign nuclear arsenal, it never strove for a self-sufficient conventional defence even during the Cold War and remains highly dependent on direct US logistics and intelligence support for its operations in the Sahel. And despite Israel’s development of a sophisticated arms industry, its dependence on the US remains real, and one that Jerusalem realises must ultimately be managed politically, not technologically.

‘Material dependence’ on the US is thus a fact of life for countries that have much greater resources than Australia, and it’s entirely consistent with ‘self-reliance’—as long as that support is something we think the US will be willing and able to provide in relevant circumstances. What the practical implications of this principle are need reinterpretation as strategic circumstances change.

In the 1970s and 1980s, we could assume that the US could comfortably meet our limited demands on advanced munitions and other consumables from its vast Cold War stockpiles. But now, as the 2020 defence strategic update rightly recognised, our needs would compete with—and thus likely miss out to—those of the US itself. In wartime, it would probably be harder for us to get access to US missiles and torpedoes to shoot from our submarines than to find US reactor technicians to service them.

In that sense, as much as the momentous decision to acquire nuclear submarines is a sign of confidence in the alliance, increases the potency of our submarine fleet and remains consistent with self-reliance, by itself it does little to make the alliance and our defence cooperation as such fit for the practical demands of great-power competition and war in the Indo-Pacific. How the decision itself has highlighted some of the shortcomings in the alliance, and how it might help address them, will be the subject of my next post.

US President Joe Biden’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific region has brought announcements of big defence spending by the United States in northern Australia. The US force posture initiatives in the north will involve total spending of $832.8 million. Australia will spend $747 million towards the same effort of expanded defence infrastructure and joint exercises with the US. These significant financial commitments clearly indicate coordinated strategic investment in the stability of the Indo-Pacific region, central to which is the interoperability of US and Australian armed forces.

As part of the US reorientation to the Indo-Pacific, in 2014 the US and Australian governments agreed to jointly fund the construction of a suite of military facilities at Defence sites in the Northern Territory. The agreement, which came into force in March 2015, authorises the presence of US forces and contractors on Australian land in specific situations. For contractors, this includes ‘construction activities on, and mak[ing] alterations and improvements to, agreed Facilities and Areas’.

These funding commitments represent a big financial gain for the Northern Territory, providing a means for infrastructure cost-sharing with Defence and a contribution to maintaining a scalable industrial base in the territory.

Under the Pentagon’s Naval Facilities Acquisition Standards (NFAS), US construction projects in foreign jurisdictions are subject to the same risk-reduction ‘bonding requirements’ that apply to projects in the US. Within a specified number of days of the awarding of a construction contract, the bidder must deposit ‘performance’ and ‘payment’ bonds with the US contracting officer, each of which is equal to 100% of the original contract price.

This is different to how the risk profile of defence construction projects is reduced in Australia. In simple terms, the US assessment is based on the company’s balance sheet, technical ability and project history, whereas the Australian assessment is based on the value of assets. This means the US bonding requirements establish a competition barrier for Australian bidders because they have to provide a bond worth twice the contract price until the project is completed. Even without this requirement, Australian companies already find it challenging to raise sufficient equity for large construction projects in northern Australia because the ‘user-pays’ model doesn’t work with the comparative ease that it does in the more populous southern regions of the country.

Big construction projects are scarce in the NT, Western Australia and Queensland. And there are challenges for the NT in particular that preclude long-term socioeconomic stability for local communities. There’s a strong case for foreign construction projects to contract Australian companies and provide jobs to local communities. It would be understandable if US contractors winning bids over local companies ruffled feathers. Whatever the commercial reasoning, why should Australia accept US barriers in a jurisdiction that has so few big opportunities and such great economic need for them?

The good news is that NFAS allows the performance and payment bonds to be waived and alternative risk-mitigation options to be used if the bonding requirements are found to be ‘impracticable’—for example, if they’re inconsistent with local standard industry practices. Australia fits that case both on industry standards and because of the difficulty of raising equity for work in northern Australia.

Yet Defence has confirmed to ASPI that no requests have been made to waive the US bonding requirements by any Australian or US companies bidding for projects.

This suite of US construction projects also has the added context of being critical to the security agendas of both countries, which affects what is ‘right’ and ‘fair’ in terms of where the construction funding goes.

If the US chooses to build defence facilities in Australia to serve its force posture, the Australian government has the authority, and perhaps even the responsibility, to mandate the use of Australian companies. On the other hand, Australia’s security and geopolitical influence and interests are served by a deeper alliance with the US in an Indo-Pacific increasingly threatened by a rising China, and by that alliance putting more US boots on NT defence bases and training ranges.

But this shouldn’t be an either/or situation. US investment in local companies assists Australia in maintaining the kind of industrial base needed to support a range of contingencies. Washington needs to consider that Canberra’s commitment to supporting the US force posture initiative is substantial and may outweigh domestic economic considerations.

