Indonesia appears to be persevering with plans for its grand infrastructure rollout, likely to cost over US$400 billion, despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the archipelagic nation.

Australian businesses can join this endeavour through the Indonesia–Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA). The long-term pipeline of work could create links between Australians and Indonesians, help Indonesia to upskill its workforce and contribute to the sustainment of a specialist, skilled workforce in the Northern Territory.

Between now and 2024, the Indonesian government intends to build or upgrade a range of airports, power plants, waste-to-energy facilities, mass-transit projects and the early stages of a new capital city to address inadequate infrastructure across the archipelago. However, Indonesia has critical workforce issues, identified by both its government and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This includes critical shortages in the construction industry, in project management and project execution, and in numbers of specialist contractors, general workers and nationally and internationally certified personnel.

Pre-pandemic, the government was aiming for approximately 40% of the infrastructure funding to be sourced from the state, 25% from state-owned enterprises and 35% from the private sector. While the full effect of the pandemic remains to be seen, especially with the most recent, devastating wave of Covid-19 in Indonesia, early indications are that these figures have changed and that a higher proportion of private-sector funding will be required.

IA-CEPA, which came into effect in 2020, opens the door for Australian companies to engage in the rollout outside of a traditional financial investor role.

Majority Australian-owned companies can now supply architectural, engineering, urban planning, project management, surveying and construction services in Indonesia. Consultants in those areas can operate on a cross-border basis, and Australian suppliers of specific technical and vocational education and training have guaranteed market access through majority-owned businesses.

This could be a major boon for the NT, which suffers from a cyclical economy with pronounced peaks and troughs, historically driven by major projects and a transient skilled-worker population.

Following the end of the construction phase of the Inpex LNG project, the territory economy contracted and many of the skilled workers the project attracted left to seek work elsewhere.

However, the pandemic’s impact in the NT has been less than was expected. Major projects in the pipeline and defence infrastructure spending, including more than $747 million for training infrastructure upgrades, appear to indicate that the worst of the contraction is coming to an end.

This future pipeline of work will generate a larger skilled workforce in the NT and attract workers to the territory, but it is critical, now more than ever, that this workforce be sustained. The presence of a skilled workforce improves the flow of specialist skills to younger workers, reduces the cost of businesses having to pay for fly-in, fly-out workers, and encourages investment in the territory. Skilled workers in sectors relevant to infrastructure development in the NT gain expertise in undertaking large projects in remote locations to a high standard, suited to the territory’s harsh environment and climatic patterns.

The Indonesian infrastructure rollout could be a key part of the pipeline of work needed to sustain the NT’s skilled workforce. The territory’s proximity to Southeast Asia means Darwin is ideally placed to serve as a hub for Australian businesses engaging in Indonesian infrastructure projects. These businesses could base their workers in the territory and draw from a skilled local workforce on a cross-border basis on these infrastructure projects as is now permitted by IA-CEPA.

Sustaining a skilled workforce in the NT is not just in the territory’s interest; it is strategically important and in the national interest. The Australian government’s 2020 force structure plan emphasises the need to build sovereign industrial capacity, which the Defence Department is working towards with its infrastructure spending. But for that industrial capacity to be maintained, there needs to be work in the pipeline to sustain it. The NT government cannot afford to fund the projects necessary for that sustainment, and the Australian government isn’t necessarily willing to provide the funding either.

While mechanisms are already available for businesses to engage in the Indonesian economy, Indonesia is a relationship-driven market. Territory businesses need help to get a foot in the door in Indonesia, and both the Australian and NT governments can play a key role in providing that support. The governments can help businesses build those critical relationships through skills exchange agreements at a provincial and business level. Such skills exchanges are stipulated in IA-CEPA and align directly with the Indonesian government’s workforce development goals.

If the foundational work is started now, and introductions are made, skills exchange agreements are negotiated and relationships developed, then by the time the current tranche of projects winds down in the territory, businesses will be ready to engage, or will be already engaged, in the Indonesian infrastructure rollout. That will ultimately contribute to the sustainment of the territory’s industrial capacity.

