Tag Archive for: Indigenous Australians

How Australia can limit the downsides of critical-minerals mining

As Australia expands its critical-minerals industry, it must limit the environmental and social effects of mining and maintain high governance standards. The government should work with the private sector, non-government organisations and human rights advocates to broker standards that balance the benefits and harms of critical-minerals mining.

The urgent need to decarbonise is driving a global shift to renewable energy, the one bright spot in an otherwise dire response to our changing climate. Globally, prices of solar power, wind power and lithium-ion batteries have tumbled, and their deployment has dramatically increased. The energy transition is an opportunity for Australia to capitalise on its abundant reserves of critical-minerals needed for the production of wind turbines, solar PV panels and lithium-ion batteries.

Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium, the third largest for cobalt and the fourth largest for rare earth elements. It has the scope to increase production at existing mines while exploring new deposits. At the same time, mining companies face various difficulties, such as riding the boom and bust cycle of the highly volatile critical-mineral markets and navigating geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. New industrial policies in the US, EU and Australia (through the Future Made in Australia Act) contribute to further increases in investment by the private sector and governments, fuelling competition in minerals processing and manufacturing.

In prioritising the mining of critical-minerals, Australia must tackle serious environmental challenges, which the UN calls a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Our drive to dig and ship critical-minerals—or even dig, process and ship them—must be tempered by the need to minimise effects on our precious water supply and biodiversity.

We must mine in a way that minimises pollution, which is a significant driver of biodiversity loss in Australia. As a result of our failure to protect fragile ecosystems and species, 19 ecosystems are already in various stages of collapse with the potential to affect food systems and drinking water in major cities. Facilitating the clean energy transition is important, but minimising its harmful side effects is an imperative.

We must also remember that Australia’s high environmental and social standards are among its competitive advantages; it must update them. Scholars have identified that Australia has not advanced its environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards as it has upgraded the nickel industry, at least.

If Australia wants to protect the planet and habitat, states may have to pay higher costs for mining that is ethical and more environmental. It is a confounding problem: if higher costs cuts profits, they may undermine the shift to renewables, which will in turn contribute to climatic instability and threaten our way of life.

Australia should also be aware of no-go zones where mining should not occur, an issue that we examine at the Sydney Environment Institute. An example is deep-sea mining, a new frontier for mining operations that could have quite harmful environmental impacts. It’s also questionable whether mining should occur in areas of prime agricultural land in Australia, given that farming is already under threat from climate change. This highlights the trade-offs between the importance of critical-minerals mining for national energy supply and the need to protect environmental and food security.

Social effects of critical-minerals mining can be limited by developing better relations with First Nations people, as more than half of critical-minerals projects are on lands where the traditional owners have a right to negotiate. The operational social licence of critical-mineral miners could be substantially improved through collaboration with regional communities and mutually beneficial economic opportunities, contributing to renewable energy production that could drastically reduce energy poverty in remote areas.

Australia should also develop new mining methods that limit environmental effects. The Future Made in Australia Act focuses not just on encouraging private investment in critical-minerals mining, but also on research and development in new technologies, including AI. These will reduce costs, increase efficiency and limit environmental harms, particularly those related to water use and hazardous waste.

Tensions and trade-offs in the critical-minerals mining industry mean that decisions about where, what and how to mine cannot be made only in Perth and Canberra, let alone in Washington DC or in the capitals of any of our other partners. The glaring absence of multilateral mining regulations demonstrates the problem of import markets such as the US and the EU wanting critical-minerals for renewables cheaply and urgently, while also wanting improved ESG outcomes.

So while national governments focus on improving access, governance standards can be improved by engaging all three points of the governance triangle: the state, the private sector (investors, mining companies, up-stream and down-stream companies) and civil society, including environmental non-government organisations and human rights advocates. Increasingly, all three are needed in brokering acceptable standards that balance the trade-offs between the benefits of mining minerals for renewables and the harms it causes.

A whole-of-Defence framework to attract and retain Indigenous talent

The effort to grow the Australian Defence Force to 101,000 by 2040 has put recruitment under the spotlight and it’s important that Defence’s ambitions on Indigenous participation are a crucial part of this drive.

