The Department of Defence is the largest single landholder in the Commonwealth and one of the largest overall landholders in Australia. The Defence estate comprises 70 major bases, 100-plus training ranges and more than 1000 owned and leased properties. Those assets have a combined gross replacement value of around $68 billion. Defence properties are situated in some of the most valuable and desirable locations across Australia, such as Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Road in Melbourne, Victoria Barracks on Oxford Street in Sydney, and HMAS Penguin and the Garden Island Naval Precinct, both of which are on Sydney Harbour. 

Historically, planning and divestment of the Defence estate has been guided by Defence White Papers and major reviews, including the most recent 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR). As a result of the DSR’s recommendations, an audit of the Defence estate was completed and subsequently submitted to Defence for consideration in December 2023. Areas of focus for the audit included strengthening the resilience of the Defence estate, mechanisms to accelerate the delivery of major infrastructure, climate-change risks, and options for the consolidation of underutilised facilities (the identification of sites to be divested). Outcomes of the audit have not yet been shared with the public. 

Before the DSR, the last detailed examination of the Defence estate footprint was the 2012 Future Defence estate report (not publicly available). That report emphasised the rationalisation and divestment of surplus sites as a priority for Defence. Surplus sites were identified as those that were surplus to capability needs, considered unsuitable by contemporary standards, or not supporting Defence capability in the most cost-effective manner. Seventeen sites (out of 75 major bases) were earmarked for closure and divestment. 

Currently, Defence has publicly shared a pipeline of around 14 property divestments in train, including notable and contentious sites such as the Defence site Maribyrnong (a large, heavily contaminated site in Melbourne’s rapidly growing western suburbs), Stokes Hill (a former naval fuel station on Darwin’s foreshore), and the Penrith Multi-User Depot (packaged as part of the former government’s Western Sydney City Deal). 

Twelve years after the 2012 Future Defence estate report, it remains unclear whether the sites identified in 2012 have been divested or whether the sites in the current pipeline earmarked for divestment were part of the original recommendation. That lack of clarity reduces transparency regarding Defence’s divestment activities. Presumably, that uncertainty arises because an update on sites for divestment is expected after government consideration of the Defence estate audit report. 

Divestment of parts of the Defence estate is understandably appealing, given the increasingly uncertain strategic environment and the focus on investing in the northern network of bases. The DSR reaffirms that the Defence budget is under significant pressure across acquisition, sustainment, workforce and operating categories, necessitating difficult decisions and trade-offs to manage the defence budget in the immediate future. 

Adding to that pressure, the cost of managing and maintaining the estate is substantial, and expenses are expected to rise due to historical underinvestment in the ageing estate. Additionally, there’s a need to enhance the resilience of the estate to mitigate the impact of climate change, comply with environmental and heritage regulations, and meet the broader federal government objective of addressing affordable housing and the supply of land for housing in key metropolitan and regional locations. Divesting the estate presents an opportunity to contribute to Defence funding shortfalls, exacerbated by major capability acquisitions such as AUKUS, the implementation of the Surface Fleet Review, and reported cost overruns in existing projects, such as the Future Frigate Project. It also offers the potential to generate capital funding and reduce overall estate maintenance costs. 

Understandably, Defence, along with its political overseers, is eager to divest itself of surplus property, even if that provides only a minimal contribution to the budget shortfall (that is, generating millions of dollars, rather than the hundreds of billions of dollars needed). 

While divesting surplus properties may seem like a good idea at face value, our years of experience in working with Defence have shown us just how complex, costly and lengthy the divestment processes can be in practice, and that most divestments don’t yield notable sale value. 

Divesting Defence estate is complex, sensitive and often subject to prolonged delays from political decision-makers. Due to a lack of public data, estimating the average time frame of the divestment cycle is challenging, but most of the 14 properties in the current divestment program have been on the list for over five years (some have been there for over a decade). 

Before Defence can divest itself of properties, it must undertake a comprehensive planning stage to prepare the sites for sale. The planning stage often takes many years to complete, as it involves site assessments; geotechnical analysis; environmental and heritage assessments; valuations; master planning; local and state government and community consultation; policy/strategic assessments; market assessment; economic analysis; regulatory and planning reviews; relocating remaining onsite assets or capabilities; and possibly site remediation—to name a few. 