In December 2020, Indonesia’s President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo offered West Papua’s Biak island as a satellite launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX program. Jokowi was courting the entrepreneur after deciding that investment and technology exchange from Musk’s Tesla was key to Indonesia’s goal of becoming a world-leading supplier of electric-vehicle batteries, harnessing its extensive nickel resources.

While Indonesia’s space agency, LAPAN, may dream of launching rockets, offering Biak seemed more of a deal-sweetener to secure the investment than a genuine commitment. In any event, Tesla is signing on to Indonesia’s EV battery dream, and the question remains: what about Biak?

The island, to the north of Papua, offers an ideal location for efficient equatorial launches at only 1° south of the equator. But as a large-scale, long-term launch site for a growing program like SpaceX, it has major problems that may send Musk searching elsewhere.

First, the island’s isolation and poor infrastructure would inhibit both the building process and operations. It lies in one of Indonesia’s least developed regions and, logistically, it would be difficult to access and service.

In terms of human resources, systemic education gaps in Biak would limit the number of workers who could be employed locally, necessitating a fly-in, fly-out workforce which would create a division rather than engagement between this foreign-owned space venture and local residents.

Moreover, Biak’s residents are fiercely resisting space developments on the island, just as they did when Russia’s Roscosmos space agency sought to build on the island in 2002. They fear displacement and environmental degradation, including deforestation.

Community leaders have warned that large-scale developments would pollute and disturb local ecosystems, including dense forests and nearby fishing areas, threatening livelihoods and the island’s overall food security. Local subsistence practices, including gathering and fishing, remain key for many of the island’s more than 100,000 people.

Biak is located in the highly politicised Papua region with its unresolved legacies of violence between indigenous peoples and the Indonesian state. The separatist Free Papua Movement has been running since 1965, and is still active, with government soldiers recently sent into rural Papuan regions in response to separatist unrest.

Musk may well look for other sites in the region that could facilitate efficient equatorial launches without these prohibitive issues.

Australia’s growing sovereign space capabilities now include a future equatorial launch site in northern Australia, just waiting for an opportunity like this. If big players like Musk need an equatorial launch site, now is the critical time for Australia to step up.

Promoting Australia’s emerging spaceports and engaging with Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar SpaceX program could support the growth of Australia’s sovereign space launch capabilities and further strengthen links to a rapidly growing global space sector that could be worth US$1 trillion by 2040. It would also be a clear statement that Australia is ready to re-establish its reputation in the new global space race.

Australia is developing three viable sites for various commercial launches: Equatorial Launch Australia is developing the Arnhem Space Centre in Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory; Gilmour Space Technologies is supporting a launch site at Abbot Point near Bowen, Queensland; and Southern Launch is establishing the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex near Port Lincoln, South Australia.

Thanks to its northern location at 12° south of the equator, sites like the Arnhem Space Centre could facilitate the same equatorial launches as Biak. And the Australian launch sites offer complementary research, commercial and employment opportunities for local communities. For example, the nearby University of Queensland can support innovative technological development at Abbot Point.

In Nhulunbuy, close consultation with and direction from First Nations people in developing the Arnhem Space Centre produces a powerful image of the world’s oldest continuing culture pushing forward the boundaries of future technology.

And each of these sites is built to comply with Australian environmental standards, with a focus on causing minimal pollution. At Whalers Way, a South Australian government taskforce is focused on customer outreach, operational planning, and adherence to environmental standards and safeguards.

Strategically, Australia must improve its sovereign space capabilities, particularly as our region is becoming more dependent on space-related technologies every day. Working with major international space programs such as Musk’s SpaceX would provide opportunities for technology transfer that would support accelerated growth of Australia’s space capabilities and supercharge Australia’s emerging capability for commercial launch services to push the nation into the competitive global market.

As a key US ally and a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, Australia is well positioned to develop launch sites that both support its own space needs for defence and national security and enable it to burden-share in orbit with allies.

