Treaties can be rendered invalid for a variety of reasons (PDF, Articles 46–53), such as restrictions on authority to express the consent of a state, error, fraud, corruption of a state, or coercion.

Alfredo Pires, Timor-Leste’s Natural Resources Minister has said that ‘during the process of negotiations, there were some exercises of covert operations’  which ‘assisted the inquisition itself during the process of negotiations’.

Australian Foreign Minister Carr and Attorney-General Dreyfus have stated that:

These allegations are not new and it has been the position of successive Australian Governments not to confirm or deny such allegations. However, Australia has always conducted itself in a professional manner in diplomatic negotiations and conducted the CMATS treaty negotiations in good faith. …the Australian Government is considering its response to Timor-Leste’s arbitration notification.

There was considerable speculation earlier this year that Timor–Leste would walk away from the treaty. CMATS entered into force in 2007 to cover the 80% of the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea. (20% of the Greater Sunrise Unit area is in the Joint Petroleum Development Area.)

CMATS is an interim agreement; it doesn’t finalise maritime boundaries. It’s an example of the sort of provisional arrangements of a practical nature which the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides for.

CMATS states that neither Australia nor Timor-Leste will assert claims to sovereign rights and jurisdiction and maritime boundaries for the period of the treaty (fifty years). The Treaty divides the revenue derived from resource extraction in the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field equally between Timor-Leste and Australia.

CMATS provides that if no development plan is agreed to within six years from when the treaty entered into force (23 Feb, 2007), then either country can give notice to terminate the treaty. This would take effect three months from when notice is given. The relevant date where there was an option of termination was 23 February this year.

So, given there isn’t an agreed development plan for Sunrise, termination is now a live option, where either side could give three months notice. But neither party has exercised that option. The treaty continues, even after Timor-Leste’s initiation of arbitration last month.

There’s a strong view in Timor-Leste that the processing plant for the Greater Sunrise field should be located on Timorese soil to spur its economy, rather than constructed as a floating plant. Onshore processing is part of Timor-Leste’s national strategic development plan. It’s also a political issue in the country, and featured in last year’s election campaign.

But a pipeline across the Timor Trench to an onshore LNG processing facility in Timor-Leste is both technically difficult and much more costly than a floating platform. Australia’s view (PDF, pages 512-513) is that it simply favours developing Sunrise to the best commercial advantage, including elements that would contribute to Timor-Leste’s development.

Under CMATS, a Maritime Commission is supposed to meet once a year and consult on maritime security generally. But it has never met, despite our common maritime interest in areas such as customs and unregulated fishing (chapter 5). And the first meeting isn’t not going to happen any time soon given Timor-Leste’s decision to pursue arbitration.

Timor-Leste has still got the option of cancelling the treaty, but feels that course might be legally messy: it might risk other joint development arrangements in the Timor Sea and wouldn’t provide certainty to business. Dili feels it’s better to secure a decision that the treaty in effect never really existed. If that was the result, it’d create the possibility of Timor-Leste opening negotiations on permanent maritime boundaries.

The arbitral tribunal would establish its own procedures. But proving espionage will be a difficult evidentiary requirement. Australia could decide not to participate. But a tribunal could still be formed by Timor-Leste asking the President of the International Court of Justice to appoint an adjudicator. The tribunal could make a ruling (Annex B (c)) even if Australia defaults. It also wouldn’t exactly be a great public relations success for Australia if we decided not to participate.

The arbitration initiative is a very high risk play for Timor-Leste. The trend of offshore technology is away from Timor-Leste’s objective of a pipeline to its country. Gas prices have come down in recent years, and shale gas is creating interest worldwide. Invalidating the treaty won’t provide an incentive to develop the Sunrise area. It’s more likely to result in the development languishing in the ‘too hard’ basket.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI. Map courtesy of Australian Government Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism.

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To give one example, there’s now a growing and extensively documented (large PDF) link between conservation, development, crime and security in the illegal ivory trade. That trade is mostly driven by the so-called ‘gang of eight’: exporters Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda; middleman states Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines; and consumers in China and Thailand.

Most ivory is obtained illegally from Africa and manufactured and sold in Asia. Elephants from east and southern Africa are stripped of their ivory, which is shipped to Southeast Asia to be turned into commercial products, and then often on shipped to Thailand and China.

