As Anthony Albanese prepares to travel to Jakarta for his first state visit in his second term, the symbolism is clear: Indonesia remains a cornerstone of Australia’s foreign policy.
Since taking office, the Albanese government has prioritised Southeast Asia, laying important groundwork through initiatives such as the 2024 Defence Co-operation Agreement with Indonesia and the Southeast Asia Economic Strategy. But the tangible reality of the relationship with Indonesia remains limited by diverging strategic visions, misaligned expectations and a reluctance to address hard topics.
This means the Prime Minister’s visit must go beyond symbolism. If this partnership is to mature, both sides must start talking honestly about where they differ, where they want to go and how best to get there in lock-step. That’s because beneath the surface of two democracies, the two countries have taken different paths when it comes to issues such as dealing with Russia post the 2022 Ukraine invasion and the region’s most pressing strategic question: how to deal with China.
Since entering office, the Albanese government has approached its China policy through the prism of stabilisation – along with the formula of co-operating where we can, disagreeing where we must, and engaging in the national interest. At the same time, through AUKUS and its support for the Quad, Canberra has doubled down on its alliance with the US and its commitment to a balance-of-power strategy in the Indo-Pacific. It believes US military presence is essential to maintaining regional stability, and it is prepared to take risks to preserve that status quo. Indonesia does not see conflict as inevitable. Instead, it wants to keep both the US and China engaged in multilateral diplomacy, with ASEAN as the central platform. It sees minilateral groupings such as AUKUS and the Quad as challenges to ASEAN’s relevance and Indonesia’s role as a regional power.
Even as Indonesian officials cautiously welcome some aspects of these arrangements, such as the potential for technology sharing or regional deterrence, they remain uneasy about their long-term impact. This divergence is not academic. It affects how each country responds to crises, how they define regional order and how they prioritise partnerships.
Suggesting otherwise touches a raw nerve. But not talking at all about the extent of Indonesia’s diplomatic and military relationships with China and Russia is not in Australia’s interests either. If both sides don’t learn to talk more candidly about these issues, they risk fuelling misunderstanding, strategic surprise and backlash.
Beyond differing approaches to strategic competition, the Australia-Indonesia relationship remains hampered by persistent misperceptions. In Indonesia, Australia is still often viewed as a “deputy sheriff” of the US, with lingering suspicions about its intentions toward Indonesian sovereignty. Conversely, many in Australia continue to see Indonesia as vulnerable – both in terms of susceptibility to elite capture and manipulation by malign powers, as well as being too sensitive to any uncomfortable diplomatic discussions. This is why Albanese’s visit must be more than ceremonial. It should mark the start of a more honest phase in the relationship – one where the differences are not hidden but worked through. Albanese and Prabowo must reflect on how their “comprehensive strategic partnership” can become more strategic rather than just comprehensive; characterised by enduring, persistent and tangible gains.
There is plenty to celebrate. The DCA institutionalised what has been a growing defence partnership, including joint training, maritime co-operation and disaster response. It also allows for a larger number of joint exercises. Economically, Australia’s Southeast Asia strategy acknowledges Indonesia as a top-tier priority, backed by new investment and commercial ties. In this context, Albanese’s decision to return to Jakarta sends the right signal. It shows Indonesia matters.
Prabowo’s positive view of Australia also creates a window of opportunity. He has spoken warmly of Australia in the past, often referencing Canberra’s support for Indonesian independence. His new role as President gives him a chance to reset the tone in Jakarta, after a decade in which relations were cordial but limited in strategic depth. Albanese and Prabowo both want to work together – but goodwill alone is not a strategy.
That means augmenting the standard regular, senior-level dialogues and engagements on strategic affairs, not just trade and investment, to deliver tangible solutions to common threats and challenges. These should address hybrid threats, climate security, and the misuse of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. In the past, Australia and Indonesia have successfully co-operated on issues such as counter-terrorism and people smuggling – there’s no reason we can’t do the same on today’s emerging risks, risks that will determine future sovereignty and prosperity for both countries.
Tangible co-operation breaks down misperceptions and builds strategic trust – so capability, distinct from intent (on both sides), is consistently understood. This gives Indonesia space to confidently articulate its concerns about regional order. And it allows Australia to assure Indonesia it does not seek to fuel bloc-based confrontation. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to shape how the Australian system conceives of Indonesia – not as a reluctant participant or passive neighbour, but as a strategic partner in its own right.
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Australia’s future prosperity will not be built on nostalgia for past booms.
It’ll be forged in the critical supply chains of tomorrow. That’s why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement of a $1.2 billion Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, should Labor be re-elected, is an essential move.
The reserve is smart, pragmatic policy targeting both supply and demand aspects of Australia critical minerals sector. Executed properly, it will shore up Australia’s economic and geopolitical interests in the face of the global energy transition, geopolitical fragmentation, and economic coercion.
Although it’s an important step, if policymakers and industry leaders are serious about delivering sovereign capability, they must build durable partnerships and plan for market instability.
Building a resilient and competitive alternative to China’s critical minerals dominance is a global strategic challenge. It’s a task far bigger than Australia alone can solve.
It demands deep, sustained co-operation with like-minded partners, particularly Japan, the United States, South Korea, India and the European Union.
While calling the announcement visionary may be a stretch, it’s a crucial addition to Australia’s long-term strategy. It signals a serious move beyond simply mining and exporting raw materials, toward making Australia a reliable supplier of refined, high-value minerals.
The reserve’s structure mirrors recommendations made at ASPI’s Darwin Dialogue meetings in 2023 and 2024. It’ll operate through two key mechanisms: government-backed offtake agreements and selective stockpiling.
Offtake agreements are already a familiar tool in the mining sector.
The innovation here is that the Australian government will become the buyer, anchoring investment, setting stable price limits, and smoothing market volatility for producers and customers alike.
Stockpiling will complement this by building reserves of priority minerals to sell strategically into trusted domestic and international markets rather than simply holding resources in reserve.
Together, these mechanisms will stabilise supply, support market confidence and direct value chains away from politically coercive actors.
China’s dominance in the global critical minerals sector results from decades of deliberate policy.
Early action, subsidies, export controls and aggressive price manipulation have created structural dependencies that cannot be overcome through goodwill alone.
There have been few viable options but selling into Chinese-controlled markets.
Supply chains that depend overwhelmingly on a single actor, particularly one willing to weaponise economic relationships, are inherently insecure.
Labor’s proposed reserve accepts this reality and offers a practical response.
Australia cannot assume that action alone will be sufficient. The uncertain trajectory of US industrial policy only reinforces the need for Canberra to work harder with Japan, South Korea, India and the EU.
Building joint stockpiles, pursuing shared downstream investments and integrating offtake arrangements will be essential if Australia and its partners are to create a genuinely diversified and resilient supply chain.
Genuine engagement with Australian industry leaders who have fought to stay viable in a hostile global market will be equally important.