From a defence perspective, there’s value in opening Australian launch sites for spacecraft such as Musk’s Starship launch vehicle to facilitate further Australia–US defence cooperation. Simultaneously, it’s also important that SpaceX takes opportunities to support the US military in space. For example, the Starship Super Heavy launch vehicle has been suggested as a mode of point-to-point commercial transport that could support the US military by enabling rapid logistics. A Starship launching from SpaceX’s Starbase One in Texas could deploy large payloads into orbit, for either civil or military purposes. That same vehicle could then land at Nhulunbuy to be swiftly turned around and launched again.

Supporting daily flights into orbit could rapidly expand business opportunities for Australia’s space sector using locally developed launchers. In that sense, Australia’s ‘space coast’ could grow rapidly while also supporting broader strategic interests.

The federal government’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill is no paper tiger.

In ending Victoria’s link with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Commonwealth has reasserted Australian sovereignty in terms of responsibility and power to ensure national security as bilateral relations with China become increasingly unstable.

The re-evaluation of the Darwin Port lease to a Chinese company seems to indicate the government is not done yet.

The Morrison government appears ready to act on national security issues by asserting Commonwealth influence in spheres it has not previously felt it had to. It also raises questions about what sovereignty means today in the context of influences such as ‘big tech’ corporations, digital economies and major technological advances.

This is not an aggressive policy change. There’s no way a local prefecture in China would have been allowed to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Australian government. Nor could an Australian company lease a Chinese port for 99 years.

Australia needs to update its understanding of the responsibility and influence that goes with sovereignty to match the strategic environment of the digital age.

The digital age has blurred the boundaries of sovereignty once clearly marked by physical borders. Now that the ‘border’ of a country stretches far off into cyberspace in the deeply interconnected fifth industrial revolution world of digital economies and globalised threats, has the nation-state lost the capacity to draw a new line around its ‘territory’ to administer it in a meaningful way?

There are very real security implications in applying an outdated understanding of sovereignty to challenges such as transnational social-media corporations influencing election outcomes, the activities of global political movements and efforts to inhibit government information and health policies.

With few exceptions, domestic legislation doesn’t reach beyond the border but the influence of a new breed of non-state actor surely reaches in—as seen with the rise of far-right extremist ideologies in Australia. Ever more of our individual and collective lives happen in the international spaces and platforms created by the internet where the sovereign power responsible for ensuring our democracy and security cannot always follow, at least not with the force it has offline.

The answer is not to embrace authoritarian policing of the digital landscape à la Skynet. Nor is it to extend Australian laws beyond our borders by using extra-terrestrial legislation like a Magnitsky Act with broad strokes (which should only be used as a targeted law enforcement tool or to strategically assert key tenets of international law). Eroding civil liberties is not the answer and would exacerbate the problem, because what is a transnational corporation influencing the lives and security of a population who did not elect it but a catastrophic erosion of civil liberty and sovereignty?

In the context of our shifting strategic environment, it’s critical to national security that Australia’s government and public rethink what sovereignty means in terms of responsibility, reach and influence.

Sovereignty means reinserting state power and the democratic responsibility of government to build people’s opinions and rights into dealings with transnational corporations that operate online.

The stand-off earlier this year between Facebook and the Commonwealth was about ensuring rightful profits went to Australian news outlets from digital platforms. Money now flows from platforms to large media outlets (government win) while Facebook argued some concessions into the government’s media bargaining code (platform win).

But that’s not why the world watched on with interest. What was at stake here was a democratic nation’s power to govern the internet as it’s used by its people, and Australia did not win. The concessions included in the bargaining code bill mean Facebook still has the upper hand. The code now functions as a tool intended to coerce platforms into negotiating agreements with media outlets to avoid being designated as subject to the bargaining code. That means the strict rules by which the code should guard against power imbalances in negotiations are not, and probably never will be, enforced on platforms.

Public interest remains at the mercy of a foreign-based, privately held tech conglomerate. Plus, small—meaning regional—news outlets won’t qualify for the code and will get nothing. And Facebook retains its right to block Australian news content again in future.

Facebook learned that the Australian government will bow to corporate pressure online. That information is arguably well worth the few million dollars it cost the company in the fees to be paid to some large media outlets.