The contracts for the first five of a total of eight projects in the agreement were awarded in 2018–2020, according to the US Department of Defense. Three went to Australian companies, with a combined value of $29.3 million, and two went to US companies, with a combined value of $116.5 million. That’s an $87.2 million lean towards US contractors. Or just 20% to Australian contractors.

Or at least that was the case until recently, when a whopping $687 million contract was awarded to Australian company Lendlease for the US component of works at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal. This project brings Australian companies up to $716.3 million, meaning 86% of the total value of US contracts has so far been awarded to Australian companies. Suddenly, it’s a very different story.

So, was bonding a barrier to Australian companies winning these contracts or winning the higher value contracts? It’s one of several possible factors.

US companies may have a greater capacity than their Australian counterparts to meet the bonding requirements for high-value projects. Given that there was no waiving of the requirements for the first three successful Australian companies, nor was such a waiver a requested, the difficulty in raising bonds could explain why Australian companies other than Lendlease won just 3.5% of the total value of the US contracts.

If US companies were able to raise bonds and Australian companies, other than Lendlease, weren’t, then it’s reasonable and fair that the US companies won the lion’s share of the other contracts.

Other factors at play here include the extent to which Australian companies are perceived to be competitive, the competitiveness of individual bids and the extent to which contracts were awarded to support the US economy.

The Australian government could consider changing its approach to ensure agreements are contingent on using local contractors for local projects to serve the local economy. Rather than accepting US policies, the Commonwealth could reframe foreign governments’ investments in Australian public infrastructure and assets by setting the rules to benefit the Australian economy.

The US wouldn’t tolerate the Australian government dictating investment policies on US territory any more than the Chinese Communist Party would tolerate Australia leasing a major piece of China’s transport infrastructure.

The security threats that Australia will face in the future will be increasingly complex, high-tech and dispersed across domains. Yet the young Australians who will be most impacted have few mechanisms to contribute their perspectives on and solutions to our country’s strategic challenges. To address this shortfall, Dom Dwyer and Tom Smethurst are spearheading a Youth National Security Strategy. Frankly, the initiative is long overdue.

One potentially critical contribution the strategy could make would be to update the Australia–US relationship for the world the next generation of foreign-policy leaders will be dealing with.

Dwyer and Smethurst contend that young Australians have a unique perspective on security in part because they have lived more under the shadow of terrorism than of nuclear war. They have ‘witnessed the waning of our US ally, in a story punctuated by recessions, populism and now the pandemic’, all of which has shaped their priorities. The implication that future Australian policymakers may not rate our primary security ally as highly as previous generations is worrying but by no means surprising.

A 2020 RAND article titled ‘The lost generation in American foreign policy’ argues that, since 2000, ‘A generation of Americans have come of age in an era in which foreign policy setbacks have been more frequent than advances.’ This is also true for a generation of Australians. To those born since 2000, US foreign and defence policy has been punctuated by false pretences for war in Iraq, a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan, state-sanctioned ‘enhanced interrogation’ tactics, and airstrikes on and support to rebels in Syria.

And then came Donald Trump.

During his presidency, the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership it once led, tore up the Iran nuclear agreement, withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and World Health Organization, and pandered to or overlooked the actions of dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. Even with President Joe Biden’s administration restoring a degree of normality to US relations, America’s global leadership and influence have taken a battering in the last two decades.

It’s no wonder Australia’s future security leaders are questioning the value of our partnership with the US.

The 2021 Lowy Institute Poll, released on Wednesday, asked Australians how important the US was for Australia’s security. Only 30% of 18–29-year-olds said it was very important, compared with 64% of those over 60. In last year’s poll, in response to a question about whether China or the US was more important to Australia, 54% of 18–29-year-olds said China, while 64% of Australians over 60 chose the US. Young Australians moving into security careers may not be as invested in our alliance with the US as in the past, which could mean great potential losses for our defence, influence in Washington and regional clout.

How might this trend be reversed? Australia’s political leaders and officials need to adopt new ways of communicating the benefits of our US relationship to the public. Rather than use tired old lines, there needs to be more cut-through and better tailoring of messages.

We need to avoid recycling phrases such as ‘US and Australian forces have fought together in every significant conflict since World War I’ and avoid the temptation to celebrate the relationship by making the focus of our success ‘100 years of mateship’. This approach is tailored to public diplomacy efforts in the US, where it has proven effective. But for younger Australians, it conjures negative associations of costly military entanglements and makes the alliance sound dated.

Emerging Australian strategists lack a connection with the stabilising role the US played after World War II and see waning utility in the US’s massive conventional military forces. They are more concerned with understanding how technology will transform statecraft and warfare, as well as non-traditional and asymmetric challenges like climate change, biosecurity, geoeconomics, non-state actors and cyberattacks.

