The defence strategic review identified Australia’s north as key terrain for deterring adversaries and working with regional partners. Yet while the review seeks new directions, its references to northern Australia revisit historical concerns about the region’s vulnerabilities and opportunities.

The review’s rhetoric has an echo of Australian defence planning in the 1960s—when threats to the north prompted federal politicians to overrule military advice and build a base in Townsville. At the time, the decision reflected the tension between defence planning and civilian development goals for the north. Now, with a ‘refresh’ of the government’s 2015 white paper on northern development underway, the history of these connections should inform the policy debate. While Defence can’t afford distractions, to achieve its goals it must take opportunities to expose its workforce to critical places, invest in dual-purpose infrastructure and leverage the benefits of regional knowledge.

In 1966, Prime Minister Harold Holt declared the opening of Townsville’s Lavarack Barracks a victory for northern development. Conservative federal governments had long been accused of neglecting the north, and Holt didn’t miss the opportunity to use the base to showcase his coalition’s commitment. While development politics were influential, they weren’t necessarily decisive. The sudden decision to build in Townsville also reflected fears about the spread of communism, war in Southeast Asia and the inadequacies of Australian forces. Nevertheless, the decision was a pivotal moment in a long history of complex concerns about the continent’s north.

With most Australians huddled in the southeast, the continent’s vast and ‘empty’ north has often provoked fear of invasion from Asia. These fears were exacerbated by the bombing of Darwin, Broome, Townsville and other northern sites during World War II. After the war, federal reconstruction initiatives prompted major economic and social reforms, but many people in northern communities still felt isolated from the emerging prosperity in southern Australia.

It was in this context that local council leaders across northern Queensland demanded that the federal government emphasise the defence of northern Australia. Their demands reflected dual concerns about the region’s vulnerability to foreign aggression and about failing to develop its untapped potential. Some felt that the north was ‘going to waste’, a notion that continues to influence the political debate.

In the 1950s, many regional and national organisations agreed that the ‘empty’ north represented a national weakness. The problem was often exaggerated, but memories of imperial Japan’s bombings were fresh and many Australians held genuine concerns about the lack of defence installations protecting the north. Still, the defence force chiefs largely maintained their view that northern development was an economic and social problem. The Commonwealth resisted calls to link defence budgets to northern development and downplayed the threat of invasion.

By 1963, however, increasing political tensions and festering conflict in Southeast Asia had convinced the government to order an urgent review of defence capability. The review stressed the inadequate size and firepower of Australian forces and recommended that Defence raise a third regular army battle group and build a new base in Victoria. Townsville wasn’t part of the new plans.

The government delayed its response to the review and in 1964 ordered the defence chiefs to review their previous recommendations. The chair of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Frederick Scherger, argued that the new base should be built in Western Australia, but the cabinet overruled that advice and chose Townsville—a decision so sudden that it came before the army had conducted a detailed reconnaissance of potential base sites or negotiated with local and state governments.

The cabinet’s decision was shaped by the deteriorating security situation in Southeast Asia, reinvigorated national political interest in the north’s economic potential, and decades of lobbying for northern development by local and regional voices.

Since then, Townsville has become a vital part of national defence infrastructure and the home of the Australian Army’s 3rd Brigade. North Queensland’s rainforest and medium-density wooded environments have provided a dynamic arena for training. Later initiatives, such as the Regional Force Surveillance Group, have further entrenched north Queensland as a hub for Australian deterrence and force projection into Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Although it wasn’t always supported by Defence, the establishment of Lavarack Barracks cemented Townsville as a ‘garrison city’ that has prompted greater appreciation of the challenges and opportunities offered by northern Australia. The civilian population growth and economic development that followed Defence’s permanent push north make it one of the most significant contributors to Australia’s northern development. With that in mind, politicians and public servants should explore new ways to develop the north and defend the nation.

Sustainable development of northern Australia has become a national priority over the past decade. The region’s geostrategic importance has grown, and recently there have been calls to strengthen Australia’s sovereign capability in the north. Importantly, northern Australia is increasingly referred to as the country’s gateway to the Indo-Pacific. It will also need to cope with increased climate-related risks like heat stress, more intense cyclones, and more extreme wet and dry climatic events.

In 2015, even before current geostrategic stresses kicked in, the white paper on developing northern Australia became the catalyst for Canberra’s bilateral and bipartisan northern development agenda. Billions in government and private-sector investment has been put into an extensive range of policies and programs. These have included the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility or NAIF (a concessional loans facility), substantive infrastructure spending, labour market programs and productivity-focused research.

