I read with interest the recent Strategist posts by John Coyne and Graeme Dunk in which they apparently took different stands on the importance of northern Australia for our defence. With better definition of how …
The Strategist on: "North of 26° south"
Most Australians have no idea how quickly they’ll be running on empty if our fuel supplies from overseas are cut in a crisis. For decades, the nation has relied on risky, just-in-time deliveries of the …
Walter Cronkite, the American broadcast journalist, was an avid sailor and explorer of the United States coast. He wrote books of his voyages and, in his twilight, returned to familiar haunts along the northeastern seacoast …
The Australian government has been quick to defend its record on energy security by arguing ‘supply chain resilience has meant that during Covid-19 pandemic, we have not faced shortages’. Despite these claims, the government has …
The global spread of Covid-19 has highlighted the importance of having a health security strategy that extends way outside of Australia. The Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade …
Over the coming decades, climate change will have serious and pervasive impacts on human security across the Indo-Pacific region. From supporting regional disaster-assistance missions to responding to sudden climate-change-related mass migration, Australia’s north will need …
In October 1942, Edward Ward, the minister for labour and national services, accused the Australian government of having planned to abandon the country’s north in the event of a Japanese invasion. While the ‘Brisbane Line’ …
In the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest, the hero (played by Cary Grant) is drawn in a northwesterly direction to the movie’s climax on Mount Rushmore. The movement is inexorable and inevitable. In …
The Chinese government was likely well aware of Australia’s plans to significantly enhance the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal in the Northern Territory before it was announced last month. Nonetheless, the government’s decision …
The government’s decision to significantly expand the Royal Australian Air Force’s key northern base near Katherine, around 300 kilometres southeast of Darwin, is a giant strategic step forward and will deliver a firmer deterrent posture …
ASPI’s ‘The north and Australia’s security’ program has just turned one. Over the past year, more than 30 pieces have been published under the banner of the program’s ‘North of 26° south’ Strategist series. Authors …
It has been painfully obvious for years that our major ally, the US, major regional partner, Japan, and major market, China, all see more strategic value in northern Australia than successive federal governments and much …