Companies such as Lynas Rare Earths, Iluka Resources and Arafura Rare Earths have hard-earned experience navigating the commercial, technological and political challenges of critical minerals supply.
Their operational knowledge, market intelligence and risk management lessons will be crucial in shaping a strategic reserve that is commercially realistic and strategically effective.
These companies know firsthand the difficulties of competing against state-backed Chinese giants that benefit from subsidies, price manipulation and market coercion.
Despite these distortions, they’ve built capabilities that are globally competitive.
Ignoring their experience would be a strategic mistake.
The proposed reserve fits neatly into the broader Future Made in Australia agenda. It complements the $7.1 billion in production tax credits designed to reduce production costs and strategic investments in Australia’s advanced battery and solar industries.
This layered approach to supply, demand and value-add is exactly what Australia needs.
In time, Australia must pursue co-investment strategies with trusted international partners, moving beyond simple export models to building integrated supply chains.
Strong partnerships with industry will also be essential to scaling up capability and de-risking future investments. As will investment into educating and training the necessary workforce.
The next government should continue to implement critical mineral policy not just as a national security imperative but one that would be seen by the US and other allies as in their interests too.
The critical minerals sector offers Australia a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
It is a chance to move beyond the traditional resource economy and lead in enabling the global energy transition and building high-value technology ecosystems.
The Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve is a smart foundation and a necessary one.
But Australia must act decisively, build strategically, work with trusted partners and listen to its battle-hardened industry leaders if it’s to fully realise this moment’s economic and strategic promise.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/02123805/gerda-4dhRzMdU_5I-unsplash.jpg12971920markohttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngmarko2025-05-02 12:41:092025-05-06 12:34:12Creating an alternative to China’s dominance is hard. But this step will help
They say silence breeds contempt but the reticence of the Australian government about national security threats is more akin to the quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer when resisting Nazi Germany: that “silence in the face of evil is itself evil”.
The government is not responsible for individual violent incidents across our cities, but it is responsible for informing, reassuring and protecting the public. Yet the current malaise of leadership is feeding anxiety and infecting the social cohesion that has stood Australia apart from much of the world despite decades of global terrorism and conflict.
Australia remained united in the face of terrorist plots from al-Qa’ida, attacks by ISIS, wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the malicious rise of China, and Russia’s war in Europe. But we are cracking; rising anti-Semitism and national fear shows domestic division is even more insidious than international incidents.
The government’s systemic abdication of responsibility, cloaked in silence and evasive justifications, is not a one-off relating to the caravan plot against Australia’s Jewish community but a troubling trend, exemplified by the tactic of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ministers only commenting if asked by media and, even then, answering with non-statements.
Australians are not naive. We understand the need for operational secrecy in matters of national security and that classified intelligence should not be divulged lightly. But “operational details” cannot be a catch-all excuse to deflect legitimate scrutiny or hide truth.
Uncertainty breeds fear so governments must be on the front foot. Almost within the hour of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, US president Franklin Roosevelt was instructing his press secretary to immediately inform the media. While not comparable events, the principle is key: keep the public informed and confident that its government is in control even in the most challenging times – even more important in the digital age.
Albanese’s refusal to address questions about the explosives-laden caravan, due to “ongoing investigations”, added to confusion, anxiety and speculation. A stonewalled public is not a secure one. Similarly, his reluctance to clarify whether he discussed China’s sonar pulse attack on Australian navy personnel in a meeting with Xi Jinping just days after the incident in November 2023, citing the confidentiality of diplomatic talks, simply resulted in doubt and more questions.
While discretion in diplomacy is essential, selective silence is inconsistent given the broad topics of leaders’ meetings, if not the exact words, are usually published, and suggested he just didn’t want to admit he had inexcusably failed to raise the matter.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s handling of the case of Yang Hengjun, the Australian arbitrarily detained in China, is equally disconcerting – failing to even acknowledge on January 19 Yang’s sixth year of detention, and previously insisting on being “constrained for privacy reasons”, despite Yang’s own desire for public advocacy. Hiding behind the veil of privacy appears less about protecting Yang’s interests and more about protecting the government’s.
This week marks one year since Beijing sentenced Yang to death so a comprehensive condemnation and demand for release is required. Similarly, Wong omitted to mention China in her readout of January’s discussions with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in contrast to Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya’s honesty that China was a central part of his meeting with Rubio.
Meanwhile, when asked about the US and European countries reviewing the security risk of Chinese-made smart cars, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said no such review would happen here as the priority was consumer choice. On that basis, we’d welcome Russian gas or perhaps Iranian nuclear know-how, not to mention that prioritising price now will mean consumers in the future will have few choices but Chinese-made smart cars.
We’ve seen it before. The flood of illegal boats from 2008 and refusal to acknowledge pull factors created not only a backlash against illegal immigration but reduced confidence in legal immigration and emboldened criminal organisations. It was only by being upfront about the illegal immigration problem that confidence was restored in Australia’s strength as a migration nation.
Importantly, division is distinct from difference. Different opinions, including on world leaders or policies, are to be promoted as the basis of freedom of speech. But support for terrorist groups and acts of intimidation and violence are not free speech.
Our longstanding national resilience means the cracks can’t be papered over but can be resealed quickly by a government willing to lead, including with some good old-fashioned naked truth.
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Australia’s national resilience and social cohesion are under strain, with the most visible cracks seen in the alarming rise of antisemitism. Governments, most particularly the federal government, whose responsibility it is to lead national debates, desperately need to engage more forthrightly with the Australian public.
The discovery in Dural of a caravan containing explosives and, reportedly, an antisemitic message and the addresses of a synagogue and other Jewish buildings, is the latest shock that will heighten anxiety in Australia’s Jewish community and further inflame public tension.
We can give police some benefit of the doubt that they had operational reasons for secrecy about the caravan, but these decisions must be balanced against the need to confront the underlying problems of extremism and hatred, and to reassure Australians that we have national leaders who are facing up to them. If our politicians had been leading the conversations that we need, there would be greater goodwill for understanding operational decisions, rather than the fraying patience that we are seeing.
Instead of confronting extremism, radicalisation and the growing influence of ideological violence, policymakers have retreated into reticence, offering platitudes that fail to give the public confidence or deter those who seek to cause harm. This absence of leadership is a communications failure and a strategic miscalculation that threatens social cohesion and national security.
The federal government’s reluctance to educate and inform the public about terrorism and extremism is fuelling uncertainty and fear. Security agencies such as ASIO and the Australian Federal Police play a vital role in countering threats, but their mandate is to act once the danger has escalated to the level of criminality and national security risk.