Policy complexity, however, emerges because in the face of the north’s economic opportunity lie internationally significant environmental and cultural values that are under threat. It’s feared that the cumulative impacts of development are driving biodiversity and other ecosystem losses. The region is also an Indigenous domain, with First Nation’s interests across the entire land- and seascape and specific First Nations’ rights extending over some 78% of the land. Australia needs to ensure that development proceeds with the free, prior and informed consent of traditional owners.

Despite the white paper’s intent and public investment, large-scale private-sector investment and on-the-ground economic and social benefits have been slow to materialise. This largely arises from the fact that both public- and private-sector investment across the north generally involves major land-use and tenure changes.

Without visionary, engaged and evidence-based regional and land-use planning, it’s no surprise that the agenda’s promise has tended to falter. This risks social and economic decline and continuing cultural and environmental loss. With the exception of economic envelopes around larger regional cities, much of the northern landscape could come to resemble a ‘failed state’.

Over the past year, the government’s renewed interest in the north has opened up opportunities for revitalising the northern Australia agenda. The announcement that the Northern Australia Ministerial Forum would be reconstituted and the Northern Australia Indigenous Reference Group revitalised were early signs of the new government’s desire to refocus priorities and strategy, shaking up bilateral relations and re-engaging the north’s Indigenous leaders. Last month, in the 2024–25 budget, the government affirmed its commitment to a refresh of the northern Australia white paper.

These are welcome developments. But some serious reforms need to be made to pave the way for positive progress.

Getting the planning right. Northern development is a contested agenda. Tensions between economic development, Indigenous aspirations and environmental and cultural protection yield multifaceted policy problems. New approaches to regional planning are increasingly called upon to resolve these tensions.

While the NAIF has historically been unfairly criticised for slow investment, little attention has been paid to the way development is prioritised, planned and assessed. Developers have communicated frustration with these processes, and a recent review of Commonwealth legislation suggests that regulations aren’t protecting the environment either. The north’s traditional owners have long been concerned that such processes don’t frame development in ways that protect cultural values and enable Indigenous-led development. The Commonwealth’s new Nature positive plan, if diligently applied, could break this deadlock.

Climate-resilient and enabling infrastructure. One area of the white paper in which positive progress has been made is major infrastructure-enabling packages, such as the Beef and Strategic Roads packages and funding for Roads of Strategic Importance. These investments have been well planned and genuinely bilateral and have focused on generating localised procurement and employment.

Such enabling infrastructure is required to overcome supply-chain fragilities and cope with the increased risks of extreme climatic events. It can also help decarbonise the economy while maintaining energy and water security, reorient our defence and trade relationships in the Indo-Pacific and address socioeconomic disadvantage in remote and Indigenous communities.

The development of a multi-year blueprint for northern Australian enabling infrastructure would help to address these issues. It would need, however, to be based on both existing and new funding systems.

Indigenous-led development. With most of the north infused with Indigenous interests and right, under the previous ministerial forum a strong Indigenous voice was established through the Indigenous Reference Group. This group of high-profile Indigenous leaders worked across governments to create the Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord—a cohesive package of initiatives aimed at ensuring that northern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities lead their own development. The accord now needs to be effectively implemented.

Workforce development. There’s a need for cohesive development of human capacity in the north. The region’s school-based educational outcomes lag behind the rest of the nation. This, coupled with deep liveability and cost-of-living pressures, means that the north faces unique workforce development and retention challenges.

Statistics from annual Closing the Gap reports also show the continuing educational and economic divide between Indigenous people and the wider population. A pan-northern approach is required to lift school outcomes and pathways, with universities and vocational institutions playing a central role. Workforce development also requires long-term sectoral planning and place-based delivery of education and training.

Creating an investment pipeline. The NAIF was an important white paper initiative that suffered from a lack of a pipeline of investable development opportunities. It needed at least a 10-year program of effort focused on research and assessment to drive priority opportunities; bilaterally agreed regional and infrastructure planning; collaborative partnerships to develop targeted supply-chain interventions; durable feasibility assessment; and a stronger focus on small, medium and large investors supported by more brokerage to a range of concession and other finance options.

If the nation is to avoid economic stagnation in the north (with a fragile boom–bust economy, entrenched regional poverty and faltering investment), a cohesive, longstanding and well-implemented approach is needed. Much can be learned from approaches that have worked well under the existing arrangements.

