In a recent post I reviewed some of the possible future modifications to the ADF’s force structure. Today I want to look at the particular case of future surface combatants. As I’ve said before, the …
Debate: "General"
Recently-released Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) research, Findings from the DUMA program: Impact of reduced methamphetamine supply on consumption of illicit drugs and alcohol, casts further doubts over the effectiveness of Australian border-enforcement agencies’ use …
In a recent blog post my colleague Karl Claxton took the opportunity to frame the issues around the Defence Minister Kevin Andrew’s recent Land 400 announcement. Sadly, Karl echoes an old complaint: Most commentators have …
Submarines continue to make headlines across Australia, with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey encouraging Australia to make a quick decision about a replacement for the Collins-class submarines. In …
To write of bureaucratic culture is to venture into fog and quicksand and risk returning with mud and mush. Yet in understanding a power town like Canberra, culture offers answers not delivered by legal tomes …
Some analysts have recently observed that Australia isn’t complying with its International Energy Agency obligations—it’s the only member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) that doesn’t have a 90-day supply of strategic petroleum reserves. But …
It’s interesting to think about the Australia–Indonesia relationship in terms of game theory, as Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Rod Lyon have done in this blog recently. And I even got a few hundred words into …
Perhaps an old-fashioned diplomatic historian might add to the valuable comments by Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Greta Nabbs-Keller on how to handle the current tensions between Australia and Indonesia. In particular, we might usefully …
This week features the Prime Minister’s national security statement, the Countering Violent Extremism Summit in Washington, terror threats in the Asia–Pacific, sweeping CT legal reforms across the globe and the upcoming metadata retention bill. Following …
This week on The Beat, we discuss the implications of Abbott’s national security address, the Australian Crime Commission’s appearance at the House Standing Committee on Communications, unexplained wealth and metadata laws, the Australian Cyber Security …
There was a glaring omission in the Review of Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Machinery released this week: an absence of discussion about the implications of the changed threat environment for Australia’s response models and capabilities, either domestically …
Last week Lenovo grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons following the discovery that the company had pre-loaded adware onto PC’s sold between September 2014 and January 2015. The ‘Superfish’ software monitors users’ online activity …