The world has changed rapidly over the past 18 months and the way Australia’s defence organisation trains its people needs to change with it, or skills and readiness will surely decline. A combination of the …
The Strategist on: "North of 26° south"
The impact of Covid-19 and Australia’s rapidly evolving strategic environment have highlighted the requirement to invest in a sovereign defence industry. The Australian government clearly articulated its ambition for a strong and sustainable capability in …
Climate change is presenting Australia’s Defence Department with new challenges on the domestic front. One of the more pressing is the need to safeguard defence installations across Australia as climate-driven natural disaster events become increasingly …
Contributors to The Strategist’s ‘North of 26° south’ series have explored the continued importance of northern Australia to national security and defence strategy, propelling the argument for expanding air, naval and space bases in the …
What a difference a year can make, so the saying goes. In August 2019, ASPI published Strong and free? The future security of Australia’s north. Since then, Australia has battled bushfires, wild storms and a …
To ensure the digital sovereignty of communities in northern Australia, intensive effort is needed to build greater digital capacity and the social infrastructure to enable it. The region has long suffered from a digital deficit. …
Nations aren’t built in silos. Nation-building, especially in Australia’s north, requires vision, leadership, cooperation and courage in spades. The Department of Defence is a significant economic player in northern Australia, and its investments have intrinsic …
Ever since Covid-19 started cutting a swathe through global supply chains, countless column inches in Australia have been devoted to the need for sovereign manufacturing capabilities as a defence against future disruptions. To its credit, …
The Australian Defence Force and all three levels of government should work together to establish and maintain ‘mounting’ bases in Australia’s north from which overseas operations could be launched. The ADF has home bases, mounting …
To make sure that northern Australia is ready to support a range of defence contingencies, the region must have socially and economically prosperous communities. Supporting the development of these kinds of communities is no easy …
Australians’ daily reliance on digital communications infrastructure—from smartphones and social media platforms to the National Broadband Network—is changing the nature of national security risks. Just like our networked communication patterns, contemporary security risks are becoming …
The Australian government says its new foreign relations bill is about one thing: ensuring foreign policy consistency by reviewing state and territory deals that could undercut Canberra. Fair enough. Foreign policy is a federal—and constitutionally …