The inadequacy of Australia’s liquid fuel reserves is like a bothersome itch that won’t go away. Recent reporting of serious concerns about Australia’s liquid fuel vulnerabilities by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security …
Articles by: "Paul Barnes"
Some watershed changes have been announced across our national security domain this year. A home affairs department is being established to act as a ‘portfolio agency’ for ASIO, the AFP, the Australian Border Force, the …
Australians with more than a passing interest in the supply of electricity can’t have missed the media attention and ongoing political engagement on the findings of Australian Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel’s recently released review …
If you study or work in the biosciences, chances are that ‘CRISPR’ has been on your mind for the past five years. That’s Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Or, in plain-speak: the easiest, cheapest …
The recent establishment by the Attorney-General and the Treasurer of a Critical Infrastructure Centre (CIC) follows strong media interest in the issue of foreign direct investment in Australian infrastructure, including the leasing of part of …
A complex network of interconnected supply chains keep Australia fed, fuelled, and functioning. But recent changes to Australia’s energy supply chain mean they’re increasingly vulnerable to disruption. Australia, like most advanced economies, relies on a …
Early warnings and communication with at-risk communities before and during crises have been central to recent post-disaster evaluations in Australia. Effective risk communication ideally results from engagement with those communities before, during and after emergencies …
This piece is drawn from Agenda for Change 2016: strategic choices for the next government. Natural and technical disasters are a major strategic security challenge. Deloitte Access Economics’ Building resilient infrastructure report estimates that in …
Military interpretations of ‘landscape’ conventionally include notions of strategy, control and domination. They also include environmental factors that might impact Defence’s readiness to carry out conventional military tasks as well as environmental protection from the …
Seventeen billion dollars will be needed to directly replace critical infrastructure between 2015 and 2050 due to the impact of natural disasters in Australia. That’s a key finding of this month’s report from the Australian …
Australia’s new Defence White Paper has plenty to say about a ‘secure, resilient Australia’. Paragraph 3.6 states: ‘Our interest in a secure, resilient Australia also means an Australia resilient to unexpected shocks, whether natural or …
Global attention was galvanised this month when World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr Margaret Chan declared the Zika virus to be a public health emergency of international concern. The WHO has expressed concern about the …