The broader responsibility – explaining the ideological drivers of extremism, reinforcing shared values, and setting clear boundaries of acceptable conduct – belongs to the government. Yet, time and again, the government has abdicated this duty, preferring to let ASIO’s annual threat assessment stand as the only authoritative voice on extremism in Australia. That is not enough. National security is not just about neutralising threats but about preventing them from taking root in the first place.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hardly lifted anyone’s morale when speaking defensively about the discovery of the caravan during two radio interviews on Thursday morning. On ABC radio, he failed to mention antisemitism at all. He refused to say when he’d learnt about it, describing that as “operational details”, and refused to say whether the national cabinet had discussed the investigation. Most of his commentary was about what the police had said and done. The closest he gave to an expression of the government’s view was by saying: “We remain concerned about this escalation.”
It wasn’t until a press conference later in the day that Albanese said, unprompted, that there was “zero tolerance in Australia for hatred and for antisemitism” and that he wanted “any perpetrators to be hunted down and locked up”.
One of the core failures underpinning this crisis is a misinterpretation of tolerance. Australia prides itself on being an open and inclusive society, but inclusivity does not mean tolerating the intolerable. Support for terrorist leaders and groups is not free speech, nor is it a legitimate expression of diversity – it is a direct threat to social stability. When governments fail to call this out unequivocally, they enable a dangerous dynamic by which extremists feel emboldened, and the broader population grows resentful and anxious. An anxious public is not a resilient one.
While the rising cost of living is at the forefront of most Australians’ minds, physical and social security must remain the government’s highest priority. People need to feel safe, and that safety is reinforced not just by policing, but by clear, decisive leadership.
The government’s approach – avoiding public discussion for fear of inflaming tensions – belongs to a bygone era. Excessive reticence was a flawed strategy even before social media, but now, in an age in which digital communications dominate every aspect of our lives, it is a liability.
Government hesitancy leaves a vacuum that is filled by those who want society to break. Without direct and frequent public engagement, we give ground to those who distort facts, push dangerous ideologies and promote violence.
ASIO head Mike Burgess was left swinging in the breeze last September after he told the ABC that the organisation assessed entrants to Australia for any national security risk, which might not cover someone who had only expressed “rhetorical support” for Hamas. Amid the political controversy that followed, the government should have swung in quickly and stressed that the wider visa check would, of course, include rhetorical support for Hamas but that this wasn’t ASIO’s job. That failed to happen, leading to days of public anger and confusion.
Equally dangerous is the government’s willingness to indulge in false equivalencies. Responding to attacks on Jewish Australians by condemning “all forms of hate” or vaguely mentioning “antisemitism and Islamophobia” is both politically weak and strategically harmful. Each act of violence or intimidation should be condemned for what it is – without hedging, without lumping disparate issues together, and without fear of offending those who sympathise with extremists.
This failure of clarity extends to the review of Australia’s terrorism laws, where there is discussion about removing the requirement for an ideological motive. Instead of diluting definitions, the government should lead the discussion on what ideology is, why it matters, and how it fuels extremism.
The government’s refusal to deal with reality is at the heart of this crisis. There is no neutral ground when it comes to national security. Attempting to placate all sides by responding too slowly and downplaying threats only emboldens those who seek to justify intimidation and violence.
Everyone accepts that history and geopolitics are complex – not least in the Middle East – but there is no justification for bringing foreign conflicts onto Australian streets. Like it or not, the federal government’s faltering responses have facilitated a false equivalence between Israel and Islamist terrorist groups, emboldening extremists who now see Australia as a battleground for their ideological struggles.
Australians can see the world is unstable and don’t appreciate being dismissed or misled. The government’s failure to engage honestly is backfiring. Public trust erodes when people feel their concerns are ignored, and social cohesion weakens without leadership. To maintain our national resilience, the government must step up, speak clearly and reassert the values that make Australia a safe and united society. Silence is not a strategy – it’s a surrender.
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James Curran gets a number of things wrong in his column on the Varghese Review and the work of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Above all, ASPI did not “work hand in glove with the Morrison government on how to play China as an issue in Australian domestic politics”. This is a baseless accusation, for which Curran provides zero evidence. One can only assume the intention is to make ASPI a political target in the aftermath of the review’s release. ASPI is a non-partisan institute that shouldn’t be painted as working or aligning with any side of politics.
Curran further alleges that ASPI has “strayed” from its founding charter, regarding itself as an “ideological font” for “calling out and confronting an assertive China”. ASPI is, and will remain, a non-partisan, independent think tank as stipulated in its charter, laid out in 2001.
He then avers that “some of its analysts created an atmosphere in which to question government policy settings on China was deemed unpatriotic”. These allegations are also completely unsubstantiated. Who is he talking about, exactly?
Varghese was indeed right to point out that Australia has failed to nurture academic expertise on China.
The only person at ASPI that Curran mentions by name is the executive director, Justin Bassi. He accuses Bassi of making a “reprehensible” and “juvenile” comparison between the 14 recommendations in former diplomat Peter Varghese’s report and the 14 grievances against the Australian government, aired by the Chinese embassy in 2020.
Bassi simply noted that there was a “grim irony” in the numerical coincidence, as one of the complaints was widely interpreted as a demand to defund ASPI because it has produced research and commentary critical of the Chinese Communist Party. How is this observation in any sense juvenile? Varghese did not recommend closing down ASPI, but he did recommend that direct government funding for ASPI’s office in Washington DC be discontinued, along with other moves designed to tighten government controls over the sector, including a role for ministers in setting research priorities and appointing government observers to ASPI’s board.
The fact that the government has agreed with most of Varghese’s recommendations is worrying in itself, but especially in light of the Chinese government’s long-running campaign to vilify ASPI. Regardless of the government’s or Varghese’s intentions, Beijing might be forgiven for leaping to the conclusion that ASPI has had its wings clipped in the diplomatic and economic cause of stabilisation – a policy that some ASPI analysts (myself included) have legitimately contested.
The fact that the government coincidentally celebrated the full resumption of the live lobster trade with China the same week it released the Varghese review and its official response can only have strengthened such associations, and perhaps even buoyed the belief in Beijing that its economic coercion of Australia was effective, after all. The timing of this statement, at a minimum, showed poor judgment.
ASPI continues to abide by the guidance in its charter that its main purpose is to provide “alternative sources of input to Government decision-making processes on major strategic and defence policy issues”. Also, that it should help to “nourish public debate and understanding”.
ASPI’s research output on China is an important part of what we do, though only one part. As an institution, ASPI is proud of the breadth of its China expertise and language skills, which is unsurpassed among think tanks in Australia. ASPI has also provided an outlet for prominent Australia-based academics to publish policy-relevant research on China. ASPI has contributed significantly to Australia’s stock of China expertise. Just this week, the US designated companies including battery maker CATL as Chinese military companies after years of research from institutions like ASPI about links to the Chinese government and military, and about human rights abuses.
Ministers from around the world seek out ASPI analysts for briefings on our research. Datasets we have built over the past decade as a public good have been used by governments and organisations worldwide.