The Ministers of the Economic Community of Central African States recently called on ivory consuming countries to take drastic measures to deter consumers and urged the poachers’ countries of origin to support affected countries in combating poaching. They’ve agreed to mobilise joint military operations to protect savannah elephants.

There’s a growing consensus around the need to act. Last September at the UN General Assembly, heads of state discussed the dangers to stability and rule of law from the illegal trade of natural resources. Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton argued last year that wildlife trafficking needs to be addressed decisively. Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in March highlighted the importance of coordinating enforcement support at global, regional and national levels, deploying a wider-range of operational techniques and reducing demand for illicit goods.

As I’ve argued recently (PDF), with reference to the trade in ‘blood ivory’, Australia needs to work with China, and regional transit states to share intelligence with regional customs agencies on the illegal wildlife trade. One way to do this would be for AusAID to focus on wildlife conservation in its African strategy, and we should be taking up the issue with the African Union. Our presidency of the UN Security Council in September also provides an opportunity to raise the security aspects of transnational wildlife crime.

Issues related to poverty eradication, security and governance in Africa will feature at the inaugural Aus-Africa Dialogue this year, sponsored by ASPI and South Africa’s Brenthurst Foundation. The Dialogue will no doubt raise the question of transnational wildlife crime. While this is a conservation issue, it’s not solely an issue for conservationists.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI. Image courtesy of GRIDA.

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A great deal is happening in the Antarctic: because of budget pressures brought on by the global economic crisis, many of the ‘old’ Antarctic nations are reducing their Antarctic capabilities while the ‘new’ Antarctic nations, especially in Asia, such as China, India and South Korea, are increasing their investments in capability and science. These new investments may well have implications for the balance of influence that has been the hallmark of Antarctic relations. Meanwhile, our Antarctic infrastructure is getting a bit long in the tooth and Australia has some big decisions to make in the near future, such as what to do with our aging flagship ice-breaker Aurora Australis.

As a leading Antarctic nation, Australia has a great deal invested in its science and Antarctic capability, in an environment where other nations are rapidly catching up.  Antarctica therefore raises important questions for Australia. That’s why we’ve commissioned a series of contributions that will look at the range of Australian objectives in Antarctica, the assumptions that underpin these goals, and the options open for us on how best we can achieve our objectives. It’s hoped that these contributions will inform those who are responsible for formulating and implementing our Antarctic policies.

So we’ll look at a range of strategic policy interests we’ve got in Antarctica and whether we need to trade off any of these goals:

• preserving our sovereignty over our Antarctic territory
• maintaining the continent free from confrontation and militarisation
• protecting the Antarctic environment
• taking advantage of the special opportunities Antarctica offers for science
• deriving economic benefits from Antarctica
• insuring against unpredictable developments down south.

How we set and weigh both complementary and competing priorities amongst our Antarctic objectives will be a key challenge (even if it’s somewhat imprecise), as will judging how other Antarctic players react to our policy objectives and our pursuit of them. (Some of our policies might not be complementary with those of other Antarctic players).

How we set our Antarctic policies in a broader international context will be important, and that should play into how much we actually spend on our polar commitments. It may even be that there’s a case for reducing our current Antarctic activity. But it’s noteworthy that last year’s Australian Defence Force Posture Review (PDF, p.iv) judged that ‘over time, increased resources for relevant agencies, not just Defence, will be necessary to strengthen Australia’s presence in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean’.

In recent years we’ve not really had to worry too much about Antarctica. But that state of contentment mightn’t last much longer. If the views of University of London’s Professor Klaus Dodds are correct, Antarctica is facing a series of crises over sovereign claims, commercial fishing, tourism, the rise of China and mineral exploitation. If these ‘Five Inconvenient Truths’ are to be believed, the treaty could break down, illegal fishing become rampant; our territorial claim disputed, the environment irreparably  damaged and a ‘cold rush’ for oil, gas and other minerals begin  .

Ukrainian scientists in West Antarctica, for example, recently announced that they’d discovered a petroleum province. Russia submitted a paper, (‘scientific results of Russian studies in the Antarctic in 2011’) to last year’s Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which noted their interest in the continent’s mineral potential and China is apparently also interested in Antarctic resources. And as concerns over water security grow, iceberg harvesting might become viable: thirty per cent of the world’s fresh water is stored in our Antarctic territory as ice.