Australia needs to unflinchingly stand up to transnational corporations who try to erode its capacity to govern online.

Sovereignty also means ensuring investment in tech capabilities that are critical to national security with urgency and accountability.

The public sector needs to curb its reliance on the private sector to invest in and deliver digital projects and resources we cannot do without from an economic and national security perspective. The private sector is rightfully subject to the preferences of individuals and companies, market forces and the plausibility of raising enough equity (among other things) to get big infrastructure projects going.

We’re lucky the private sector is building Australia’s first hyperscale national fibre internet network. This infrastructure is critical to connecting Australia domestically and internationally and supporting economic development into the future. It could also be strategically significant in the case of a regional military confrontation by connecting Australia to key allies via submarine cables outside Southeast Asia.

But now that we’re talking about being inside the historical ‘10 years’ warning time’ for potential regional conflict, was it not extremely risky to wait for a private company with the vision, and enough risk appetite and capital, to build such critical infrastructure?

And while this network is undeniably a boon, a similar investment in critical public infrastructure by a tech entrepreneur not driven by the same values and vision of enabling and securing Australia’s future could have the opposite effect. It could mean private, monopolistic control of critical infrastructure, where private profit is prioritised over public interest and opinion, and the elected government bows to private interests.

This is not to suggest that the government should seek to coerce or control the private sector and the market. But it has a responsibility to secure Australia’s digital and tech capabilities. It should strategically invest and support projects and industries critical to our national security, even if that means wearing greater risk in terms of equity investments than Canberra generally has appetite for.

We stand at the brink of the fifth industrial revolution, which will bring cooperation between people and machines, while our understanding of sovereignty is still grappling with the third revolution, digitisation and the internet. It’s imperative that we get up to speed.

The next part of this series will deal with proactive digital sovereignty by policing the internet, securing data domestically and internationally among trusted allies with legislative protections for privacy and civil liberties, and digital human rights.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner recently highlighted an overarching challenge for the territory, and arguably for all of northern Australia—to break the social and economic cycles of severe disadvantage that perpetuate problems for generations.

As with many entrenched cycles of disadvantage, it’s easy to dream up policy solutions that rely on bottomless government coffers, and to call for cross-portfolio responses.

Creating stable, meaningful economic opportunities for northern Australian youth would surely reduce crime rates, and that’s rightly an agenda of the NT and Queensland governments. But it will take time to implement and to produce results. And for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living in remote communities, economic opportunities are often not sustainable if they prevent them living on Country.

Youth crime is a consequence of these cycles of disadvantage and disrupting them must be central to policies that reduce crime and restore community confidence in police. The NT and Queensland governments have responded to this crisis from a law enforcement perspective with announcements of a new ‘tough on crime crackdown’ and a youth crime taskforce.

Two policy issues are at play here. Is there actually a surge in youth crime in Australia’s northern cities and towns, and, if so, what can be done now to address it?

Can we apply a circuit-breaker to this cycle of disadvantage and crime, without having to wait for the long-term economic stability and prosperity we know is needed to alleviate the broader socioeconomic disadvantages and precarity facing northern communities?

The reality is that Australian Bureau of Statistics data records a decline in youth offenders rather than a surge in the NT and Queensland. But there’s still a very real crisis that isn’t being addressed because it’s not well understood.

Legislative and law enforcement responses to youth crime need to happen in tandem and to be integrated with radical rethinking and reform of the child protection system in northern Australia.

ABS data for the decade from 2009 to 2020 show a 51% drop in annual youth offenders proceeded against by NT police, from 15% to 7% of total offenders. In Queensland, there was a 34% drop in the number of youth offenders proceeded against by police, from 18% to 12% of total offenders.

But the rate of recidivism by young offenders is significant.

In 2019–20, NT police proceeded against 54% of offenders aged 10–14 more than once. They acted against 37% of offenders aged 15–19 more than once, and this older cohort made up 82% of total offenders. In Queensland in 2019–20, police proceeded against 40% of offenders aged 10–14 more than once and against 36% of offenders aged 15–19 more than once.