Blind spot
In his report, Varghese was indeed right to point out that Australia has failed to nurture academic expertise on China. But universities, for their own reasons, have long since abandoned the field in the areas that matter most for Australia’s strategic policy – the external behaviours of China’s Communist Party, through its state security apparatus and the People’s Liberation Army. ASPI will continue to do what it can to nurture the talent required to fill that national blind spot and to publish ground-breaking research in these areas. ASPI’s researchers would collegially welcome a greater investment of resources by other think tanks, universities and the government in this regard.
Curran and others are free to criticise ASPI and other research institutes but should focus on evidence, not innuendo. I, for one, would much prefer to be writing about Australia’s regional security environment, defence capability and military strategy. A glance at the international headlines is sufficient to understand there is an urgent and growing appetite for expert analysis in these areas, to inform the general public, and provide alternative policy inputs for the Australian government.
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Keir Starmer’s geopolitical in-tray will arguably be one of the most daunting in recent history. The Prime Minister faces a number of conflicts and hard choices – and a completely different geopolitical landscape to the last time Labour was in power.
Key among these challenges is China, which has risen in the past 14 years to become an economic and military superpower, and a disruptive antagonist to the liberal international order.
A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead
So far the new government’s position has been mixed. Work has begun on the promised China audit, which David Lammy described as ‘a full audit across Whitehall of our relationship with China so that we can set the direction and a course.’ A new review of the benefits of the Aukus security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has also been announced. But a decision on China’s potential inclusion in the top tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, requiring all individuals engaged with the Chinese government to formally declare their activities, has been delayed. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer last week held the first call by a British Prime Minister with President Xi since March 2022, and a Beijing trip for the Foreign Secretary is being discussed for the autumn.
A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead. If Starmer and his team are looking for a practical example of what does and doesn’t work with China, they should study the experience of their Australian counterparts, who also came to power after a long period in opposition.
In its first year, Australian Labor held firm to the strong security position established by the previous government, and was able to secure some important wins.
But subsequent waves of coercion and aggression from China tested the practicality of the government’s cooperation doctrine. For UK Labour, the lesson must be that its ‘compete, challenge and cooperate’ slogan should be understood as a hierarchy – in which competition comes first and cooperation is contingent on China’s actions.
An incoming government cannot predict every new China challenge that will arise, but it can learn some other lessons from Australia.
First, fatalism and declinism towards Beijing are self-fulfilling prophecies, and must be overcome. Australian Labour acted deftly in the Pacific. It brokered meaningful new agreements with Pacific countries to counteract China’s increasing security presence, with tangible results. Britain too has instruments to deploy to make a difference.
Second, good faith compromises will not be reciprocated by China, and will only encourage more malign behaviour. Australia’s initial reluctance to speak up against China’s bullying of the Philippines in the South China Sea didn’t stop the Chinese military threatening Australian forces while they were on lawful patrols, putting Australian lives at risk. China’s breaches of international rules and bilateral agreements must be called out every time, not only when it’s convenient.
Third, no official visits should be made to Beijing before the completion of the China audit. China’s leaders will inevitably seek leverage in areas where sovereign decisions should lie with Britain. Labour should prioritise visits to core Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies first.
Fourth, a UK-China engagement strategy must not involve policy compromises, nor set a precedent of cowed silence. Canberra abandoned two World Trade Organization cases against China for its unfair trade practices. Only then did Beijing begin to remove some of the tariffs it had imposed against Australia. This allowed Beijing to mask its economic coercion as an act of magnanimity. Realpolitik has its place, but China should not be rewarded for things it should never have done in the first place.
Fifth, bipartisanship is essential for long-term resilience towards China. Labour should focus on constructively building on the work done by Conservative governments, while filling in any gaps and unfinished business. The new Defence Secretary’s intention to share intelligence briefings with the opposition, and the appointment of former National Security Adviser Stephen Lovegrove to the Aukus review, are welcome signs.
Sixth, be frank and transparent with the British people about the reality of the threats from China and the resources required to address them. Western governments have, at times, refrained from adequately highlighting Beijing’s malign behaviour, such as its support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. This squanders the opportunity to build public support for necessarydefence spending.
Finally, Labour should be aware that we are not simply bystanders in the US-China story. China retains a significant interest in the UK, and Britain holds a considerable degree of agency to effectively project deterrence. This requires a coherent approach to both domestic and international policy, building on the UK’s strengths in innovation, technology, research, and policy.
In the coming weeks and months, there will be no shortage of voices in Westminster and Whitehall advocating for a fresh start with Beijing and a greater emphasis on dialogue. It is vital that the UK engages with China, but from a position of strength and confidence. The early decisions made by this government will be crucial if the UK wants to succeed against a global competitor more formidable than any we have faced in modern times.
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AUKUS is a multigenerational project, and it’s time to admit that the trilateral effort between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom to develop and share defense technology is still in its infancy. The enabling environment must be tended to before advanced capabilities can be developed and delivered. Progress has been made in this first phase, but concrete steps should be taken to realize the agreement’s potential concerning “AUKUS Pillar 2.”
The goal of AUKUS Pillar 2 is to accelerate the development and delivery of advanced military technology to the militaries of the member nations. To achieve this, it zeroes in on lowering barriers to information sharing and streamlining joint and cross-nation funding pathways while establishing reciprocal export controls. Underpinning these efforts are the continual efforts to strengthen and deepen the culture of trust among the participants. Significant work is underway already. Two new policy recommendations will add to this and help create the enabling environment required for AUKUS to truly thrive and for the successful creation of a more integrated defense industrial ecosystem.
First, independent AUKUS advisory boards should be created to improve institutional knowledge retention. Second, creating AUKUS business parks with shared labs and workspaces would foster closer collaboration between government and industry while lowering entry costs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who wouldn’t normally have access to classified networks and government experts. The name of the game is improving collaboration and efficiency to bolster innovation and deliver advanced capabilities.
Creating and Retaining Expertise
Given the sheer scope and complexity of AUKUS, there needs to be dedicated staff focused on implementation over the longer term. Currently, government officials within the partner nations are responsible for all aspects of AUKUS, from problem diagnosis and analysis to implementation. While these individuals are highly competent and driven to see AUKUS succeed, they often wear multiple hats and are tied to pushing official government positions. This does not enable the same freedom of inquiry and debate that an independent advisory board would provide. Additionally, ensconcing this staff exclusively within the government risks not only missing vital information from the industry but also exposing senior staff to electoral churn every few years. Even within the mid to lower levels of government, there is a culture of movement with talented individuals hopping between departments, often as a way to move up in the service. Losing expertise continuously will hamstring efforts at creating the enabling environment needed for AUKUS to succeed.
Thankfully, most of the work is done by career officials and attached military forces on orders or assignments for a few years, and they are, therefore, less exposed to political changes. This ensures some continuity and institutional knowledge retention within the organizations. However, this system can still be improved. Independent advisory boards would allow for institutional expertise to be cultivated and retained and policies pressure tested. Creating budgetary line items to fund these bodies would ensure proper staffing and resourcing of the organizations while avoiding the pitfalls of government agencies, such as bureaucratic bloat and changes due to political appointments or shifts. This should extend past the national level and take a two-tiered approach. A national body within each of the AUKUS partner nations should be complemented by a trilateral secretariat run by the heads of the national bodies.