For 18 months, ASPI researchers have engaged with various parts of defence, Indigenous communities and businesses on how to capitalise on Defence’s ambitions. A new ASPI report, Building genuine trust, funded by the Defence Strategic Policy and Intelligence Group, provides a framework and strategy for Defence to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) recruitment and retention, and cybersecurity careers.

Defence’s aim is to reach 5% Indigenous participation in the armed services and 3% of Defence public servants by 2025. The targets are a point of pride and a source of clear goodwill and have provided momentum in several areas of Defence for Indigenous employment and pathways.

However, success in individual areas is yet to translate into an effective whole-of-Defence framework with cohesive lines of effort.

We propose that Defence enact a wide set of supporting measures—particularly in data and reporting to track professional development—to more sustainably deliver organisational improvements and outcomes.

A common story in the services and on the civilian side of Defence is slow progress on the policy reform that’s urgently needed to build Indigenous employment pathways. Defence needs to demonstrate that it invests in the long-term training, retention and advancement of Indigenous personnel.

The services are driving much reform, but the lack of a comprehensive data picture and an annual public report that canvasses what’s working well means many work areas are without a clear guide or a definition of success beyond participation targets, so their efforts are unfocused and can be discordant.

Developing measures and public reporting, including on how senior leadership is achieving Indigenous targets within the workforce, will be an important step forward. It will cement Defence’s leadership role as an exemplar to other parts of government. It will also ensure that Indigenous employment is addressed as part of the renewed drive to optimise defence data, as outlined in the Defence data strategy 2021–2023.

Setting up Indigenous employees for success within the ‘One Defence’ team requires personnel at all levels to have greater situational awareness of the grassroots reasons for Indigenous Australians joining, staying in or leaving the organisation.

Addressing career pathways and enhancing retention require a mindset and training that anticipate employee issues—including cultural factors—and address them so that Indigenous Australians decide to join and stay. The cultural integrity framework for the public service, sponsored by Defence, will be an important part of that effort.

The ‘pathway’ metaphor is often deployed to describe Indigenous training and employment programs and equity and social inclusion initiatives. Indigenous employment pathways aren’t just about entry points but are also about training and development opportunities within Defence and beyond into veterans’ employment.

Initiatives for Defence and other parts of government that tie together training, scholarships and pre-apprenticeship programs would provide a major lift to current efforts. Initiatives to build capability, such as business incubators, venture financing and ensuring that existing policy tools are being used effectively, would increase the ability of Indigenous businesses to deliver higher value contracts. There are risks in all these areas, so linking those policies to Defence’s core purposes—delivering capabilities for the government to use to advance Australia’s security—must be clear.

In the broader business environment, there’s patchy engagement with reconciliation processes among major defence contractors. This is an area where Defence can influence overall change in the sector.

There will always be tension for Defence and government between targeting problems that are clearly visible (and for which data is available) and addressing blind spots. Labour market data on Indigenous Australia is notoriously unreliable, so government action can be misaligned. For example, an effort to improve the quality of labour force statistics by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Central Analytics Hub was shelved because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the bushfire season and data access problems. Defence can be a powerful advocate for improved federal and state data collection as a basis for policy and implementation in this area.

Visible data creates a bias towards taking action that seems relatively straightforward, but which in fact will require concerted efforts on multiple fronts and involve several government portfolios or work areas.

This is why relationship-building comes up so often in discussions with those in Defence charged with attracting Indigenous candidates and with their counterparts in the education sector responsible for guiding students into careers. Relationships trump everything when raw numbers (on, for example, completion rates) might not tell the full story of Indigenous perseverance.  Indigenous students are much more likely than non-Indigenous students to experience conflict between study and family commitments, including caring for children or other family members, which affects results.

Defence hasn’t built strong enough relationships through frequent interactions with the vocational education and training and university sectors, including Indigenous elders in universities and Indigenous pro-vice chancellors (some of whom are ADF veterans). Its signature cyber initiatives—the ADF Cyber Gap and Cyber Defence College—don’t have a visible Indigenous engagement strategy or a clear link to the Defence TAFE Employment Scheme.

Defence and other agencies will need to ensure that the growth of Indigenous opportunities is part of the government’s revised ‘industry cluster’ model for skills development.

Defence has set itself an ambitious goal in its reconciliation action plan: ‘fostering genuine relationships built on trust’. Trust is intangible, but high-trust organisations have lower costs and ensure social cohesion in the face of rising uncertainties. How Defence holds itself to account and builds long-term relationships with Indigenous Australians will be a key marker of its success.