The politics of Antarctica are starting to hot up. We need to ensure that our polar policy settings and capabilities are adequate for a new era in Antarctic affairs.  Sitting on our hands, or trotting out familiar platitudes on our Antarctic policy won’t be the best way to ensure our long term national interests in the frozen continent. We need to realistically consider our Antarctic interests and the future of our engagement in Antarctic affairs.

In the following weeks we’ll be posting a number of pieces on The Strategist on the challenges ahead for our Antarctic policy, and how we can best continue to contribute to remain a leading Antarctic player.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director at ASPI. Image courtesy of the University of Queensland. 

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The strategy was released recently, without fanfare, under of the signature of former US Secretary of Defense Panetta—probably one of his last policy pronouncements as SECDEF. The new policy establishes the US DoD’s priorities in the areas of ‘homeland defense’ and ‘defense support for civil authorities’ through to 2020.

It’s a rich document that provides many insights into US thinking. Generally consistent with the previous (2005) strategy (PDF), it nevertheless shows some development in a few themes that are instructive for Australia.

While much briefer than the earlier version, it confirms the distinction between ‘homeland defense’ (against external conventional and asymmetric threats) as a primary Defense mission, and ‘defense support for civil authorities’, as a secondary mission.

In Australian parlance, the term ‘homeland defense’ is more aligned with defence of Australia and ‘defense support for civil authorities’ is more like our Defence assistance to the civil community and Defence Force aid to civilian authorities.

One area in which the strategy demonstrates progress is in the mechanisms for employing all US military resources—regular and reserve—for roles within the homeland. This is a complex issue for the US, fraught with convoluted laws and equities between the state national guards and federal military (both active duty and reserve).

The strategy emphasises the use of ‘dual-status commanders’—state national guardsmen or federal officers who are authorised to command both national guard and federal military forces in a crisis. This underscores quiet legislative developments pursued methodically since 9/11 to make the application of US military resources in the homeland—whatever their origin—much more efficient.

The new strategy also sustains the priority focus on military support to domestic CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives) incidents. This has long been a major theme of US homeland security, with its origins well before 9/11 in the 1996 Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act.

The strategy refers to some new reserve force structure for CBRNE response, developed since the 2005 version. Interestingly, the high-yield explosive aspect of CBRNE has been de-emphasised relative to the earlier strategy. But DoD’s hard-earned new expertise in dealing with improvised explosive devices is noted as a major contribution that must be preserved and made available to support civilian agencies in the homeland.

The strategy points out that public expectations of a timely and effective Defense response to a homeland security threat or crisis have grown over the past decade, and cites recent natural disasters as examples.

Lessons from hurricanes Katrina and Sandy (that left eight million people without electricity and underscored the vulnerability of the US power grid) have framed the US approach to military–civil support roles. The strategy notes that the obvious capacity, capabilities, training, and professionalism of the DoD mean that the US public will expect it to play a prominent supporting role in response efforts—an expectation that the Defense establishment cannot afford to disappoint. The strategy doesn’t limit that expectation to the uniformed services, but extends it to all agencies for the DoD.

But what’s interesting in the new strategy is a recognition of what it calls ‘complex catastrophes’, where the concentration of population in major urban areas and the interconnected nature of critical infrastructures have combined to ‘fundamentally alter the scope and scale of “worst case” incidents for which DoD might be called upon to provide civil support’.

The strategy points out that:

This environment creates the potential for complex catastrophes, with effects that would qualitatively and quantitatively exceed those experienced to date. In such events, the demand for Defense Support for Civil Authorities would be unprecedented. Meeting this demand would be especially challenging if a cyber attack or other disruption of the electrical power grid creates cascading failures of critical infrastructure, threatening lives and greatly complicating DoD response operations.

Australia should take note of the extent to which its major security partner has taken to heart threats to the homeland, and has made significant institutional adjustment to its Defense establishment in order to address them. Such things are much more difficult for the US, given the relationships and orthodoxies that affect the domestic application of military resources, yet something in the US calculus has caused it to grasp that nettle.