At the national level, these advisory boards should be formed from a mix of trade and industry leaders, government officials, and military experts. The advisory board would then be ideally situated to capture lessons learned and feedback from all key stakeholders. These boards would examine the regulatory environment, proposed legislation, and obstacles to implementation within their respective country. They could give annual reports to the legislative and executive branches or the parliament. This ensures governmental oversight and would allow lawmakers to identify areas for improvement within their control.
The trilateral secretariat would be ideally placed to coordinate between the three advisory boards to identify obstacles and opportunities that cannot be solved within the national infrastructure of a single partner. Dual hatting the leaders of the national bodies as members of the secretariat would increase buy-in within the national advisory boards, improving their effectiveness and efficiency. This would also reward talented individuals within the organization and thus facilitate knowledge retention.
Aside from its engagement with the national advisory boards, the council should at least engage at the minister level across all three countries, providing briefings and soliciting inputs from the government. These engagements could take place every couple of years, limiting bureaucratic and political fatigue while maintaining momentum. Given the complexity and novelty of the endeavor, there are sure to be unforeseeable friction points and obstacles, so this coordination body would be pivotal in ensuring all partners operate from the same playbook as they are tackled.
Sharing Info by Sharing Spaces
As it stands, defense research and development is highly siloed and concentrated in the hands of a small number of “primes,” the biggest defense industrial companies, that have the institutional capacity and budget to manage the Byzantine legal requirements involved in defense manufacturing. The costs of building a classified workspace, known as a SCIF, can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars to the cost per square foot, drastically increasing the upfront costs of competing in the classified space. Additionally, each organization manages its SCIF and pays for its employee’s clearances, which adds to the overhead.
This process becomes even more complex when dealing with geographically separated offices, and those within the AUKUS countries are no exception. Given the price and complexity of establishing even a single SCIF, many SMEs are precluded from operating in the classified space, a requirement for higher-level defense development and contracting. This limits the inflow of potentially disruptive technology into the procurement process and complicates collaborative development.
The government can dramatically lower these barriers by funding the creation of co-workspaces with certified SCIFs. Developing business parks that facilitate businesses with complementary capabilities operating in a shared area is nothing new, but applying this model to AUKUS endeavors could supercharge research and development. These AUKUS parks should be based around both classified and unclassified workspaces that companies can share, thereby maximizing utility while minimizing costs. This allows for synergistic collaborations within the industry and access to government expertise.
Governments could staff these parks with export control experts, rotate through military members to test prototypes early in development, provide feedback, and evaluate prospective projects for contracts. Leveraging their combined experience, these routine interactions among the researchers, government, and defense would propel innovation. Ideally, engaging with end users early in the process would allow minimum viable capabilities, or “problem sets” that need solutions, to be shared with the industry and minimum viable products to be developed rapidly.
Having government officials on site to continuously evaluate these developments would allow for built-in maturity paths. Rapid, responsive iteration with avenues to official contracts would supercharge the defense industry. AUKUS parks would have the additional advantage of capitalizing on economies of scale with respect to security. By centralizing these facilities, security protocols could be standardized, easier to manage, and ensure better safeguarding of critical technology from potential sabotage or theft from adversaries. Providing these services would offset the steep upfront costs associated with classified work, opening the door to SMEs that are usually excluded from competing and collaborating in the space.
Governments don’t have to construct and manage these spaces themselves. However, they could leverage the private sector to manage the construction and daily operations of the SCIFs. Within the United States, some movement exists within the private sector to establish shared and mobile SCIFs. Still, these efforts could be amplified across all three AUKUS partners to significant effect. If a public-private partnership is pursued, there could be a planned transition to fully privatized funding and operations of the business parks, further limiting government overheads in the future while enabling collaboration. This would help derisk the investments made by private industry and facilitate rapid expansion into the field.
And Now, for Something Completely Different
With AUKUS still in its initial phase of enabling environment creation, there is no better time than now to lay a foundation to ensure the greatest returns on investment. The feedback mechanisms provided by advisory councils and secretariats will be immensely valuable in refining processes and policies. AUKUS parks will facilitate greater collaboration during development and push the focus toward solution-based, minimum-viable product thinking and rapid iteration. Radical changes and thinking are what will ensure success. All three partner nations must push to create new systems and structures to create a truly integrated enabling environment.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/11153507/20250327ran8535379_0020.jpg13332000nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-11-26 09:02:022025-04-11 15:35:48How To Ensure AUKUS’ Success
Donald Trump was already the frontrunner to win the presidential election, with the assassination attempt and his defiant response only increasing his chance of victory.
Global capitals, including Canberra, are abuzz with policymakers anticipating a predictably unpredictable second Trump term. But unpredictability doesn’t mean Trump is random or absent strategy.
Trump will be better prepared than his first time in office. Australia, therefore, has enough of a road map to use the next six months to plan for Trump 2.0, which will require Canberra to avoid any penchant for reactive thinking or falling into a flat-footed state of voyeurism.
Australia, and our partners in the Quad, fared well through the first Trump administration by anticipating those areas where we needed to defend ourselves and where we could co-operate.
Trump considers the actions of allies more important than words. That can help shape four main lessons to navigate potential sources of friction and opportunity over the next four years. First, Australia should showcase its national security credentials. Strategic rivalry with China, especially on technology, will be front and centre of a second Trump term. Restricting Beijing’s access to advanced technologies has been a bright light of American bipartisanship, with President Joe Biden expanding Trump-era policies.
Given Trump says he wants “total independence from China” and to “stop China owning America”, we can expect further expansion of the technology-driven economic security agenda.
Many of these measures are in Australia’s national interest, but Canberra will need to encourage protection of our respective and collective sovereignty, not mere protectionism. When Australia became the first country to exclude “high-risk” vendors – namely Huawei – from its 5G network in 2018 it was done to protect critical infrastructure. The decision gained respect within the Trump White House and across Washington, given the call was made without knowing the US decision.
Australia’s 5G decision helped rally a global coalition to mitigate Chinese technology risks and address the shifting technological balance away from the US and its allies. Meanwhile, Australia pursued broader reforms in areas such as foreign investment screening and countering foreign interference, in part to protect cutting-edge technologies.
Australia’s clear-eyed approach to China provides a strong track record for engaging Trump and his team. In doing so, it will be important to show how Australia’s recent diplomatic stabilisation with China has not changed Australia’s willingness to “disagree where we must”.
Second, Australia should share the burden of deterring aggression. Trump wants peace through strength. This includes countering adversaries as well as preventing allies from free-riding on US security guarantees.