The goal of building trust makes Defence’s task more ambiguous and success more difficult to assess in the short term.

Engagement with Indigenous liaison officer network initiatives such as the appointment of Indigenous elders to military bases help build trust. But some foundational blocks are missing, such as an Indigenous youth engagement strategy and a digital service design attuned to how Indigenous candidates access internet services, including for labour market information.

Fostering trust is necessary for Defence to truly represent the nation it protects. There are opportunities to partner with Indigenous Australians, build capacity alongside them and prioritise their leadership so that the collection and use of data, strategies on staff training and development, and strategies on engagement with youth, veterans, businesses and communities are developed in genuine partnership.

The power of Indigenous diplomacy as a strategic asset for Australia

International relations sometimes seems like a game that’s all about controlling and asserting simplistic national-power narratives without acknowledging the complexity of each nation’s stories.

But the key to effective public diplomacy is moving from monologue to dialogue, which means knowing when to speak and when to listen. In Australia, this begins with listening to, and reckoning with, the nation’s Indigenous history and projecting that into the international public sphere.

Indigenous diplomacy needs to be seen as an asset in Australia’s strategic toolkit.

‘International interest in Indigenous culture is very high and people see it as unique,’ says Australia’s first Indigenous ambassador, Damien Miller, in an interview with ASPI. ‘It’s a natural part of our soft power.’

Miller belongs to the Gangulu people, traditional custodians of land in Central Queensland’s Dawson and Callide valleys. His grandmother moved to Rockhampton after the 1897 Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act nullified the political and civil rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In the 1960s his father moved to Brisbane, where Miller grew up.

This painful part of Australia’s history reverberates into the present. There are distinct challenges in reconciling these elements in the national story, and Australia has its detractors globally over its treatment of its Indigenous citizens.

Miller acknowledges, but also challenges, these views: ‘Some have very outdated views of our nation based on cherry-picking the most negative aspects of Australian history. But I would say that this bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground.’

It’s important to tell the whole complex and rich story of Australia—the parts where we succeed and the parts where we stumble, especially in relation to the Indigenous experience.

When we do this, says Miller, ‘Australia’s Indigenous diplomacy is a way of showing the world an open, mature country that can explore the light and the shade of our history.’

A world awash with disinformation has shown how important ideas are. Australia traditionally thinks of soft power as education, sport and culture. Those elements are important, but there’s a harder edge to appreciate.

In the context of the grey zone, where information warfare targeting the political culture and reputation of nations is a key tactic, having a strong narrative about national identity, values and history becomes ever more important.

In Miller’s view, having a compelling story to tell about Australia is a critical element of national power. In his work as minister-counselor for strategic communications at Australia’s Washington embassy, he talks about three distinct chapters of our national story.

The first is our unique Indigenous heritage. ‘I’m just so proud of our Indigenous culture—60,000 years of relationship and stewardship between culture and the environment—it’s an incredible story to tell the world.

‘The second chapter is our European heritage, which brought new ideas and values that eventually grew into a vibrant democratic political culture embracing the rule of law domestically and internationally.

‘The third thing I emphasise is our multiculturalism,’ says Miller. ‘Australia is one of the most successful and unified multicultural nations in history and it’s getting more so over time. It’s this story that makes us so competitive, for example, in attracting the best and brightest around the world to our skilled migration program.’

Key to this narrative is how Indigenous Australia is changing, he says. ‘I talk about Indigenous youth graduating from high school, increasing numbers going to university and forging professional paths, and those re-embracing traditional lifestyles, going into business, becoming strong members of civil society.’

This story of education and empowerment is reflected internationally, with transnational Indigenous civil-society networks on the front lines of global systemic crises from Covid-19 to climate change.

It’s important to note that indigenous peoples have ownership, use or management rights over more than 25% of the world’s land surface and 37% of all remaining ‘natural’ lands. Australian Indigenous interests own or exercise a degree of legal control over close to 80% of the Northern Australian landmass, and considerable areas of sea country.

Indigenous expertise is crucial to building resilience to climate change and preserving the world’s remaining biodiversity. And the transnational, collaborative, non-state-bound nature of indigenous diplomatic networks demonstrates the type of diplomacy the global community will need to manage future crises more effectively.