The greatest success in development planning and major infrastructure delivery in the north has come through highly collaborative approaches between governments, communities, industries and traditional owners. Examples include the Cape York Infrastructure Package, which has delivered stable partnerships and major regional and local benefits.

Getting the financial and cost-sharing architecture right for shared investment in the north is a key to building long-term investment confidence. A strong and bilateral approach could be developed through either national or sectoral agreement mechanisms envisaged under emerging Federation Funding Agreement arrangements.

Once areas for priority development are identified, delivering regional and local benefits will rely on getting the governance arrangements for local delivery well established. Highly place-based approaches to development planning, assessment and delivery have the potential to deliver positive results.

Targeted packages for developing major enabling infrastructure have demonstrated benefits and have shown the value of governments leading the planning and delivery of such projects.

With geostrategic change, fragile supply chains and the real risk of continuing social decline and environmental loss, more visionary, scenario-based thinking needs to underpin long-term strategic policy and planning for the north. Such thinking, however, must be tested by appropriate economic modelling of the value achieved by shared investment.

Nations must regularly ask themselves how they are to meet the challenges of their strategic context. The defence strategic review commissioned by the Australian government set out to assess Australia’s force posture, structure and capability. But its biggest takeaways were as much about the country’s underlying strategic mindset as they were about defensive details.

At the review’s heart was a clear reassertion of the strategic importance of northern Australia, with a renewed focus on ensuring it is resilient and prepared for its role in meeting future challenges.

It can be tempting to keep alive a dated understanding of Australia’s north. For instance, state and territory governments continue to market their tourism wonders around a kind of inhospitable schtick, with campaigns targeting adventure tourists and focusing on ‘getting away’ to somewhere remote from the rest of the country. While some of this is true, it paints a quiet picture that undersells the level of economic activity happening in northern Australia.

While spread out, Australia’s north is an export powerhouse. Yet it has been truly terrible at telling that story. Few truly understand how to do business across the vast region.

Remote Australia is different from metropolitan Australia in several ways.

Metropolitan Australia is a world-class and sophisticated economy, providing deep labour markets and skills availability, broad-based service and supply sectors, and short supply chains.

Remote Australia, for its part, has a mix of world-scale and world-competitive industries spread much more thinly across a large region, many small-scale localised businesses providing services and products to small population centres, and world-class industrial infrastructure—if alongside more limited social infrastructure and longer and more vulnerable supply chains.

Given these differences, most organisations of any scale would naturally prefer to base themselves in metropolitan Australia. While there are disincentives when it comes to congestion and some higher costs, the attraction of a city’s mature services economy is compelling. Logistics, forward planning, and service and supply-chain development all require less investment than they would in northern Australia.

But the DSR has identified that defence does not have this choice. Geography is important in national defence, and the review reflects this, arguing that defending Australia involves mastering its north.

This means defence leaders need to engage in Australia’s remote economy, not its metropolitan economy. Their success largely depends on understanding this context and adopting a mindset designed to succeed in remote Australia.

Leaders in northern Australia’s key industries—resources, energy and agriculture—understand this challenge exceptionally well. Unlike in a city, remote businesses must analyse their geographical location and understand in detail its strengths and weaknesses. They must then invest a great deal in building robust supply chains and product routes to markets. They need to plan well in advance methods to sustain their workforce year in and year out. In the process, they inevitably build economic and social partnerships with their host communities.

Defence has long done this, too, and it has led to many successes, but the shift it identifies from a ‘long peace’—wherein Australia would have 10 years to prepare for a direct attack once an adversary has determined to do so—demands a fresh take. The review has pointed to new challenges and expectations which will require accelerated tempo and surge capacity to resolve.

So, what do Defence decision-makers need to change to better operate in remote Australia in the coming years?

Defence must be more flexible with information and forgo a ‘need to know’ culture when operating in remote Australia. Local leaders will be crucial partners in responding to the challenges ahead, both in the political arena and in local industry. Business is unlikely to invest in extra capacity and capabilities unless there is some investment in genuine market signalling.

Defence must overcome its fear that local authorities always want to ‘cost shift’ onto them. With proper engagement and strong negotiation, Defence should trust that it can secure a more mature outlook from partners. Crucially, local authorities can better invest in ways that assist national defence if they understand the nature of operational challenges.