Once the planning stage is complete, Defence typically has two divestment options: off-market sales to state or local governments to achieve broader government outcomes, or open-market sales that achieve market value. Off-market sales require the alignment of state or local government interests with those of Defence and often involve lengthy intergovernmental negotiations to achieve the desired public purpose outcome. Open-market sales require careful planning and execution of (often multi-stage) commercial divestment strategies and commercial negotiations. Either way, this process can add an additional two to five years to the time taken to achieve a sale. 

On this basis, it wouldn’t be unusual for the Defence property divestment life cycle to span up to 10 years. Clearly, the process of divesting Defence property is excessively complex, costly and time-consuming, and in many cases the site’s size and location mean it would be impossible to ever replace. 

While rigorous due diligence and planning are necessary, the underlying cost and time frame of the divestment process raises the question ‘Is the cost of divestment justified by the sale value?’, particularly when the sale value is diminished by those costs and doesn’t significantly contribute to meeting Defence’s funding shortfall. In the current environment, in which Defence must expedite planning and infrastructure delivery (and achieve value for money), a new approach to Defence estate divestment is imperative. 

Ideally, Defence would rely on industry to develop a more cost-effective, coordinated and streamlined delivery of its divestment program, as property divestment is a commercial activity that strays outside of what’s considered normal government business. 

While we’re eagerly anticipating the public release of the Defence estate audit to comprehend how the Defence estate footprint will adapt to the DSR and defence budget constraints, the larger question looms: how can Defence estate divestments deliver value without procedural changes? Without such changes, divestment risk remains a poisoned chalice. 

AUKUS is back in the news again, this time because the US Navy has asked to order just one Virginia-class submarine in fiscal 2025, compared with the target of more than two a year needed to meet US needs and supply Australia as well.  

The building rate is likely to rise, but the news has provided grist for the mill for critics of the security grouping. And support for the Australian-UK-US security partnership is already weaker among the general public than in the navies, defence ministries and defence industries involved in it.  

AUKUS badly needs a public diplomacy arm. Led by the foreign services, such a unit could explain the purpose of the partnership, counter misunderstanding and disinformation about it, especially from China, and coordinate external communications of the partners. There’s a precedent for this: the NATO Information Service set up in 1950.  

An AUKUS public diplomacy centre would have plenty to do. The flurry of questions about AUKUS that followed reporting of the Virginia-class order was not the first mini-crisis for the partnership and won’t be the last. Committed opponents can be expected to exploit any bad news.   

In Britain and Australia, a small but raucous coalition of isolationists, pacifists and anti-nuclear campaigners has coalesced against the agreement. Many critics in Australia dislike it for implying a strategic decision to align more closely with the US against China.​ Others are sceptical that Britain is a reliable and consequential partner.​

A Guardian Essential poll published this month found that barely half as many Australians wanted their country to be a US ally as those who wanted it to be “an independent middle power with influence in the Asia-Pacific region”. A similar poll from March 2023 showed that support for AUKUS among Australians had fallen below 50%. 

In Britain, AUKUS has sometimes been brought into the Brexit debate, with critics seeing it as part of an effort to draw the country away from Europe. Meanwhile, in the US, AUKUS has been criticised for weakening American deterrence and warfighting capability against China by agreeing to sell submarines from the US fleet to Australia. The concern is acute because of the lack of US submarine construction capacity (the likely cause of the request for just one boat in 2025).  

Meanwhile, China has tried to frame AUKUS negatively across the Indo-Pacific. When the partner countries announced the agreement in September 2021, the Chinese foreign ministry warned them to abandon their ‘cold war’ mentality and said they had ‘seriously undermined regional peace and stability, aggravated the arms race and hurt international non-proliferation efforts’. Beijing has since maintained this​​ line of attack. 

This framing of AUKUS as ‘disruptive’, fuelling an ‘arms race’, and breaking ‘non-proliferation norms’ was ​​amplified​ quickly​ across Southeast Asia. Ismail Sabri Yaakob, then Malaysia’s prime minister, stressed his commitment to Southeast Asia being a neutral and nuclear weapons-free zone, while Indonesia’s foreign ministry voiced similar views. 

Sir Stephen Lovegrove, a former British national security adviser, described AUKUS as ‘the most significant capability collaboration anywhere in the world in the past six decades.’ But AUKUS governments cannot stand back and expect the public in all three countries to understand its importance without help.  