Australia has shown a commitment to our own security and the alliance that should help avoid the “tough love” directed at the likes of NATO members and South Korea in Trump’s first term. Defence spending is set to increase to around 2.3 per cent of GDP within the decade. The 2024 National Defence Strategy sets out major strategy, force structure and capability reforms. Australia and the US have expanded collaboration on Australian soil. This includes rotations of US and British submarines through HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027, enhancing nearer-term collective deterrence in the region.
Australia plans to pump around $6bn into US and British defence industrial capacity in the coming decade, a long-term play to support Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, under AUKUS Pillar I. Canberra should promote this investment to Trump every chance it gets. But history is short-lived and Trump’s White House will back in allies and partners who show an ongoing commitment to their own security.
Third, Australia should push AUKUS as a good deal.
Trump is transactional, a deal-maker. Even if he supports some or all AUKUS elements, the partnership will require long-term political, institutional and industrial effort across the US, UK and Australia to succeed.
For Trump and his closest advisers, Australia will need to sell the partnership’s advantages in making Australia a more capable and lethal ally, bolstering regional defence supply chains, and contributing to US-led deterrence of conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Australia will need to highlight AUKUS’s merits as a boon for US companies, rather than being a drain on their technology, industry capacity and workforce.
Trump has a history of tearing up or renegotiating agreements he judges as taking America for a ride. Australia should ensure Trump doesn’t see AUKUS as an American handout but a transaction that boosts US capability to muscle up to China.
Finally, Australia should be bold. Early in a second Trump term, the value of our partnerships should be reinforced, starting with Quad meetings that emphasise the grouping was revived in 2017 under his presidency.
If Trump is re-elected, the Albanese government and its representatives in Washington – starting with ambassador Kevin Rudd – will have a job ahead of them. But, unlike 2016, there are no excuses for being underprepared.
Image: Jackson A. Lanier 2019, Wikimedia Commons
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/11154401/2560px-President_Donald_Trump_-_Fayetteville_NC_Rally.jpg17072560nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-08-08 09:11:342025-04-11 15:45:22Canberra has no excuses for failing to prepare for Trump 2.0
This week’s AUSMIN dialogue between Australia and the United States has delivered some important policy agreements that will strengthen the vital US-Australia alliance in the face of a strategic outlook that Australia’s National Defence Strategy, released in April, characterises as “the most challenging environment since the Second World War”.
Of greatest concern in confronting the risks ahead must be that China will seek to impose unification on Taiwan, against the wishes of the Taiwanese people, through use of force, if necessary, with a crisis potentially coming as early as this decade.
China also continues aggressive provocations, notably against the Philippines, in an effort to dominate and control the South China Sea.
In the longer term, Chinese success in these territorial disputes would see it then well placed to control maritime trade routes that are vital to Australia’s security and economic prosperity in the 2030s and beyond.
In the face of this growing challenge, Australia and the US must continue to strengthen their alliance and reinforce credible deterrence against the risk that Beijing will seek to use military force to achieve its geostrategic ambitions in the coming decade and beyond.
The latest round of AUSMIN talks saw very practical and sensible steps being taken towards this goal.
Most importantly, AUSMIN saw agreement between Canberra and Washington that Australia’s defence facilities in the north will be enhanced to enable greater access and sustained use by US military forces during a crisis. This makes eminent sense.
Australia’s key role in any future war with China would be to act as a secure rear area for US and allied forces to operate from and to sustain and support allied military operations in what is likely to be protracted major power war lasting months or longer.
The agreement out of AUSMIN to enhance airbases at Darwin and Tindal in the Northern Territory, and to consider upgrades to the “bare bases” at Curtin, Learmonth and Scherger, as well as at the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, will give US and ADF forces greater flexibility to conduct forward operations in a crisis.
Important agreements were made on combined logistics, sustainment and maintenance that builds on a demonstration of pre-positioned US Army equipment at Albury-Wodonga and will consider requirements for establishing a logistics support area in Queensland.
It is sensible for Australia and the United States to prioritise the steps needed to ensure that the US, and other allied partners in the Indo-Pacific, can operate on a sustained basis from Australia in a future war in the Indo-Pacific.
AUSMIN 2024 thus has produced some practical and sensible outcomes which will not only contribute to strengthened deterrence to ideally prevent such a war from happening in the first place, but also ensure that Australia and the United States and other partners are best placed to respond if a crisis were to emerge.
The second key outcome from AUSMIN is a focus on technology co-operation that can lead to key new military capabilities. There has been important progress on new mechanisms which can circumvent onerous defence trade regulations that would otherwise stifle the prospect of progress under AUKUS Pillar 2.
These include greater integration between the US and Australia on defence innovation, and enhanced co-operation within the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise to enable co-development of long-range missile capabilities to facilitate ‘impactful projection’. Of key importance is an agreement on securing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on building the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), and continued work on developing hypersonic weapons, with both supporting the urgent requirement for greater long-range strike capabilities for the ADF and also for the US military.
AUSMIN has produced an opportunity for greater co-operation to counter threats in new domains such as space and cyberspace. For example, AUSMIN has reinforced the importance of norms of responsible behaviour in space, and opposed Russia’s development of a nuclear weapons-based anti-satellite capability. Given the importance of the space domain for Australia’s security and prosperity, it’s vital that states stand together to oppose and deter any move by Moscow to deploy such a destabilising weapon, that would effectively destroy the 1967 Outer Space Treaty even if the weapon itself was never used, and in doing so, ensure that space was a battleground in future wars.
The government’s approach to AUSMIN is a welcome one, which recognises the importance of the US-Australia alliance, and which is based on undertaking practical steps that strengthen Australia’s ability to support the US in deterring a major power crisis. Key defence capabilities such as the nuclear powered but conventionally armed submarines, won’t appear until the mid-2030s, so its important for government to work with the US and other allies to strengthen defence capabilities now. In this uncertain environment, dialogues such as AUSMIN that generate practical steps towards enhanced defence co-operation are more important than ever.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/11154635/d75b0f1e83326c904eca975293a06acc.jpg5761024nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-08-08 09:04:272025-04-11 15:46:57The big wins for a stronger Australia out of AUSMIN talks
Australia needs to spend more on defence – and it needs to do so immediately. The strategic imperative has been firmly established in the government’s own major defence documents.
The Albanese government and the Coalition opposition agree that we are in the gravest geopolitical period in generations and it is only going to intensify.
But the rhetorical urgency is not being matched by action in the form of defence investment.
The May budget is the latest demonstration of this mismatch, lacking spending for swift increases in capabilities that the Australian Defence Force would need if our region were to deteriorate quickly.
In particular, this year’s budget priorities are not directed towards strengthening the ADF’s ability to fight in the next decade.
This is not doom-mongering; the government has acknowledged that the warning time before any conflict, which had long been set at 10 years, has shrunk to effectively zero.
This year’s budget priorities are not directed towards strengthening the Australian Defence Force’s ability to fight in the next decade.