Miller points to the Kimberley Land Council’s savannah-burning carbon projects, which embrace Indigenous grassfire techniques and have been trialled in Botswana. The program generates around $20 million worth of Australian carbon credit units annually.

Such Indigenous ecological approaches will only become more important. Degradation of indigenous land rights often goes with the catastrophic degradation of carbon sinks like the Amazon Basin. The survival of indigenous communities might be intimately linked to limiting the damage associated with worst-case climate scenarios.

Their ownership of a quarter of the world’s land means indigenous communities are crucial in more conventional geopolitical terms. They often stand at the nexus of resource exploitation, political conflict and economic competition.

On one level, indigenous peoples suffer from similar issues of dispossession, underdevelopment, unemployment, drug abuse, youth suicide and structural discrimination.

On another, international indigenous networks have grown institutionally sophisticated. They’re  embedded in multilateral politics and run media organisations, businesses and sovereign wealth funds with substantial capital and asset holdings. In the United Nations system, important forums for indigenous issues include the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Indigenous groups were a big presence at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

Indigenous geopolitics is also regionally significant. Of the 500 million indigenous people in 90 countries, 70% live in Asia.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Indigenous diplomacy agenda, launched in May 2021, is timely. It has four main pillars: shaping international norms and standards to benefit indigenous peoples, maximising opportunities for indigenous peoples in a globalised world, promoting sustainable development for all indigenous peoples, and deploying Indigenous Australian diplomats to advance Australia’s national interests.

The agenda came out of DFAT’s Indigenous peoples strategy 2015–2019, launched by departmental secretary Peter Varghese in 2015. DFAT has used elements of it for decades, says Miller, working through human rights forums in the UN, in DFAT’s human resources policies, and in its promotion of Indigenous voices overseas.

The agenda consolidates and elevates Indigenous diplomacy as a key element of our national diplomacy. Australia, says Miller, is a global leader in this area, along with Canada and New Zealand.

On various postings, Miller has spoken about Australia’s unique reconciliation movement, Indigenous policy and governance models. DFAT and the National Indigenous Australian Agency discuss Indigenous issues as part of their regular bilateral engagement with the US, Canadian and New Zealand governments. He says Australia would like to do more with the US indigenous community and scholars, particularly on economic governance.

Public health is key to supporting social and economic wellbeing, says Miller, noting that Australia has leading-edge Indigenous networks doing community health work that emphasises place-based solutions while building strong partnerships with governments, corporates and not-for-profits.

Australia’s Indigenous nations have their own traditions of relationship-building and diplomacy. Miller says northern Australian Indigenous peoples had historical relationships based on trade and culture with regional indigenous populations—for example, between Torres Strait Islanders and Papua New Guineans and between the people of Arnhem Land and Indonesia’s Macassans.

Miller says these traditions and cultural values have always informed his work as a diplomat. He uses the example of the Gangalu people, who are passionate about organising and promoting community welfare and partnering with others to find solutions.

‘The ancientness of the Indigenous story in Australia gives you a certain perspective: respect for elders, the importance of deep listening, respect for the heritage and stories of others, the importance of finding common ground, being deeply engaged in community life, giving back and showing generosity of spirit.’

East Arnhem region could become a forward operating base for Australia and its partners

The Northern Territory’s geostrategic importance has never been clearer as longstanding tensions in the Indo-Pacific are exacerbated by the dislocating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The United States has foreshadowed an increased military presence in Darwin, with major planned spending and infrastructure development expected. While Darwin is an ideal location for a forward operating base for Australia and its allies and partners like the US, Japan and others, there’s potential for a larger presence across the Top End in more regional and remote locations.

East Arnhem Land is a pristine natural environment with a rich and extensive history of Aboriginal cultures (Yolngu groups), a significant town (Nhulunbuy—the largest in the region) and a range of communities and homelands. It is also home to the NT’s second deepest naturally occurring port, in the Gulf of Carpentaria approximately 14 kilometres from Nhulunbuy.

Following the Australian government’s enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, the East Arnhem region, which includes the land on which the Gove mine and township sit, was granted to the traditional owners as freehold Aboriginal land. The mining leases are due to expire in 2053, but may be terminated earlier, after which the leases for the mine and township, currently held by the Northern Land Council, will be given over to the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Land Trust. Once that happens, the traditional owners of the Gove Peninsula will be the primary decision-makers for the entire peninsula.