People must be provided with clear factual information about the intentions, processes, and, yes, challenges in accomplishing the AUKUS mission. A mechanism is required to engage with the public inside all three countries and further afield.  

In May 1950, shortly after the founding of NATO, its governing body, the North Atlantic Council, determined to ‘Promote and coordinate public information in furtherance of the objectives of the Treaty while leaving responsibility for national programs to each country.’ Three months later the alliance set up an ‘Information Service’.  

It answered to two working groups: one on information policy and the other on social and cultural cooperation. In 1953 the two working groups were merged to form the Committee on Information and Cultural Relations, and in 2004 that became the Committee on Public Diplomacy.   

Similar to NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, an AUKUS Public Diplomacy Service could undertake the basic task of informing the public about AUKUS’​s​ purpose, activities and policies. It would use such tools as a website, online magazine, other publications, conferences and social media. These would focus on younger generations to increase familiarity with the agreement and its long-term importance to the three nations’ security.   

The AUKUS Public Diplomacy Service would also push back against false and fictitious narratives. It would correct misconceptions and challenge hostile discourse, particularly disinformation and misinformation from China and Russia targeted at Southeast Asia and other middle-ground countries.  

Furthermore, it would advance a constructive case for the agreement and its objectives, to build trust and support.
   

And the information service would ​act as an information hub, by coordinating ​communications with such organisations as think tanks, universities and the media, which would amplify the AUKUS message. 

The AUKUS Public Diplomacy Service would be leaner and nimbler than NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, since it would have only three partners to serve rather than 32. It could also be given maximum leverage to experiment with new ideas and mediums of communication.  

Since AUKUS is intended to be a decades-long, resource-intensive trilateral effort touching the armed forces and defence-industrial sectors of the three nations, the cacophony of opposition cannot go unaddressed.   

Constructive, evidence-based criticism from within the AUKUS nations and their allies and partners is of course justified and even welcomed, because the challenges to delivering the agreement are large. But AUKUS is too important to fail in an era of disinformation and discursive statecraft. A vigorous program of public diplomacy is needed to support it.

The following is an edited summary of introductory remarks made to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) today by ASPI executive director Justin Bassi, the head of ASPI’s counter terrorism program, John Coyne and Henry Campbell, the program’s coordinator. The committee is examining the operation, effectiveness and implications of Division 105A of the Criminal Code which is a key part of the legal framework for the management of convicted terrorists. The full ASPI submission is here. 

 

The issue of terrorism and how to both counter and respond to it has been a key part of ASPI’s work since the Institute was established in 2001.

From 9/11 and the Bali bombings, to the rise of ISIL and the threat of issue-motivated violence from the likes of white supremacists, a comprehensive approach is needed, including education, prevention, punishment and rehabilitation. Division 105A of the Criminal Code fits into a sophisticated legal framework for the post-sentence management of convicted terrorists.

An issue of foremost importance to the committee, and central to our submission, is whether continuing detention orders (CDOs) should remain part of this legislative framework.

The former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM), Grant Donaldson, recommended in a report that CDOs be abolished. We consider this a misjudgement and urge the committee to disagree with the recommendation.

This does not mean that amendments are not needed. Indeed, the PJCIS is a part of the framework that ensures Australia’s national security and counter-terrorism legislation undergoes effective, continuous reform. And sometimes, laws should be abolished. But often, an ‘evolutionary’ approach of ongoing reform is better than a ‘start-stop’ approach that responds to incidents rather than prepares for them.

Instead of abolishing the entire CDO provision, the former INSLM’s concerns about the scheme’s risk assessment tool should prompt examination of, and any necessary reform to, that element. There is no existing or proposed substitute for CDOs. Eliminating them would therefore create a gap and expose the Australian community to greater risk.

Extended supervision orders (ESOs) are sometimes proposed as alternatives, but they are not the same. Supervision orders, while important, create greater risk to the community and are more resource-intensive for security agencies.

This was unfortunately demonstrated in the case of Ahamed Samsudeen in Auckland. Regarded as a terrorism risk, Samsudeen was under surveillance by New Zealand Police following his release from prison in July 2021. Surveillance and control orders could not stop Samsudeen from entering an Auckland supermarket on 3 September 2021 and grabbing a knife. It took the police surveillance team only one minute to realise he was launching an attack and a further 30 seconds to shoot him dead. But, in that time, he injured eight people.

