It’s getting on for two years now, and the government is still not saying how it will reconfigure the Defence establishment’s land holdings, known as the Defence estate. It announced an audit of the Defence …
Articles by: "Raelene Lockhorst"
Thirty-three years ago, Deng Xiaoping said that ‘The Middle East has oil, but China has rare earths.’ Today, that rings truer than ever. Critical minerals and rare earths are no longer niche commodities; they are …
Northern Australia’s resilience in the face of crises depends not only on military facilities but on a network of civil infrastructure—ports, liquid-fuel facilities, airfields and logistics hubs that keep people, goods, and equipment moving. Whether …
Australia’s national security is increasingly shaped by the resilience and presence of communities across our remote and strategically significant regions. With more than 10,000 km of vulnerable coastline, northern Australia is a crucial frontline both …
Deep beneath the Israeli port city of Haifa lies a facility few would expect: a fully operational, blast-resistant hospital converted from an underground car park. The Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital can be created …
Australia must stop viewing the Pilbara solely as a resource basin and start treating it as a national security asset. That’s the message that emerged at the Pilbara Major Projects Summit in late June, attended …
Australia and its partners must move towards frameworks that manage, rather than merely lament, the negative side-effects of critical mineral extraction. As the world scrambles to meet the demands of a clean energy transition, it’s …
For more than a decade, commentators, analysts and industry have warned Australian governments about fuel vulnerability. Yet little has changed. Despite repeated reviews and rising geopolitical tensions, there has been little concrete action to strengthen …
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2023–24 Defence Industry Account has made clear that the Department of Defence is not just a strategic actor; it’s an economic institution with national and regional influence. But the data …
Gas still plays a role in powering Australia, even as the country transitions towards a fully renewable energy system. The link between gas supplies, national resilience and economic prosperity means that any decision affecting its …
The six-year delay in approving Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf extension reflects a failure to integrate Indigenous Australians as strategic partners in the nation’s development agenda. Policymakers and project proponents should recognise the impasse is …
Few issues are as urgent and as poorly understood as Australia’s energy policy. While we build up renewable energy to replace an ageing and increasingly uneconomic coal fleet, we are more dependent on gas to …