To thrive in northern Australia, local industry must understand its geographical context—any environmental impact statement shows that. Defence, local authorities and local industry must work together to tap into this and foster the same mindset.

There will need to be a collective understanding of the power of building long-term economic relationships. Local authorities, local industry and Defence need to collaborate more strongly than ever to join the dots required to navigate the challenges remote Australia will throw at them.

Consider the region from Darwin to Katherine. Critical decisions will be made in this area in coming years that affect land tenure, clearances, housing and industry, public infrastructure, community services, utilities, disaster resilience, and jobs and training. Australia cannot miss the opportunity to align these decisions with national defence.

Of course, there’ll be those that will call loudly for an alternative model—advocating a fly-in, fly-out model for defence operations in remote Australia with short-term logistical solutions. But they must explain how that works towards Australia’s goals in our current strategic context, and into the future. Limiting investment in partnerships, planning and physical infrastructure is a massive drag on future capacity if Australia hopes to quickly respond to extreme situations to its north.

With the review making crystal clear that time is of the essence, there is no time to waste establishing a new economic model for defence activities in northern Australia. Defence leaders must initiate this process and begin shaping the environment beyond the barbed wire of their bases. They must form and maintain genuine partnerships with local authorities, and from there, work with local industry to grow their capacity and capability to defend and develop Australia’s north well into the future.

For the third time in less than a century, the US government has rapidly awakened to Australia’s strategic importance. On this occasion, it’s focused on the significance of Australia’s northern strategic geography. While on previous occasions Australia traded sovereignty for protection, this time it must play a far more assertive role. Northern Australia is critical to preventing and deterring future conflict in the Indo-Pacific. It is also essential to ensuring Australia’s economic and social prosperity.

By early 1942, following Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, strategists in Washington realised that Australia and its geography were vital in halting Imperial Japan’s advance across Asia and the Pacific. Australia spilled blood and treasure alongside its US ally. If we are honest with ourselves, the US wrote the rules for this partnership far from Australia’s shores, and we most definitely traded agency for help.

During the Cold War, the opening of the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs marked a second time when Australia’s strategic geography was critical to Washington. Australia, far from the front lines of the Cold War, drew comfort from its American ally’s presence and the commitment it symbolised. However, the US once again wrote the rules for this relationship inside the Washington beltway.

Now, for the third time in Australia’s modern history, our strategic geography is once more vital to the US.

In December 2012, 200 US marines deployed to northern Australia during the dry season to form the first Marine Rotational Force—Darwin. For many reasons, including deference to Australia’s sovereignty, it took seven years for this commitment to mature. Finally, in 2019, the program reached its full potential of a 2,500-strong marine air–ground taskforce.

Of course, there have been other US deployments and exercises in Australia. Australia’s bases play host to regular US air force and navy deployments. Pitch Black and Talisman Sabre are large-scale joint exercises that take place every two years in northern Australia. Nary a US serviceperson fails to marvel at the training opportunities Australia provides.

In areas where northern Australia’s defence infrastructure has yet to become fit for purpose, the US Department of Defense has more recently sought to invest. Bulk fuel storage in Darwin and the enhancement of Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal near Katherine are excellent examples. These kinds of investments have tangible economic benefits for northern Australia.

At the strategic level, the AUKUS pact offers two lines of effort: advanced submarines and advanced capabilities. The first of these puts Australia squarely in its historical position as the dependent ally. In contrast, the second stream offers the potential for Australia to be a full partner.

Of course, some see the US Force Posture Initiatives and AUKUS as risks to Australia’s sovereignty. That is nonsense. Both offer Australia the ability to maintain and exercise its sovereignty while enhancing its defence posture. Still, the government must be willing to bargain hard and reinforce what it brings to the bilateral relationship, especially regarding strategic geography and its contribution to integrated deterrence. It must also insist that there will be no free rides.

Washington’s commitment to increased and demonstrated interoperability between US and Australian forces will contribute to strategic deterrence. But during this new period of strategic uncertainty, Canberra will need to work hard to focus Australia’s engagement with the US on maintaining our sovereignty and bringing immediate and tangible benefits to Australia. One area that offers such potential is integrated combined logistics.

If the war in Ukraine has shown us anything, it’s that logistics still matter. This lesson is familiar to the US. Since 1981, the US Marine Corps’ prepositioning program has been a critical enabler for the availability of a rapid-deployment marine air–ground taskforce globally. Over the same period, the Marine Corps’ prepositioning program in Norway has stored and maintained equipment and logistics supplies for a marine expeditionary brigade.