New Zealand, notably, has terrorist control orders but no comparable CDO policy.

To be clear, CDOs are not a silver bullet, but they are a last-resort measure when a terrorist offender is judged as posing too high a risk if released.

Australia’s community safety results from a national security strategy that includes a legislative framework to address the full range of threats, not just those that are most common, likely or current.

This framework must be able to respond to future threats, with the expectation that certain threats, such as terrorist plots, are prevented, not responded to once they’ve happened.

In addition to the focus on the risk assessment tool, the former INSLM’s recommendation to remove CDOs from the framework was based in part on the view that Australia faces a reduced threat environment, writing in his official report: ‘It is my judgment that CDOs are not proportionate to the threat of terrorism and are not necessary.’

We have made the mistake before of examining security in the context of current circumstances as though they are static. One example is the 2013 National Security statement, which effectively called an end to the era of terrorism, only to see the rise of ISIL that same year and, in 2014, the increase of Australia’s terrorism threat level to HIGH. While Australia’s terrorism threat level is now at POSSIBLE, reduced from PROBABLE in 2022, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said last month in his Annual Threat Assessment 2024: ‘Terrorism remains a threat—a real threat, a pervasive threat—even with a lower national threat level.’

Australians should be proud of our system and the security agencies that make our safety the nation’s top priority. While we are currently in a period in which a terror attack is less likely than recent years, we should not become complacent. CDOs have an important role as a last resort and, even if not used for many years, they remain relevant in both principle and practice.

Australians should take pride in our prompt and generous response to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Australia’s ongoing assistance to Ukraine, which is approaching one billion dollars, mostly in the form of military materiel and training, reflects enlightened self-interest as well as national resolve to help a fellow democracy repel flagrant and illegal aggression.

Anything less than failure for Putin in Ukraine would have serious implications for Australian interests and security. Beyond the consequences for Europe, it would signal that liberal democracies lack staying power, emboldening other autocrats with growing military capabilities and a disruptive agenda, including Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un in our region.

The Australian government seems to appreciate the stakes. As Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles aptly put it, ‘We stand with Ukraine in support of its courageous people and also in defence of a fundamental principle—the right of every sovereign nation to be secure in its own borders and to determine its own future.’ In other words, what happens in Ukraine resonates around the world.

However, despite ministers’ firm rhetoric and ongoing pledges, there are signs that assistance for Ukraine is slipping as a political priority in Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has stopped claiming that Australia is the most generous non-NATO donor to Ukraine. Albanese’s initial hesitation in confirming his attendance at the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius also sent a confused message. A downward trend in Australian assistance would run counter to the national interest and jar with public sentiment favouring greater support for Ukraine.

Australia’s assistance to Ukraine should reflect its objectives. Defence says that Australia aims, along with its partners, to ‘empower Ukraine to resolve the conflict on its own terms’, while ‘noting Defence’s primary focus on the Indo-Pacific region’. While these goals may seem in tension, they are in fact complementary.

For Kyiv, resolving this conflict on its own terms means expelling Russia from all Ukrainian territory. While that may seem difficult to envisage at this point, many credible analysts, including Jack Watling at the UK Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), assess that Ukraine could achieve sufficient leverage from military success on the battlefield to impose a lasting peace, but only if liberal democracies stand together and increase military assistance to Ukraine.

Whatever we may hear from presidential candidates and Congress ahead of a US election, Watling argues persuasively that Russian success in Ukraine would likely necessitate greater US commitment to deterrence in Europe, diminishing its resources to deter Beijing and Pyongyang. Avoiding this outcome supports the already compelling logic for increasing Australian assistance to Ukraine, and complements Defence’s objectives in the Indo-Pacific.

It’s also important that Kyiv receives sufficient assistance to end this conflict on its terms as quickly and efficiently as possible. Providing only enough support to keep Russia bogged down in Ukraine is neither morally nor strategically sound. It is essential for Australia that the US can refocus its considerable policy and military might towards the Indo-Pacific as we face what President Joe Biden has aptly referred to as a ‘decisive decade’. That US pivot—already deferred twice by the post-9/11 war on terror and the 2008 global financial crisis—cannot be achieved cleanly while Putin’s expansionary delusions remain buttressed by territorial gains in Ukraine.