This year’s Defence white paper should set out the ADO’s role in domestic security. To take two examples. First, we don’t have a process for determining the capability requirements for Defence assistance to civilian agencies. Such a process would make it easier for Defence to integrate planning and operational capabilities for supporting civil authorities at home. Second, there’s still a degree of ‘ad-hocery’ when it comes to Defence supporting special events, such as next year’s G20 in Brisbane. Given the unpredictability of the gaps between such events and the risk of losing important corporate knowledge in the interim, formalised Defence special-event support ‘packages’, with supporting doctrine, might be an option to make planning easier for both the ADO and the supported jurisdiction.

Over six years ago we argued that the Australian community is very supportive of using the ADO (in particular, the ADF) in domestic missions. Public opinion will continue to support sensible steps by Defence to increase its involvement in these roles.

These missions shouldn’t be seen by Defence as ‘second eleven’ tasks: where the ADF performs poorly in supporting our civil authorities, it’ll be highly damaging to its relationship with the Australian people.

Andrew Smith recently served as director of United States Central Command’s Combined Planning Group and is now an independent researcher based in the US. Anthony Bergin is deputy director at ASPI.

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Climate change will require Defence to play its part as part of a whole-of-government approach, rather than work in isolation. Tasks range from identifying the threat and taking preventive action to reduce the risk, through to dealing with the consequences.

The ADF will always need to have hard-edged war-fighting capabilities, but it will also have to recognise the increasing requirement to become involved in capacity building, especially in those countries that are already feeling the effect of stresses and where climate change will have its greatest impact.

Heavy Weather recommends that Defence work with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to establish an interagency working group on climate change and security. The group would focus on analysing climate event scenarios for Australia and the Asia–Pacific region in order to manage the risks those scenarios pose to national resilience and regional stability.

Having a senior ADF officer, backed by a competent and knowledgeable staff, with responsibility for climate change matters would send the right message about the degree to which the ADF is responding to climate risks. The Navy’s Hydrography, Meteorology and Oceanography Branch Director-General is well placed to become the adviser to the Chief of the Defence Force on climate issues. A key role would be to develop a Responding to Climate Change Plan, which details how Defence will manage the effects of climate change on its operations and infrastructure.

On the home front, Defence should audit its environmental data to determine its relevance for climate scientists and systematically make that data publicly available.

And at the international level, Australia should work with like-minded countries to share best practice and thinking on how military organisations should best respond to extreme weather events. Extreme heat, floods and bushfires were likely all aggravated this summer in Australia by a shifting climate, and the trend is likely to continue.

These recommendations, and others that are set out in Heavy Weather, aren’t about Defence having a ‘green’ view of the world: they’re about the ADF being well placed to deal with the potential disruptive forces of climate change.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI. Image courtesy of Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

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We conclude that “private ends” include those pursued on personal, moral or philosophical grounds, such as Sea Shepherd’s professed environmental goals. That the perpetrators believe themselves to be serving the public good does not render their ends public. ..The activities that Cetacean alleges Sea Shepherd has engaged in are clear instances of violent acts for private ends, the very embodiment of piracy.

It’s a big legal call for a court to describe the Sea Shepherd activists as pirates.

Pirates can be prosecuted by any state, even where there’s no connection between that state and the pirates, the pirates’ vessel or their victims. The international law of the sea permits any state to seize a pirate ship on the high seas. So Sea Shepherd vessels could, by virtue of this line of argument, be boarded by any state in international waters. And its crew could be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.

But international legality aside, there are real maritime safety and environmental issues at stake. Admiral James Goldrick was in charge of Australia’s Border Protection Command four years ago. At that time, he deployed a Customs ship to monitor Japanese whaling operations so he’s seen Sea Shepherd’s activities up close. He’s rightly expressed concern that Sea Shepherd’s actions will cause injury or loss of life, as well as risking ships being damaged or sunk, which might create significant environmental hazards.

Debris from Sea Shepherd’s activities is scattered around the Southern Ocean. ‘Fuel spilled from a damaged tanker (and such a vessel was one of the ships involved in the latest encounter) could wreak havoc’, Admiral Goldrick has pointed out.

Harassment by the Sea Shepherd won’t change Japan’s position on whaling. Access to a port of a state is a privilege, not a right.