We have war in Ukraine and the Middle East, aggression and increasingly dangerous and unprofessional behaviour from China causing instability and confrontation in the South China Sea and across the Taiwan Strait, erosion of the rule of law and revisionist agendas from authoritarians.
Instability is heightened by foreign interference, economic coercion and artificial intelligence-enabled dangers such as cyberattacks and disinformation.
If war were to break out at any time in the next 10 years, our military would essentially fight with the force it has today. Based on current resourcing, nothing significant will change over the decade.
Most of the major new capabilities in the government’s defence investment blueprint are two decades away from being fully fielded. That blueprint does contain some shorter-term enhancements, but these will not be fielded until the 2030s.
The welcome $5.7 billion in new defence spending over the four-year forward estimates period is devoted to just three priorities: the AUKUS submarines; the next fleet of surface warships; and investment in long-range strike, targeting and autonomous systems.
But two-thirds of this funding doesn’t arrive until 2027-28.
The relatively impressive longer-term plan leaves us vulnerable in the immediate period ahead. More money immediately is not a silver bullet, and ambition must be balanced with how much Defence can actually spend each year.
But the nation’s security requires a two-pronged strategy of enhancing our existing force to meet threats within the decade while investing in long-term capabilities.
No credible pathway forward
Other countries are furiously pursuing new capabilities that can be put into action quickly – such as creating masses of small drones and prototyping and developing new technologies.
We talk about technology and asymmetric advantage – playing to your strengths and using them to overcome your adversaries’ strengths – yet lack a credible pathway to bring them into operation to bolster the force we have today.
Over the longer term, the picture starts gradually to improve.
The $50 billion in additional spending over the next decade is an important commitment, even if far away. The plan for a complete recapitalisation of the surface combatant fleet will eventually give us the biggest and most capable navy Australia has had since World War II.
But, so far, we are failing to grasp the opportunity to link our traditional large platforms such as submarines and warships to more modern developments in warfare: drones and various small uncrewed and smart capabilities.
AI, robotics, electronic warfare and space capabilities remain aspirational, without any pathway for inclusion and integration into a truly focused force capable of meaningful deterrence and war fighting.
That is why it is so important to realise AUKUS Pillar II, which is dealing with these capabilities.
It’s easy to criticise; harder to do. All governments are grappling with tight budgets amid competing demands and the unremitting expectations of voters and taxpayers.
As a nation, we need to accept the need for higher defence spending. Hoping conflict won’t come is not a viable strategy. If we are prepared for war, we have a better chance of deterring and hence averting it.
Europe is living that lesson now, having put all hope in the judgment that global trade and economic entanglement would bring security. Now it is clear that only military investment can deter war or best prepare nations for it.
The government has a vital responsibility to speak plainly to the nation about the geopolitical risks and the possibility of conflict.
We need to grasp the challenge that is in front of us today, not in three or five years’ time. Otherwise, we risk delivering on General Douglas MacArthur’s famous two-word warning. “The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words, ‘Too late’.
“Too late in comprehending the deadly enemy. Too late in realising the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”
Why take the risk of only acting after a crisis and saying better late than never? The world in turmoil demands we act in real time to deter crises and be best prepared for them.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/11154850/20250326ran8552143_0123.jpg14482000nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-06-03 09:31:132025-04-11 15:50:47Defence rhetoric is mismatched with lack of action on investment
Hybrid threats, enabled by digital technologies and fuelled by geostrategic competition, are reshaping international security and global norms. Most often, states (commonly working through non-state proxies) are exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities and engaging in economic coercion, information warfare and even physical sabotage. They do so in order to advance their strategic ambitions and undermine the interests of others, while avoiding the threshold for conflict.
ASPI has been collecting open-source data to examine the nature and frequency of hybrid threats targeting Australia. We’ve built a database that spans nine years, from March 2016 to February 2025, and in that time we have tracked 74 activities. Understanding the scale that confronts us is the first step to strengthening public awareness and building an effective national response.
We collected data from sources including government statements, media reports, cyber firm alerts and think tank reports. We also cross-checked reports, making sure the counted activities were reported across multiple credible sources. We assessed whether these past hybrid activities were state-linked and sorted the activities into six threat categories: economic coercion; foreign interference; narrative and information campaigns; cyberattack; military and paramilitary coercion; and diplomatic coercion.
Due to their nature, covert or unreported hybrid activities were not captured.
Frequency of hybrid threat activities in Australia (by threat category). Source: ASPI.
ASPI data shows that during the nine-year period, the most frequent activities were cyber in nature, including attacks and intrusions, accounting for around 35 percent of total activities. Most reported cyberattacks were perpetrated by China-linked hackers, including Naikon, APT40, APT27 and Aoqin Dragon. Their targets included the Australian government and Australian companies and critical infrastructure providers. Iranian state-sponsored cyber actors—including Fox Kitten and APT42—attempted to infiltrate industrial control systems in Australia as early as 2015 but were only detected a year later.
Narrative and information campaigns, which aim to shape public discussion of contentious political issues, accounted for around 20 percent of recorded threats. These included global efforts, such as the Chinese Communist Party’s information campaigns linked to the Spamouflage network. Spamouflage employs networks of inauthentic accounts across multiple social media platforms and is still active. It attempts to sway and distract public opinion and targets organisations and individuals, often with threatening harassment campaigns. Previously, these activities targeted an Australian rare earth mining company to impede market access and disrupt supply chains; coordinated harassment campaigns against journalists, researchers and activists of Asian descent; and sought to influence perceptions of partners and allies.
Foreign interference activities make up around 25 percent of the dataset. Such threats aim to interfere and sow discord in society. For example, during the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, China-linked actors reportedly amplified ideologically motivated narratives, including those linked to the far right and to white supremacism. Additionally, Iran has monitored its diaspora in Australia, targeting individuals through intimidation, surveillance and personal data tampering.
Economic coercion accounted for around 20 percent of identified activity. Examples in the period included China’s tariffs on Australian barley and wine and its ban on the import of Australian lobsters. At times, such restrictions were accompanied by non-tariff trade barriers, such as consumer-led boycotts and disruptions to import clearance procedures.
Tariffs are an established tool of trade policy used to protect domestic industries, address trade imbalances or pursue national economic goals. But economic coercion involves actions that go beyond standard trade policy, including: engaging in targeted boycotts; blocking access to essential resources; and imposing sanctions with the explicit goal of forcing political concessions.
Military and paramilitary coercion, which accounted for around 15 percent of recorded hybrid activities, have seen a noticeable uptick in the past year. In February 2025, China conducted a series of provocative military actions, including a close encounter between a Chinese J-16 fighter and an Australian P-8 Poseidon maritime patroller over the South China Sea; the deployment of three Chinese naval vessels into Australia’s exclusive economic zone; and Chinese live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea. Although overt military coercion remains relatively rare compared to other forms of intimidation, these hybrid threat activities increase the potential for serious escalation.
Actors linked to hybrid threat incidents targeting Australia. Source: ASPI.