Australia’s transfer of military materiel, its ongoing training of Ukrainian soldiers in the UK through the extension and expansion of Operation Kudu, and the ADF deployment of an RAAF E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft to Germany are all making a difference to outcomes in Ukraine. But some forms of assistance are being refused or held up in Canberra.

We acknowledge Marles’ explanations to Parliament for not providing some forms of materiel to Ukraine, including Hawkei vehicles and the F/A-18 ‘classic’ Hornet aircraft, citing a combination of factors including safety, and issues with sustainment and readiness. A similar debate is playing out with MRH-90 Taipan helicopters, which will be retired from service and buried due to safety concerns, rather than sent to Ukraine.

These might be sound reasons for refusing to transfer military materiel in normal circumstances, but war warrants a different approach to risk. Ukrainian officials should be fully appraised of any risk assessment from the Australian Government and Defence specifically, but if the goal is to empower Ukraine to win on its own terms, then surely the decision on accepting capability in less than pristine operational condition is one for Ukraine. Its soldiers have proven time and again what they can do with kit that is not what we would consider fit for purpose.

It’s good that Parliament is scrutinising the government’s policy on assistance to Ukraine, including as the first item of an ongoing inquiry into Defence’s annual report by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.

In our submission to the parliamentary inquiry, we encourage Defence to adopt a more forward leaning stance towards future Ukrainian requests for materiel, especially where capabilities are retired from service or are surplus to ADF requirements.

We recommend that Defence, working with the Ukrainian authorities, reviews all capabilities that are close to retirement or retired, as well as capabilities being produced by Australian defence industry, which may be suited to assisting Ukraine. This review should be conducted with a particular eye on low-cost capabilities that might have an asymmetric effect, such as the Precision Payload Distribution System (PPDS), more famously known as the ‘cardboard drone’, produced by Melbourne-based Sypaq Systems.

Such a review could have positive carryover to the changes the government plans to make to Australia’s own national defence. These include streamlining procurement, getting capabilities into the hands of warfighters early and refining them in the field, and seeking asymmetric advantages in both Australia’s partnerships and homegrown pool of innovative talent. We hope that the Defence Industry Development Strategy, the National Defence Strategy, and other plans that are expected to be published in the coming months will make progress towards these goals.

Setting Ukraine in a global context, Australia must become an important part of an emerging collective arsenal for democracy. This means deepening research and industrial collaborations with trusted partners, including through AUKUS. Given Europe’s demand for quality and dependable supplies of arms, investments in Australia by key foreign partners, like Hanwha’s establishment of armoured vehicle manufacturing in Victoria, should also be encouraged.

To recall Margaret Thatcher’s choice turn of phrase to George H.W. Bush when confronting Saddam Hussein’s flagrant aggression against Kuwait in 1990, this is no time to go wobbly. Ukraine can resolve the war on its terms, and it’s essential for Australian interests and the security of our region that it does. Australian assistance—military, financial and diplomatic—is making a difference, but we must help stiffen our spines, and those of our friends and allies, by doing more.

Defence diplomacy, the peaceful use of defence resources to pursue foreign and strategic policy objectives, is generally viewed as positively contributing to Australia’s statecraft, especially in the Pacific Islands region.

But although it is gaining prominence in Australian debates, the concept of defence diplomacy is often not well-understood and there is scepticism about its value.

In our recent paper for the Statecraftiness project we assess the nature and effectiveness of Australia’s defence diplomacy in the Pacific Islands region. We analyse: defence cooperation; maritime surveillance and support; people-to-people links; humanitarian and disaster relief; and minilateral and bilateral arrangements.

We find that, while much of Australia’s defence diplomacy is positive, its effectiveness as a tool of statecraft can be increased in the following ways.

As for all statecraft, demonstrating causality between defence diplomacy and outcomes that are favourable to Australia’s strategic interests is challenging. We recommend that Defence consider reviewing its diplomacy efforts to assess how they are received and perceived by Pacific Island countries and how they specifically meet Australia’s strategic interests. This would provide a sound basis on which to design the expansion and improvement of Australia’s efforts.