It’s an offence for a whaling vessel, for example, to call at an Australian port, unless the master has written permission from the environment minister to bring it into the port.

If the Australian government continues to let the Sea Shepherd group (which have now been deemed by a properly constituted court as pirates) use Australian port facilities, it will in effect be sending a message that it’s prepared to countenance dangerous behaviour and be selective in its application of the law of the sea.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI. Image courtesy of flickr user Wally on water.

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Many Asian countries don’t agree, and argue that states’ activities intended for military purposes in their EEZs aren’t ‘peaceful’ under UNCLOS, and so can’t be undertaken. It’s a fair bet that the US would argue that any proposed guidelines would invite more misunderstandings, and so lead to more confrontations.

Naturally any guidelines for preventing and managing incidents at sea would need to operate without prejudice to any sovereignty claims. States should be decreasing the frequency of patrols in disputed areas by both naval and coastguard ships. Countries should try and use non-naval vessels for law enforcement at sea, and give other countries notice when they’re going to undertake maritime operations. Hot lines and information exchange should be put in place between regional navies and civil coastguards. Normal international law rules for preventing collisions at sea should apply.

Military exercises in the maritime zones of other countries shouldn’t undertake weapons exercises using live ammunition. And foreign warships or aircraft intending to carry out military exercises or war games in the ocean zones of other countries should notify the coastal state, behind the scenes. Countries should accept responsibility for the actions of all their national vessels operating in disputed maritime areas. Agreeing to suitable guidelines will be difficult, but isn’t insurmountable. The Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS), has many Pacific navies as members, and a focus on professional naval mastery.

A number of years ago, the WPNS developed a voluntary Code for Unalerted Encounters at Sea (CUES). It’s based on international legal and navigation principles. CUES might serve as an unofficial template for the navies in North Asia as well as the United States, who are all WPNS members.

For most WPNS navies, CUES has been a working document for many years. But the Chinese have refused to accept revisions, even though they acknowledge they’ve been using parts of CUES. They object that the word ‘Code’ in the title of the CUES is ‘viewed as a legal term with binding force’ and that the phrase ‘unalerted encounters’, isn’t properly defined (PDF). That will make the WPNS meeting that China will host next year, (that will again consider WPNS endorsing CUES), very interesting.

But beyond CUES, there’s going to be real practical problems in enforcing any agreed guidelines. The guidelines would need to be voluntary, if there’s any chance to put them in place. But that’s not to say that over time, they might acquire some level of regional legitimacy. Some sort of regular regional performance reporting regarding acceptance and implementation of any maritime confidence building guidelines would be useful.

If a state adopted the guidelines, but failed to abide by them in good faith, then other parties that had accepted them would be entitled to withdraw their commitment.

The key objective of any voluntary guidelines would be to prevent maritime incidents or to keep them from escalating: in other words, they’d be a tool in preventive diplomacy. The alternative to such guidelines is to leave the resolution of ocean disputes in our region to the exercise of raw power. But the timely message in Sam’s blog, is that’s a risky approach if we’re to prevent the growing number of maritime incidents in Asia from getting out of hand.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI.

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There’ve been a few visits by high profile political figures so far which indicates increased attention in the region. In December, Environment Minister Tony Burke visited Casey station, the first Australian government minister ever to visit an Australian Antarctic base. This month, Quentin Bryce achieved a milestone; she was the first serving Australian Governor-General to visit Antarctica. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke has also just made a flying visit to Antarctica to officially open the Wilkins Runway Living Quarters.

That said, other states have upped their Antarctic activity. This month two Welshmen are taking on the role of polar postmasters as they re-open an old UK post office in Antarctica, more than 50 years after it was abandoned. The Post Office will sell British Antarctic Territory stamps, and provide a fully-functioning international mail service to the rest of the world.

Also this month the President of Peru announced that Peru will increase the number of expeditions and develop a permanent base there, (the current one operates only during the summer). The Chilean President recently announced that Chile’s air force will run a new base in Antarctica. In January, China selected a site for its fourth Antarctic research station. One or two Chinese stations will be built in Antarctica between now and 2015 under China’s 12th Five-Year Plan.