The US Army has a similar initiative that’s designed to reduce deployment response times. Its prepositioned stock program is described as ‘a cornerstone of the Army’s ability to rapidly project power and send a clear signal of US commitment’. Across the globe, sets of equipment, such as all the tanks and wheeled vehicles needed for an armoured brigade combat team, are strategically prepositioned in climate-controlled facilities. This program allows soldiers to fly to a theatre that has all the equipment they need already in place. These stocks—identified as APS-1 (United States), APS-2 (Europe), APS-3 (Afloat), APS-4 (Northeast Asia) and APS-5 (Southwest Asia)—are available to support all combatant commanders’ missions, not only in contingencies but also for major exercises and humanitarian missions.

Given the US’s focus on the Indo-Pacific, its continued interest in northern Australia, and its combined logistics, sustainment and maintenance needs, it is time the Pentagon considered creating prepositioned stocks in northern Australia. Such a program would make maximum use of Australia’s strategic geography, and would no doubt focus on the regional areas around Darwin and Townsville. An investment would provide construction projects and ongoing employment in northern Australia. It would also signal a further formal US commitment to not just visiting but being part of northern Australia. And it would offer the opportunity for collaboration between the US and Australian defence organisations on logistics, sustainment and infrastructure. Long-term commitments like this can allow Australian industry to make long-term investments and enable communities to grow while achieving strategic advantages.

We often think about national resilience at times of crisis or conflict. However, the foundations for resilience are built with every decision we make before a crisis begins to unfold. Resilience is a nation’s ability not only to withstand expected disruptions but also to better position itself for an unknown disruption.

An Australian merchant shipping fleet, operating day to day on coastal or international trading routes and able to be drawn upon in times of crisis or conflict, would make a positive contribution to national resilience. However, policy and legislation have failed to address the disadvantages Australian ships experience and deterred the growth of the Australian fleet.

In a time of economic, climatic and security disruptions, it’s more important than ever to foster diverse ways of moving goods around Australia. Enhanced sovereign coastal trading would reduce the nation’s dependence on road and rail infrastructure, which is regularly affected by major flooding as we’ve seen across large parts of eastern Australia this year.

Coastal trading is the movement of cargo or passengers on ships between ports in different states and territories. It has been a live issue for the shipping industry for some time, which has from time to time prompted the federal government to enact a series of amendments to the Coastal Trading (Revitalising Australian Shipping) Act 2012, most recently in 2017. Those amendments were ‘intended to arrest the decline in the number of the Australian ships operating in the domestic maritime sector’ by ‘creating incentives for business to utilise coastal trading’ and thus reduce freight costs. It was expected that the number of Australian vessels undertaking coastal trading voyages would grow and that this ‘increased capacity would foster more competition [and put] further downward pressure on freight costs’.

However, five years on, those amendments have failed to halt the contraction of the Australian fleet. The complexity of the operating environment has allowed foreign-flagged vessels to cloud this policy failure.

In the lead-up to the May federal election, which it won, Labor acknowledged that ‘less than one per cent of Australian seaborne trade is carried by Australian ships, forcing our nation to rely on foreign governments and companies for our essential imports’. The party committed to ‘appoint a Taskforce to guide it on the establishment of the [Strategic] Fleet as quickly as possible. The Fleet is likely to include up to a dozen vessels including tankers, cargo, container and roll-on-roll-off vessels.’

Labor said that while ‘these ships will likely be privately owned and operate on a commercial basis’, it would ‘ensure they will be available for use by the Defence Forces in times of national crisis, whether that be natural disaster or conflict’.

That taskforce is now being established and its membership is expected to be drawn from the shipping industry, major charterers, unions, Australian businesses and the Department of Defence.

However, the Productivity Commission’s draft report on Australia’s container ports, released in September, presents an alternative view. The report found that the proposal for a strategic fleet ‘requires further evaluation as on present evidence it is not the best remedy for concerns about domestic shipping capacity and training’. It also notes: ‘A privately owned, Australian-registered strategic fleet would have limited ability to mitigate the types of issues that have recently affected Australia’s international freight task.’

The commission suggests as an alternative that:

Capacity could be acquired as needed from the international market without the costs involved in supporting a strategic fleet. The shipping charter market provides access to a wide variety of vessels that could be used to address specialist case-by-case needs. And the Australian Government could access international resources—including the charter market—in times of natural disaster and emergencies.