The North Australian Bauxite and Alumina Company (which became Alcan in 2003) originally operated the bauxite mine near Nhulunbuy and expanded its operations there to include an alumina refinery. Alcan was purchased by Rio Tinto, which took control of Nhulunbuy mining operations in 2007. Rio Tinto also provides most of Nhulunbuy’s essential services and is a major financial backer of the school, hospital, power plant (which supplies the refinery and town) and air services.

While mining still occurs on the Gove Peninsula and is expected to continue at the Rio Tinto mine until around 2030, activity at the refinery was curtailed in 2014, resulting in a loss of more than 1,000 jobs and a significant reduction in Nhulunbuy’s population. Following that decision, Indigenous organisations (including Gumatj Corporation, the Rirratjingu Aboriginal Corporation and the Northern Land Council), Rio Tinto, and the NT and Australian governments committed to working towards a positive post-mining future for Nhulunbuy and the Gove Peninsula for Yolngu landowners, local communities, businesses and industry.

Understanding this history of Nhulunbuy and its facilities is essential to considering potential defence and national security uses and appreciating the benefits and potential drawbacks.

Nhulunbuy has several strategic advantages that make it an ideal location for an alliance forward operating base, particularly with some relatively small upgrades and investment.

There are significant power-supply facilities in the area, servicing both the town and the alumina refinery. It was estimated in 2014 that they generate approximately 180 gigawatts annually. Nhulunbuy’s natural deep-water port has infrastructure to service mining and resource companies and it’s one of the primary supply lines into the region. The airstrip is more than 2,200 metres long and 45 metres wide and can accommodate US and Australian military planes, including the giant C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. While the primary supply line is by sea, the airstrip’s suitability for large aircraft means provides an alternative.

The Nhulunbuy area lies just 12° from the equator, which gives it vast aerospace potential. Equatorial Launch Australia, supported by the Yolngu Gumatj Corporation, the NT government and Developing East Arnhem Limited, are working on the Arnhem Space Centre, approximately 30 kilometres east of Nhulunbuy on the Dhupuma Plateau. The centre will accommodate suborbital and small orbital satellite launch vehicles and provide potential for strategic recognisance operability across the Indo-Pacific.

Health and accommodation facilities in Nhulunbuy have supported the township and Rio Tinto’s operations at their peak and while those operations were winding down. These facilities are located within or close to the township, which is an advantage in that any strategic expansion into Nhulunbuy would likely be integrated into the existing community, avoiding any ‘us and them’ issues prevalent in other communities that host military bases.

While Nhulunbuy presents critical advantages for a forward operating base, challenges remain.

The primary challenge is the mining lease on which the township and alumina refinery sit. Land within a mining lease can be used only for activities stipulated in that lease, which would likely exclude the strategic activities of such a base. While land could be excised, responsibility for any environmental problems created during the term of the mining lease may deter or complicate strategic investment.

Furthermore, many of the overland supply lines into East Arnhem Land would probably need to be significantly upgraded at considerable cost to permit year-round access.

Because the entire East Arnhem region is Aboriginal land, there’d need to be extensive consultation with the traditional owners of the Gove Peninsula and their agreement would be essential. While that may take time and the owners may veto a military presence, establishment of a base also presents an opportunity for significant contributions to the area’s social and economic future.

Allied investment could provide traditional owners with opportunities across training and skills development, employment, and infrastructure upgrades and development, which may otherwise be unattainable.

The long-term nature of such a strategic investment would also address some of the training and development issues that plague projects across remote Australia, which are often piecemeal and bring limited employment opportunities for Aboriginal people. Appropriate engagement and collaboration is key to achieving mutual, sustainable benefits.

For industry, the opportunities generated by a Defence presence would bring significant local economic benefit, assist the development of a skilled workforce and lead to more sustainable economic development for the township.

Because a base in Nhulunbuy could bring broad benefits regardless of these challenges, exploration by the Australian government of what’s needed to establish a sovereign capability on East Arnhem Land fits nicely into the evolving northern Australia strategic defence and national security architecture.