To protect the future of the Australia–US relationship, we need to stop talking about the past. Instead, we need to communicate that our security alliance is a helpful modern tool with contemporary relevance. For example, it is:

• helping Australia develop cutting-edge science and technology, including in new areas such as hypersonics, electronic warfare and biosecurity
• underpinning Australia’s engagement in new regional security networks such as the Quad and driving us towards tangible action on climate change
• supporting Australia’s counterterrorism efforts and helping prevent attacks
• enabling mutual defence against cyberattacks and providing training on countering cyber threats
• providing invaluable assistance from an intelligence-sharing and analysis perspective, even if this success is still largely a secret
• amplifying our support for a liberal, democratic, rules-based Indo-Pacific.

As they say in the finance industry, recent past performance is not an indicator of future benefit. Even though there have been US foreign and defence policy missteps in recent decades, Australia reaps overwhelming security advantages from its relationship with the US, and will continue to do so.

If the Youth National Security Strategy can acknowledge this and chart a way to rebrand the Australia–US relationship, it will have made a considerable contribution to Australia’s future.

Now that the government has made the decision to purchase 29 of Boeing’s AH-64E Apache helicopters by 2025 to replace the Australian Army’s 22 Airbus Tigers, where does it leave us?

Surprisingly, it’s with a great opportunity to increase Australia’s defence capability. Using Darwin as the Apaches’ basing and sustainment location will deepen the city’s ability to support high-end technologies and train and work with our US ally, a partner that seems likely to visit more and more frequently as President Joe Biden looks at US global force posture changes—and Australia seeks to makes that work in both its and America’s interests.

Darwin sits right near the fulcrum of our region, the Indo-Pacific. And, as ever in world history, strategic geography matters. Being able to project force from Darwin, and support and sustain it out of Darwin, is a simple necessity that flows from this fact.

Maximising Australian industry involvement in defence capability, with the ‘potential opportunities for Australian industry in logistic support, warehousing services, training development, engineering services, and maintenance, repair and overhaul’ that Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has referred to, could all be very good news.

For that to happen, though, the helicopter transition plan needs to build certain things in early, and it needs to connect to the bigger moves in our strategic environment, like the Biden administration’s thinking on US force posture and presence. It’s only four years to 2025, so decisions to guide transition planning need to be made now. And Defence must not keep those decisions to itself—they need to be understood by the industry and other stakeholders that have critical roles to play.

The defence industry in Darwin is ready to start the transition process and make sure that it has a sustainable workforce for maintaining capability.

The Covid-19 pandemic and disruptions to various supply chains have taught us two key things that are relevant here. First, we have to plan for vulnerabilities in extended supply chains by building in local resilience and capacity. Second, it’s shown how adaptable and capable Australian industry is, including in our smaller cities and the regions. It was a small, regionally based mining technology company that produced ventilators at light speed from a standing start when Covid-19 struck, for example.

It’s great to hear that the Apaches will be operated by the army’s Darwin-based 1st Aviation Regiment, but that’s well short of a commitment to basing the Apaches and their crews there. And it’s a long way from recognising that sustaining these high-technology platforms out of Darwin isn’t just feasible, but will grow foundations that enable Australia and our partners and allies to make Darwin even more useful in the challenging strategic environment we know is upon us.

It would be a somewhat ironic outcome if Defence was to move either the helicopters or their deeper sustainment and support away from Darwin, given that last year’s AUSMIN discussions showed the US making decisions to increase its investment and presence in the area through fuel storage, and now in light of the Biden force posture review. From a US perspective, we could expect the question, ‘How is it that we see the strategic role of Darwin but you Aussies don’t seem to?’—unless, of course, the Americans are too polite to ask.

Darwin has always been vital ground in the Indo-Pacific. The defence industry in Darwin is doing an outstanding job of rising to the challenges of various Australian Defence Force units being redeployed south and east, as well as gearing up for more naval activity. Industry capacity in Darwin isn’t all about defence, of course—big oil and gas projects are enabled by our industrial base too, and there’s a growing commitment to and investment in enablers that allow data-hungry sectors and people to operate effectively here.

Darwin has the weapons and testing ranges, the allied presence, and the industrial capacity needed for Australia’s attack helicopter capability to transition and thrive.

It might be attractive for Defence to think that the Apaches can be forward-deployed to Darwin but sustained out of the east coast—and that might be initially simpler for Boeing, which has a hub in Brisbane. The Apache transition needs to get beyond these tactical industry and ADF posting incentives and instead put strategic value at the heart of the plan.

I look forward to these early decisions and to helping Defence and the Darwin industrial sector make the transition from Tiger to Apache a strategic and commercial success.