Australia has no requisite expertise in engaging with the shipping charter market and, in times of crisis or conflict, it’s unlikely Australia will find international ships available to support it. That’s because these vessels are owned or registered in countries that may have their own requirements and supporting Australia may not in their national interest.

There are several issues of national significance to consider in evaluating the potential solutions.

Fostering a sovereign coastal trading sector could deliver benefits beyond availability in emergency situations. While addressing industry-specific issues of competitiveness with foreign-flagged vessels and maintaining a skilled Australian workforce are important, we need to think bigger. On a positive note, there appears to be consensus on the need to address barriers to establishing a sustainable Australian fleet, though the views of industry and unions diverge about how that should be done.

Another issue relates to the focus on a ‘strategic fleet’ that would be co-opted by Defence to support its preparedness and mobilisation in response to national disasters and conflict. Here, the assumption is that voyages undertaken by the strategic fleet one day are not needed the next. It doesn’t recognise that, in times of mobilisation, civil society must also continue to function in some way and at some level and contribute to national mobilisation requirements. This would be the case irrespective of the nature of the disaster or conflict.

It’s also important to recognise that the assumption that civil society can be co-opted for defence purposes doesn’t sit well in a democratic society. A better understanding is needed of the minimum level of support that Australia, not just Defence, needs in times of mobilisation to sustain Australia’s economy and its physical and social infrastructure.

If a conflict or extreme natural disaster occurred today, civil society would suffer immediate and severe disruption, compounded by reliance on foreign shipping. In the case of conflict, many of these ships are from nations that would have a direct or indirect incentives to avoid it.

The response to a disruption would involve the government requisitioning Australian ships to relieve the impact of the immediate crisis on Australian interests. This is the approach adopted by other OECD countries. At the time of requisition, any other activities these ships were involved in would be secondary or irrelevant to our needs.

There are also sovereignty concerns inherent in mobilising for national security and defence purposes both foreign-flagged and Australian-flagged ships crewed by foreign nationals. History tells us this is an issue for Australian-crewed vessels. In 1967, for example, the Seaman’s Union boycotted the merchant ship Boonaroo in opposition to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and waterside workers refused to unload the munitions ship Jeparit. Viewed through today’s lens, these actions are understood in the context of growing public opposition in Australia to the Vietnam War. However, it raises a questions about how the concerns of foreign nationals would play out today.

When the Victorian town of Mallacoota was surrounded by fire on 31 December 2019, fuel company Esso deployed a Norwegian ship and helicopters to the area. The ship arrived on 1 January and was a second registry vessel operated and crewed in Australia by Australians. It wasn’t until the morning of 3 January that the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Choules arrived and commenced evacuations. The quick response by Esso was likely driven by its proximity to Mallacoota, but it’s important to appreciate that it was a diversion from other nation-sustaining activity. What we’ll never know is how long the Esso ship could have continued to be deployed in this manner before it had significant economic impacts on other sectors.

There’s no suggestion Esso should have done otherwise, but in these times of concurrent and cascading crises, for a strategic fleet to be a sustainable option it needs to be accompanied by measures that support Australian international trading vessels. That requires us to address the imbalance favouring foreign-flagged vessels over sovereign vessels.

Perhaps a different way to consider the issue is from the perspective of a ‘coastal trading highway’—not a novel idea for Pacific island nations. For an island nation, a coastal trading highway would complement the national road and rail freight sectors. Such an approach would create a broad sustainable base that can better accommodate diversion of some ships into a strategic fleet.

Some benefits need quantifying but could include cost savings on road maintenance arising from the impact of heavy trucks and reducing the road toll on our national highways.

But there are also known benefits, particularly in terms of achieving the government’s commitment to a 43% cut in greenhouse emissions below 2005 levels and net zero by 2030. Road freight results in three times the emissions of sea or rail freight. The shipping sector is rapidly moving to clean fuels, and now appears to be ahead of other sectors in the race to net zero.

Australia needs more than a domestic strategic fleet; we need a framework that encourages a mix of coastal and international trading ships. Solutions solely for a small coastal strategic fleet don’t address the real strategic problems Australia has created for itself in this sector.

The many attempts to tackle the issues facing sovereign coastal trading highlight that this is a complex and challenging problem. However, the push to establish a strategic fleet is yet another example of focusing on a symptom rather than solving the core problem.