The case for an Indigenous Australian civil defence force

Australia needs an agile surge capacity to provide emergency personnel to respond to disasters, domestically and into our near region. That need will only grow, due to the increasingly frequent and intense weather events we’re now experiencing. The 2019–2020 bushfires and Covid-19 have both illustrated that existing civil security and emergency response arrangements can be quickly overwhelmed.

To date, the Australian Defence Force has been the government’s answer to the increasing demand for civil defence responses. While the ADF is doubtlessly agile and capable, it’s also an expensive capability that is already overcommitted. Australia’s increasingly uncertain security environment is argument enough that the ADF shouldn’t be diverted to civil tasks if they impact on its capacity and capability.

So, where do we get a new civil defence emergency service from?

Volunteers have traditionally been a key element of our state emergency services and country and rural fire services. However, we’re already drawing on a lot of goodwill and community commitment to meet current needs, and we could soon be drawing from an almost empty well.

Australia’s reserve force elements, especially those of the army, have become increasingly capable over the past two decades. But Defence is trying to increase their capacity and capability to perform their primary task of warfighting. The addition of new civil defence training requirements is probably a bridge too far for part-time ADF members already under pressure to meet individual and collective warfighting readiness levels.

In trying to answer this dilemma, I found myself reflecting on my youth in central Queensland. I remember being in awe of the way my family members and the Indigenous stockmen they worked with could fix anything. Of course, living remote requires the development of a high level of resilience. ‘Bush mechanics’ could—and still can—fix almost anything.

In remote communities, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have those skills. Life in remote places remains challenging, and replacement parts and qualified tradesmen can be days away. The locals are, by necessity, some of Australia’s most resilient and capable citizens.

Little wonder then that members of those communities are sought after for their skills and knowledge of the country by the ADF’s regional force surveillance units in northern Australia: the Pilbara Regiment, the 51st Battalion of the Far North Queensland Regiment and the North-West Mobile Force (Norforce).

Similarly, there ought to be no surprise that northern Australia’s ranger programs rely on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians’ capabilities and their deep connection and intimate understanding of Country.

Unemployment is inexcusably high in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. With the resilience and abilities locals already have, imagine how much more capable these communities would be if training in skills such as search and rescue, first aid, firefighting and swift-water rescue were to be provided.

Being able to call upon a 300- or 400-strong unit of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civil defence unit, consisting of 18- to 30-year-olds under guidance from local elders to respond to emergencies at home and abroad could be a great force for good.

The skills and training provided to that civil emergency force could be used in Australia’s most remote communities. More importantly, it would bring positive community outcomes, including much-needed employment and training. It will see those ‘bush mechanics’ provided with training that can be used daily in support of their communities.

In northern Australia, susceptibility to natural disasters like cyclones and droughts is exacerbated from a policy perspective by the small size and often wide dispersion of populations. While state emergency services and rural fire services still make significant contributions to those regions, more capability is needed, often on very short notice. An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civil defence force unit has the potential to address that challenge.

And let’s not forget the powerful message that would be sent regionally and nationally when a 300-strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander response force arrives in the Pacific islands to help locals clean up after a cyclone. Or when a unit arrives in southern NSW to help during the next fire season.

Of course, setting up that kind of arrangement would be no easy task. But setting up ranger programs and regional force surveillance units wasn’t easy either. Both programs have had their issues, but both continue to deliver capability.

While the Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australian governments could establish their own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civil defence units, it makes sense in terms of economies of scale for the federal government to take the lead here.

The program could be integrated with existing policy initiatives, such as the ranger program. The government could make the kind of investment into training and capital to ensure that this force could be kept at a high level of readiness for a fraction of the direct and opportunity costs of having ADF personnel performing the same tasks.

Policy, Guns and Money: China–US competition, closing the IT gap and hate speech

In this episode, Mali Walker interviews Oriana Skylar Mastro, assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, about her most recent book, The costs of conversation: obstacles to peace talks in wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019), and her latest project on China’s challenge to US primacy.

Louisa Bochner speaks with Dion Devow, an Indigenous engagement specialist working with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre and 2018 ACT Australian of the Year, on closing the information technology gap for Indigenous Australians. Plus Jake Wallis interviews Vijay Padmanabhan, who leads Google’s strategic response team combating violent extremism and hate speech.