In December, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague reminded everyone that the UK wishes to preserve its polar presence. Polar place names are potent national symbols. Hague announced plans to rename an area of 437,000 square kilometres of Antarctic territory as Queen Elizabeth Land, in honour of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee. While it may now be Queen Elizabeth Land on British maps, the naming event provoked Argentina to issue a formal protest note to the UK Ambassador to Argentina. The British Antarctic Territory is counter-claimed by Argentina and Chile. Moscow immediately put out a statement that the Antarctic treaty does not provide grounds for making, supporting or denying any claim for territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.

Things are heating up. While it would be expensive to recover oil and gas from Antarctica a big spike in oil prices could change the economic equation. Fishing and tourism offer commercial potential. Antarctic tourist numbers have been around 40,000 in recent years. There’s no international regime that governs Antarctic bio-prospecting.

Australia’s Antarctic capability is treading water. We’re now looking to replace the research and polar support ship, Aurora Australis, as it nears the end of its life and studying options for a second Antarctic runaway (the current one is melting). Australia has a long history in the frozen south, but more strategic thinking is needed to secure our Antarctic future.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of ASPI. Image courtesy of Flickr user Liam Quinn.

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It seems that Pacific Island states have learnt from the Caribbean experience: launched five years ago, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility is a parametric insurance scheme. In terms of the scheme, payments of claims aren’t based on actual losses or damage following natural disasters. Instead, they’re calculated according to predefined indeces based on the intensity, period and location of a disaster. Countries can buy coverage limited to specific events and specific areas, and for a specified amount of time.

When the devastating Haiti earthquake struck three years ago, Haiti’s claim was assessed within 24 hours. It was determined that the earthquake was strong enough to trigger the full earthquake coverage. Preliminary calculations suggested that Haiti would receive just under $8 million (about twenty times Haiti’s premium for earthquake coverage), which was made after fourteen days.

Countries can alter the amount they allocate for each disaster, so in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake many Caribbean countries reviewed their earthquake coverage—they had previously placed more emphasis on hurricane coverage. This built-in flexibility might suit Pacific economies with low growth or where natural disaster assessments have changed.

A Pacific regional disaster insurance scheme will require region-wide coverage to spread the insurance risk, identification of the magnitude of a disaster as a trigger point for payments, and speedy cash flows to countries so that they can begin rebuilding as quickly as possible after a disaster.

As part of international climate negotiations states have agreed to provide finance to poor countries for loss and damage from climate change. Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has said Australia will pay for climate loss to developing countries from our aid budget. One academic has suggested that a fair share for Australia to contribute to the global funding effort would be about $2.4bn a year by 2020.

The Australian Government’s new National Security Strategy (PDF) points out that ‘as the climate continues to warm, extreme weather events and natural disasters will increase in frequency and severity across the region’. So it’ll be important for Australia to monitor the progress of the Pacific’s recently launched disaster insurance pilot and see where we can best assist our near neighbours.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

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Last October, Prime Minister Gillard announced that a cyber white paper, to have focused on cyber security, would be broadened to make it more a digital white paper. Apparently this was to allow the government to spruik the benefits of the National Broadband Network. One thing the new cyber paper should do is set out clearly what the government will do to counter online radicalisation and what resources will be devoted to this.

It might also consider the merits of promoting online communities of Australian young people motivated to discuss and act against hate speech online, a program that’s being developed in Europe.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

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Hurricane Sandy in the US recently underscored the importance of emergency care in the face of disaster, when major hospitals in New York lost power and had to evacuate patients at short notice and in dramatic circumstances.

In developing our health response to a disaster we face some fundamental constraints:

• most ambulance and hospital services are overstretched on a daily basis. Pre-hospital and paramedic capacity, along with medical and nursing shortages, limits surge capacity for a large influx of critically injured patients
• few of our hospital staff and paramedics have been involved in no-notice, large scale disaster exercises, using the equipment they’re supposed to be competent on
• finding adequate numbers of ambulances will be a problem for most states in the event of a disaster. There are no formal protocols between the states for the deployment of paramedics and ambulances

Clearly we have a problem. The first step in working out a response is to identify the shortfalls and set some performance goals. If the new National Health Performance Authority was to audit our national healthcare preparedness for large-scale disasters on a regular basis, then our healthcare system would then know what they were reasonably expected to be able to cope with and could plan appropriately, including what funding is required.