Future defence diplomacy investments must be made cautiously and strategically. For example, while Defence Minister Richard Marles indicated that Australia is ‘very keen’ to help Solomon Islands establish a defence force, questions over its likely benefit should give Australia pause.

Australia should continue to emphasise partnership and mutual benefit. One of the longstanding strengths of the Defence Cooperation Program and Pacific Maritime Security Programme is that they are designed to meet both Australian and Pacific priorities.

Australia should support greater localisation. For example, closed borders during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that most of the frontline humanitarian response in Vanuatu in 2021 and Tonga in 2022 was delivered domestically, with Australia and other partners providing logistical and material support. As a start, Australia should ensure implementation of the Partners in the Blue Pacific’s planned Pacific Humanitarian Warehousing Program that would pre-position humanitarian and emergency supplies to empower local humanitarian responses.

Australia should think more about how to work with other partners in the increasingly ‘crowded and complex’ Pacific Islands region. There is scope to improve cooperation with allies and partners through existing mechanisms such as the FRANZ Arrangement and the Pacific Quad.

Ongoing discussions on maritime cooperation with Japan, South Korea, and Canada are likely to be facilitated by developing mechanisms such as the Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative. However, these cooperative efforts need to be mindful of not sidelining Pacific institutions, particularly the Pacific Islands Forum.

Cooperation with China is going to be less straightforward. But China’s increased presence in the region means that Australia and its partners can’t avoid considering how they’ll work alongside—if not with—China on issues such as humanitarian and disaster relief.

Australia should discourage bilateralism and use its defence diplomacy to emphasise multilateral security efforts that bolster regional institutions and meet Pacific priorities.

There were concerns that the April 2022 China-Solomon Islands security agreement could fracture Pacific regionalism and pave the way for a Chinese military base. While a base is unlikely, particularly as it would be unpopular domestically, the agreement may encourage other partner countries to compete by engaging in ’increased militarisation of the region’.

This concern appears borne out by the 2023 US-PNG defence cooperation agreement. PNG also signed status of forces agreements with the UK in 2023 and France in 2022. American security analysts praised the US agreement as a ‘way for the US military to gain influence on the island and shift military policy to fall more in line with that of the US.’ But its broad scope was described as ‘unbelievable’ by Henry Ivarature, deputy director of strategic engagement at the Australian Pacific Security College, who said that it ‘reads to me as if PNG has sold itself and its sovereignty to the US’. The agreement was met with student protests.

The 2022 Australia-Vanuatu security agreement is also unpopular domestically and was cited as one of the reasons behind the successful August 2023 vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau. The new Vanuatu government plans to ‘revisit’ the agreement, which is unlikely to be ratified by Parliament in its current form.

There are also questions about the 2023 Falepili Union. Australia has provided a security guarantee to Tuvalu and gained an effective veto over Tuvalu’s future security and defence engagements, in exchange for a special visa arrangement for Tuvalu citizens to Australia. The treaty was signed without widespread public consultation. There are concerns that its benefit to Tuvalu may be limited by the difficulties Tuvaluans face migrating to Australia and its failure to require Australia to commit to greater emissions reductions, given that climate change is Tuvalu’s greatest security threat. There are also questions about practical difficulties of Australia responding to external aggression against Tuvalu.

Questions about practicalities also arise with respect to the 2023 Australia-PNG security agreement. While the immediate priority under the agreement is police cooperation, either party may ‘request assistance… on a security-related matter or threat’. Patrick Kaiku, a teaching fellow in the political science department at the University of Papua New Guinea and Faith Hope Boie, an undergraduate student at the university, observe that the agreement covers ‘wider security issues far in excess of those covered by the US agreement’. This represents a welcome vote of confidence, but it also poses risks to Australia, which lacks the capacity to substantively respond to any widespread outbreak of conflict in PNG.

Indeed, recent reports that PNG is in talks with China about a potential security and policing agreement highlight the difficulty of individual partners meeting PNG’s security assistance needs. Rather than encouraging bilateralism, Australia’s defence diplomacy should advance an approach that bolsters cooperation and capacity to respond to security challenges under the auspices of regional institutions such as the Pacific Islands Forum. Regional approaches would generate fewer domestic consequences, better spread responsibility, create a deeper pool of capacity, and potentially take the heat out of partner competition and militarisation.