Protecting country: Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north

Notions of ‘protecting country’ have, anecdotally at least, been a key motivation for Indigenous people to participate in Australia’s defence services since World War I. It may well be one reason they have been joining the army reserve’s Regional Force Surveillance Units for the past 30-odd years. The youngest of the three units, 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland Regiment, even has as its motto Ducit amor patriae, ‘The love of country guides me’.

Given that it’s been almost three decades since we last considered the defence of Australia’s north, it’s time to think about whether there are new ways to involve Indigenous people in that endeavour.

Since 1981, the army has employed the North-West Mobile Force (or Norforce, as it’s more commonly known) to be its ‘eyes and ears’ across the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region of Western Australia. As a regionally based component of the army reserve, Norforce is uniquely placed to utilise the local knowledge of the Indigenous communities in the area it patrols. Not only is 87% of its personnel made up of reservists, but 60% of the unit is drawn from Indigenous communities in Norforce’s area of operations.

For a unit with the designated roles of reconnaissance, observation and collection of military geographic intelligence, the benefits of this recruitment base are obvious. The Australian Defence Force is able to build vital links with the communities it may need to work with in the future, and trust in the ADF among those communities is enhanced when they see faces already known to them, or closely identified with their social grouping, among Norforce members in uniform.

Recruitment from Indigenous communities in Australia’s north is a development that draws on some hard-won lessons of World War II, when the military had scant knowledge or experience of a vast region they were called to defend against a seemingly imminent invasion in 1942. The army initially improvised by forming an Aboriginal auxiliary unit in Arnhem Land, but a year later replaced it with a non-Aboriginal outfit called the North Australian Observer Unit—the heritage of which has been heavily and directly drawn upon by Norforce.

Wartime lessons were also taken on board by defence strategists during the 1980s, when thinking focused on the ‘lesser contingencies’ that could conceivably confront northern Australia. In the absence of major or direct threats, the priority was to address a range of non-military situations that might equally pose a security threat to the sparsely populated north—for example, illegal fishing and immigration, or smuggling—possibly orchestrated or manipulated by state actors for political, economic or strategic advantage.

The responsibility for dealing with such situations might rest primarily on civil agencies in the first instance (police, customs, quarantine), but the ADF could still be called on to contain and prevent escalation into direct hostilities. While it may be unlikely that Norforce would be required to ‘stay behind’ in the event of an invasion, to operate behind enemy lines, there are still scenarios where the Regional Force Surveillance Units would have an important role to play—for example, helping to provide rear-area security and countering threats to lines of communication and infrastructure.

In that context, the raising of the units made perfect sense; it still does, considering that a number of the ‘lesser contingency’ scenarios have largely been realised in recent decades, making surveillance of the north more important than ever. All three units currently contribute to border security through Operation Resolute, and already work in liaison with law enforcement agencies and regional authorities.

It was to enhance their role in support of the defence surveillance network that the Regional Force Surveillance Units were brought together in October 2018 as the Regional Force Surveillance Group, under a single formation headquarters located in Darwin. Considering some of the newer capabilities added to the surveillance network since the 1980s, including drones and advanced radar, it makes sense to coordinate the surveillance effort at a higher level, and to further integrate the group into the ADF’s total intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability and the whole-of-government approach to northern security.

The greatest gains realised so far from the involvement of Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north have been the social benefits derived from Norforce programs. Those gains have been an important contribution to the whole-of-government strategy for closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. Potential recruits from remote and isolated locations often need help to overcome levels of social disadvantage that restrict their ability to meet standard ADF education and health requirements. In addition to using waivers to take account of the lack of opportunity, Norforce has instituted prerecruitment courses to help Indigenous people ‘acculturate to life in the uniform’.

The impulse to ‘protect country’ may also explain why the proportion of ADF members who identify as being of Indigenous heritage has steadily risen in recent years to reach 2.5% in 2017. But that’s still only half the level the ADF hopes to achieve by 2025. Growing indigeneity of the ADF as a whole is probably where the best prospect of improving participation in defence activities lies. For its part, Norforce is a stepping stone for many reservists into regular force employment.

Also worth exploring is the role that Indigenous people could play in providing industry support to the Defence organisation, especially given the major construction projects expected in the Northern Territory in coming decades, including the building and sustainment of ADF training facilities. It might well be in this area that Defence reaps the benefits of its investment in the social development of the Indigenous workforce, demonstrating that the true value of Norforce has been about far more than symbolism.