Most youth crime in the north is committed by people on bail (50% in the NT last year).

There’s been much discussion in both jurisdictions about what policy measures will reduce crime and incarceration rates of youth in general and of Indigenous youth who are over-represented in the justice system. Options being considered include mandatory refusal of bail and GPS monitoring of recidivist youth while on bail.

Both Queensland and the NT have made moves to amend their bail laws to address the significant over-representation of recidivist youth in crime statistics by keeping more offenders in custody while on remand due to high rates of reoffending while on bail. This is consistent with evidence-based best practice internationally of targeting criminals not crime. Data suggests that most crime is committed by a small cohort of recidivists. If you lock them up, crime rates go down.

But we know that time locked up increases the likelihood of young offenders reoffending and being repeatedly incarcerated in the youth and then adult prison systems. So, incarcerating youth doesn’t reduce crime, and neither does not incarcerating them. For incarceration to work as a standalone strategy, they would have to be locked up for life.

That’s not to say offenders should get off scot-free, but in terms of outcomes it’s clear the problem needs to be addressed at its root causes as much as in its symptoms. The starting point must be to fix the profoundly broken child protection system.

Most recidivist youth offenders experienced significant abuse, neglect and/or trauma during childhood and interacted with the child protection system. Both the NT and Queensland need to pursue law enforcement options in tandem with significant reform of the child protection system as a preventive measure to have any significant impact on youth crime rates.

Otherwise, police forces in both states will keep putting band-aids on a wound that’s fundamentally about children who have been profoundly injured, traumatised and abandoned by their communities. They have ‘nowhere safe to go’ when they’re discharged from youth detention, so they end up back in the crowds and cycles of crime that put them there the first time.

While there’s no single comprehensive formula for child protection, there’s a large body of international evidence on protective factors that should be at the forefront of policy solutions for northern Australia.

We need only look as far as New Zealand to see the significant positive impact of the 1980s shift to use courts less, emphasise community-based alternative action, and reserve criminal charges ‘for the absolute smallest group possible’.

For the NT and Queensland, this will require meaningful engagement with the established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled sector and communities to identify local solutions given the significant over-representation of Indigenous youth in out-of-home or foster care and in youth justice facilities.

Policymakers may well be going to the wrong places for this advice. The recent evaluation commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services of the previous decade of child protection policies did not consult a single Aboriginal community-controlled organisation, and spoke to just one, Melbourne-based, non-government organisation representing Aboriginal children and families.

Youth crime, and especially recidivism, is fundamentally a child protection policy issue. Until state and territory governments address it with a coordinated policy response from the justice and child protection sectors, it will remain a festering wound for northern Australian communities that will drive people away from the north.

Maritime law enforcement (MLE) vessels are non-naval vessels employed on maritime law enforcement duties, primarily coastguard vessels, but also vessels of other MLE agencies, such as marine police and fisheries protection services.

The growth of coastguards and other MLE forces has been particularly evident in Southeast Asia. There have been several reasons for this development.

There’s the general increase in maritime activity, especially shipping and the exploration and exploitation of offshore oil and gas, which require monitoring and possible policing for safety, security and environmental protection reasons. The regulatory environment for these activities has become more complex over the years, necessitating a higher level of training for the officers of MLE agencies.

There’s also been the continuation of a high level of illegal activity at sea, be it piracy, armed robbery against ships, acts of terrorism in the vicinity of the Sulu Sea, or trafficking in drugs, arms and people.

The third reason is the number of boundary and sovereignty disputes in the region, notably in the South China Sea. MLE forces are now regarded as preferable for sovereignty protection and their presence in disputed areas is preferred over navies, which carry a higher level of political risk, especially where there are pre-existing tensions between neighbouring countries.

Regional countries recognise that cooperation is necessary for most forms of MLE and safety, even though there may be no agreed maritime boundary. Again, MLE forces are preferable to navies for these operations.

MLE forces, ships and aircraft are generally cheaper to acquire than their military equivalents. They are also cheaper to operate, invariably requiring smaller crews and less sophisticated equipment.

