Tag Archive for: national security strategy

Not just defence: we need a national security strategy

After World War II began, Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, said: ‘The [Allies] let us alone and let us slip through the risky zone and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs. And when we were done and well-armed, better than they, then they started the war.’ 

Today, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Korean Peninsula, once again a dark alliance of great powers has festered, working for many years to dismantle the global rules-based order and, with it, Australia’s democracy. 

Foreign interference ‘corrodes our democracy, sovereignty, economy and community,’ as Mike Burgess, the director-general of security, put it so well in his annual threat assessment in February. 

As deputy chair of the federal parliament’s intelligence and security committee, I know how deeply our competitors seek to embed themselves in our parliamentary democracy. 

Only last year the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation revealed it had disrupted a nest of Russian spies in our capital city.  

Yet, if you managed to get a young person to look up from TikTok and asked him or her to name the biggest threat to Australia, I can almost guarantee that the answer wouldn’t be ‘foreign interference.’ Yet foreign interference is being perpetrated even as the young person doom-scrolls—compulsively looks at bad news—on unsafe apps. 

To be honest, you’d probably not get the right answer from that person’s parents or even grandparents. 

While our defence, intelligence and security agencies are working hard behind the scenes to keep us safe, the Australian public is none the wiser. The political class has failed to ensure that Australians can understand and contend with the threats we face. 

That’s why, once again, I’m calling for a whole-of-nation national security strategy, in the spirit of the grand strategy proposed by the late, great senator Jim Molan. 

This would not be a national defence strategy, like the long-awaited document released last week, which looks at only one component of security. Rather, I’m talking about an integrated strategy that would engage Australian industry, academia, the community and all governments in developing a comprehensive plan to bolster Australia’s self-reliance, sovereignty, and security. Crucially, it would strengthen our resistance to foreign interference. 

Our AUKUS partners have implemented their own national security strategies, while our government has cut back on border security, the space industry and modern manufacturing.  

As Molan said, ‘What good is it to have a brilliant defence strategy without an overarching and comprehensive national security strategy?’ 

He questioned how we could defend Australia without national policies addressing such crucial security considerations as liquid-fuel and pharmaceuticals supply, industry, science and technology, labour, diplomacy, and stocking. 

National security is everyone’s responsibility. The last few years have made that clear. 

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea continue to conduct malicious activities against critical infrastructure, public and private companies, agencies, and democratic institutions across the world.  

We saw it in Canada, where foreign meddling in elections has prompted a public inquiry to examine foreign interference.  

We saw it in Britain, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) targeting Westminster parliamentarians and 40 million British voters only months after a parliamentary staffer was arrested on suspicion of espionage. 

We saw it in Taiwan, where the CCP intimidated voters and used social media to spread disinformation during the campaigning for the January election. I saw evidence of those intimidation tactics up close when I led a delegation to Taipei last month.  

At every waking hour, these aggressive nations and their so-called axis of resistance mobilise social media anonymity and algorithms to radicalise the vulnerable, recruit foot soldiers and rip off vulnerable Australians.  

Yes, our parliamentary democracy is a resilient institution—but it’s not indestructible.  

Ronald Reagan said: ‘Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.’ Global politics has become so obsessed with populism, feel-good politics, and ticking boxes that we’ve adulterated government’s primary duty: to leave a safer, stronger, and more secure nation for our children. 

In the grey zone and veneer of peace, we’ve allowed poli cs to descend into theatrics and short-term gains. We’ve failed to distil the reality that Australia faces an existential threat, and the world is on the threshold of broadscale conflict. 

It’s time to change the narrative.  

I’m calling on all levels of government, all sides of parliament, and every sector of the economy and community to work together on developing a national security strategy.  

As Warren Buffett said, ‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  

I want my kids to raise their kids in the free and democratic Australia we know today and cherish. The seeds of that security must be planted today if we want to safeguard their future.

The National Security Strategy didn’t go to Parliament

The Prime Minister has failed to put her National Security Strategy to Parliament. The document hasn’t even been tabled in the House. The Strategy is a public statement of policy, certainly, but the complete bypassing of the Parliament shows how far Presidential Pretensions and the Minder Mentality in the ministerial wing have skewed the workings of the Canberra system.

To be clear, the Gillard Government didn’t just fail to bring on any Parliamentary debate about what’s proclaimed as a central definition and driver of its international policy; the government didn’t even give the Strategy to Parliament. I’ll return to that larger failure to debate in a moment: the initial surprise this column is emphasising is the ignorance and arrogance of ignoring Parliament. Whether by blunder or design, the Gillard Government didn’t perform the simplest of actions, the formal presentation of the National Security Strategy by tabling it in the House of Representatives. This is the omission of a government that has problems with process.

Taking the Prime Minister’s own ambitions for the Strategy as a guide, the oversight is strange. Here is how the PM’s Department website describes the importance of ‘Australia’s first National Security National Security Strategy’, launched by Julia Gillard in a speech at the Australian National University on 23 January: Read more

National Security: the decade after the decade before

'Near miss'. Image courtesy of Flickr user Madison Guy.

In strategy it’s the big judgements about security that matter— they set the context for all the policy decisions that follow. In Strong and Secure: A Strategy for Australia’s National Security, launched by the Prime Minister this week, there’s no bigger judgement than that Australia has a ‘positive’ and ‘benign’ security outlook. It’s worth tracking the use of these words in the Strategy. In her foreword Prime Minister Gillard says:

Some 12 years [after 9/11], our strategic outlook is largely positive. We live in one of the safest and most cohesive nations in the world. We have a strong economy. A major war is unlikely.

In chapter four, which reviews Australia’s strategic outlook, we read:

An assessment of the strategic environment suggests that the outlook for Australia’s national security over the next decade is largely positive. Major conflict is unlikely and we have a proactive, effective and adaptive national security capability to respond to challenges as they unfold.

The use of the word ‘benign’ is in a section titled ‘National Security Risks’:

The current international environment is unlikely to see war between major powers. However, it is characterised by shifting power balances, strategic and economic competition, and territorial disputes. This competition brings a degree of uncertainty and complexity to the relatively benign global landscape.

Read more