Speed is life in critical cases, and again we lack the ability to move lots of patients quickly—or to move response teams to the victims. As I and the former Director-General of EMA have argued recently, an immediate priority should be to address inadequacies in national casualty airlift (PDF). The right capability might look like several planes each of which that can carry at least six to 10 stretchers in an appropriate airframe to handle patients needing ICU treatment, with certified equipment and ready to go immediately.

With minimal investment and a contractual agreement with Qantas and Virgin, we could configure up to four aircraft with the requisite kit, when required, for medivac use as part of the commercial fleet on the east and west coasts. Similar arrangements are already in place in the United States. Suitable military transport aircraft might be available, but the RAAF must balance this role with military operations, training and maintenance. In any event, Defence assets rely on doctors and nurses who often have to balance their civilian life with their part-time military service as specialist reservists.

There’s a lot we could do to prevent the adverse health consequences that will flow from disasters. It’d be much better to deal with this proactively rather than after a ‘lessons learned’ report.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Image courtesy of Flickr user kayaker1204.

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Diplomatic sparring over cyber affairs and the internet is likely to grow more intense in the future, so if Australia is to play a significant role in international cyber affairs we need to ensure that we are well placed to advance our interests in all aspects of cyber security and the digital economy.

One way of approaching that goal is to draw some lessons from another area of international legal diplomatic activity. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea. We might apply some of the lessons from our success in ocean diplomacy to the new area of international cyber statecraft. This isn’t the first time that this concept has been proposed but it’s the right time to revisit it. While the parallel might not be immediately obvious, the oceans and the internet are both global commons that have at their boundaries the territorial and economic spaces belonging to sovereign states. Before the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (PDF), the ocean was a vast and unregulated space in which arbitrating issues like fishing and resource exploration was challenging. Today we find ourselves in a similar situation with the internet, with more cats and less fish.

It wasn’t easy to get to an agreement on the oceans, but today most countries are onboard. The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea was negotiated over nearly a decade, and culminated in a major convention, (in effect a constitution for the world’s oceans), in 1982. Australia was very successful in achieving our key ocean goals at these marathon negotiations. We were seen as one of the most influential players during the longest, largest and most ambitious multilateral conference exercise the UN had ever attempted. And there were several reasons for our success.

First, we were assiduous in establishing early clear objectives across the whole gamut of law of the sea issues and in identifying, in tactical terms, the ways in which to achieve those objectives. This assisted our image as a competent actor on law of the sea issues.

Second, there was solid unity over policymaking in Canberra, where our ocean priorities were set by an interdepartmental Law of the Sea Task Force, which undertook considerable consultation with industry. Right from the start Australia made it clear that we were playing for high stakes that justified a significant commitment of bureaucratic resources to ensure our success.

As well, at five substantive sessions of the conference the delegation was led by the Foreign Minister. Ministers became knowledgeable about law of the sea issues and helped to bring about a situation where any bureaucratic policy differences were brought under control.

Third, the Australian delegations enjoyed the strong support from state governments and industry groups, such as the fishing, shipping and mining industries. Fourth, the quality of the Australian delegation contributed enormously to our negotiating success. Continuity of leadership of the delegation was also important. States that frequently changed their delegation heads had less influence on the negotiations.

Fifth, Australia decided its goals at the conference would override traditional loyalties. A hard-headed approach meant that negotiating partners had to be chosen in terms of those countries which were prepared to give political backing to Australian positions.

If we’re to make a significant contribution to the growing area of international diplomacy on cyber behaviour we’ll need well organised and adequately backed diplomacy. Particularly where the internet is concerned, the complexity of cyber issues means that a number of different Australian federal and state agencies are involved. Coordinating each of them, let alone creating a unified national cyber policy that we can subsequently sell internationally, is no mean feat.

So an important start on advancing our international cyber objectives might be to start at home with the establishment of a committee of the heads of the key departments and agencies of government to establish a national position on all aspects of cyber policy. Then we’d be in a much better place to take up the issue internationally.

Anthony Bergin is deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Image courtesy of Flickr user Official U.S. Navy Imagery.

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