MLE is also becoming more complex with the increased number of international conventions and regulations dealing with illegal activity at sea. It’s more difficult for navies to undertake MLE on an ad hoc basis. Meanwhile, regional navies are focusing more on war-fighting capabilities. Most are reluctant to be too heavily involved in policing tasks.

The development of MLE forces has provided increased opportunities for more advanced allies and partner countries to assist in building the capacity of less advanced countries to handle MLE and maritime safety tasks.

Pacific island countries are now facing increasing maritime security challenges. Much of the transnational crime reported in the region has a maritime dimension.

The tasks of MLE in the Pacific islands’ ocean domains have never been more difficult. There are operational gaps in maritime patrolling by many islands. Aerial surveillance of remote areas, offshore zones and adjacent areas of high seas is only conducted on a limited basis.

In the Indian Ocean, maritime safety and security have been identified as priorities for the Indian Ocean Rim Association, with specific reference made to piracy, sustainable fisheries management, and the need for preparations to deal with the natural disasters. The association has established a working group on maritime safety and security that may sponsor some training courses.

MLE training around the Indo-Pacific is available in a variety of forms, ranging from online delivery to in-country delivery of capacity-building assistance to residential programs extending over weeks or even months.

Most regional coastguard academies are focused on providing basic training for coastguard officers, but some, such as the Japan Coastguard Academy, also offer advanced training programs for middle-ranking officers both national and international.

The US Coast Guard has helped in hands-on exercises to train Southeast Asian coastguards in conducting boarding procedures and vessel inspections. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Thailand has a global maritime crime program that conducts capacity-building.

But overall, there’s no regional institution focused on providing professional training and education for middle-ranking officers from regional MLE agencies that enhances their knowledge and skills to enable them to exercise command within their organisations.

By careful analysis, engagement and intelligent program design, an Indo-Pacific maritime law enforcement centre (IMLEC) would effectively identify strategic interventions that leverage the respective strengths of existing MLE programs and institutions in the Indo-Pacific.

The IMLEC would reflect the position that MLE and maritime safety are common interests of all regional countries and necessary tasks, regardless of any discord or disagreement. The centre would deliver modular training and focus on MLE, but with some attention also to maritime safety and marine environmental protection.

Once established, IMLEC might also offer bespoke courses and workshops that might be agency- or country-specific, or multi-agency, multi-sector and/or multilateral in nature.

IMLEC should have a research function that would enable it to keep abreast of technological developments and how they might be employed by regional countries to assist them with MLE and providing maritime safety in their waters.

The main role of IMLEC would be to promote a combined, joint, intragovernmental, interagency and multinational approach to the conduct of regional MLE operations drawing on the very best expertise and skills.

It should host high-level regional MLE gatherings that foster links between partner-nation MLE leaders as well as host track 1.5 dialogues on sensitive topics.

Critical to the success of the centre as a facilitator for integrating MLE training across the Indo-Pacific would be sponsors ranging from national MLE authorities, national governments and various regional and international bodies—such as Interpol, UNODC and the International Maritime Organization—that are committed to better MLE and stronger maritime security and safety in the Indo-Pacific.

In terms of location, given Australia’s regional reputation as a country with a strong civil maritime law enforcement regime, there’s a strong case for IMLEC to be based in northern Australia.

Darwin has deep links to the region. It’s a rapidly growing centre of maritime activity supporting the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Border Force, the offshore oil and gas industry, commercial fishing, ship repair and maintenance, and marine tourism.

The range and depth of civil maritime security efforts in Darwin would provide participants with opportunities to engage with operational commanders and senior executives from a diverse array of agencies. This would be invaluable for generating a shared understanding of regional civil MLE challenges.

For Australian Border Force staff, there’s the possibility that some of the training that’s now conducted at the ABF College in Sydney might be undertaken in Darwin.

By maintaining engagements with all MLE authorities in the Indo-Pacific, IMLEC would be able to nimbly shift to develop programs on emerging policy issues at the request of key stakeholders. It would operate innovative MLE programs to build partner capacity, promote professionalism in MLE agencies and strengthen regional cooperation to better meet civil MLE challenges.