China remains, by far, the most active state engaged in hybrid threats targeting Australia, appearing in about 70 percent of reported activity. Russia (11 percent) and Iran (10 percent) also appear regularly in the dataset.
We also found non-state actors engaging in cyberattacks and promoting ideologically motivated violent extremism. Their presence adds to an already complex threat environment that continues to change and evolve each year.
Our research also tracked the Australian government’s publicly available responses across four categories: diplomatic; legislative and regulatory; capability enhancement; and public awareness. Not all government responses may appear in the public domain.
Diplomatic responses have included formal statements, joint declarations and collective advisories (an increasingly common practice among government cybersecurity agencies). On the legislative and regulatory front, Australia has, for example, introduced tighter foreign investment rules, established a foreign influence transparency scheme (although it has been criticised since its creation) and issued sanctions to target specific malicious actors including Iran and Russia (although sanctions are yet to be used against China, the most frequent offender).
Attribution by ministers has so far lacked teeth and uniformity. The 2018 Espionage and Foreign Interference Act provides an attribution framework, but the only open attribution so far has been directed towards Iran, a pariah state in which Australia has little economic interest (and therefore not much to lose).
Capability enhancements have included infrastructure upgrades—such as installation of advanced threat detection systems, the enhancement of encryption technologies for government and financial networks, and the strengthening of national cyber capabilities. For example, the REDSPICE program aims to significantly expand Australia’s cyber intelligence, including offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. Additionally, Australia has managed to diversify its trade partnerships to lessen the risk of economic dependence.
Meanwhile, public awareness has involved strategic communications through public statements, including ministerial comments, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s annual threat assessments, and alerts by the Australian Signals Directorate. The federal government also shares information with states and territories.
The data shows that military/paramilitary coercion has received the highest response rates—with diplomatic responses to 80 percent of military/paramilitary coercion activities, capability enhancement responses to 70 percent, and public awareness responses to all cases of military/paramilitary coercion. This high prioritisation is understandable, given that such operations can result in significant loss of life and infrastructure. The strong response signals a commitment to pre-empt and mitigate the most dangerous threats.
However, other activities also carry significant long-term risks. A balanced response strategy is essential to ensure that, while military threats are robustly addressed, other evolving hybrid threats are not neglected.
Australia’s response to hybrid threat incidents. Source: ASPI.
An effective response requires Australia to prioritise protection, resilience and deterrence. We must protect ourselves by having enough awareness and capacity to implement preventative measures. We need resilience so we can bounce back quicker. But we must also deter by imposing costs on hybrid threat actors and the states that sponsor or enable them.
This includes developing and then being prepared to use two capability offerings: intelligence and policy. By design, intelligence-led approaches are effective against immediate danger but do not—by design—necessarily offer a strategic, enduring and public effect. Policy-led approaches provide more visible deterrence and seek to address strategic and systemic risks.
Australia has so far been strong on the first, for example through the prosecution of businessman Di Sanh ‘Sunny’ Duong for seeking to influence a minister. But the evolving nature of hybrid threats requires the political will and ministerial direction to do more on the second—enabling a truly national approach to national security.
As foreign actors develop more sophisticated and far-reaching strategies, Australia’s response cannot rely on coordination alone. While partnerships—with states and territories, industry and international allies—are essential, the effectiveness of countermeasures ultimately hinges on a political willingness to use the tools we already have and to build the adaptive tools we don’t. Inaction by Australia risks normalising hybrid activities.
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Australia’s cost-of-living election has a khaki tinge and an uneasy international tone.
You know defence is having an impact when a political party promises to raise taxes to buy more military kit, and makes defence its largest election promise.
The domestic dimensions of the campaign have been decisively disturbed by forces beyond the borders.
The broad defence consensus between Labor and the Coalition has always had tacit and explicit dimensions. But much that was once implicit and inferred is now declared. Taboos fade. Sacred cows topple.
The international mantra of the 2022 election was ‘China has changed’. This time it’s ‘the United States has changed’. China and the US are destabilising forces in different ways, but are equally disturbing.
Each pushes Australia to think about defence more and spend more. Thus, the Coalition has promised to spend an extra $21 billion over five years, taking defence’s share of GDP from just over 2 percent to 2.5 percent within five years.
Labor’s plan is to lift defence spending to 2.3 percent by 2033–4, making the point that this is more than 0.2 percent higher than the spending trajectory it inherited. So, in opposition, the Coalition has become more ambitious for military might than it was in office. How times change. The 2.5 percent trek is the new policy norm. With the target agreed, only the timeline is in question.
The Coalition has reversed the standard election question ‘where’s the money coming from?’ Instead, it has announced the cash and said it’ll decide the details in office. The money answer is that Coalition will raise taxes by repealing Labor’s $17 billion tax cuts.
Labor has the military shopping list, the Coalition has the budget. Although coming from those two different directions, the campaign shows a consensus for more defence money, even as politics-as-usual argy-bargy continues over which side has the better record and the smartest plan.
The shadow defence minister, Andrew Hastie, said he’s ‘agnostic’ about what to buy with all the extra cash: ‘We’ve got to work out where the most pressing problems lie and then resource them.’
Reflecting the view that political parties are supposed to detail what they’re offering, Defence Minister Richard Marles argued that the Coalition policy has ‘no strategic direction, no strategic purpose’, offering only ‘vague numbers, aspirations, targets, but not one iota of substance’.
A generous view would be that the holes in the Coalition policy don’t show a lack of preparation, but an understanding of the rolling revolution in military affairs. Perhaps Hastie’s hesitation shows he wants to ask big questions about our future defence force. If so, it’s a brave move, because elections demand colour and movement, not a plea for time to think.
To caricature these complex debates about future defence kit, reduce them to a simple either/or equation: missiles and drones versus ships and submarines. Now there’s a proposition to light up The Strategist forever: sure, we want all of them, but even big budgets must make choices about rolling demands.
The other revolution in this campaign is Hurricane Donald. The decade-old Liberal-Labor consensus on the China problem now has a new twin, the understanding that Donald Trump makes the US a less reliable friend, testing the three core elements of Australia’s international policy: the US alliance, the region and multilateralism.
Explaining the Coalition’s defence spending plan, Andrew Hastie referenced the America First shift, stating: ‘We have a strong relationship with them but can’t take anything for granted.’
Journalist and academic Mark Kenny called the Coalition’s $21 billion defence boost the most consequential policy pivot in the election, based on a ‘terrified’ diagnosis that Trump’s US has ‘shifted from a global force of stability to a net creator of instability’.
The twin fear of China and the US is on show in Labor’s announcement of a critical minerals strategic reserve. Australia will stockpile rare earths to protect against ransom demands from China, as the dominant supplier of the minerals. The reserve will be offered to ‘key international partners’, so it becomes an important card in dealing with the transactional Trump.
The US has featured as a strategic factor in other Australian election campaigns: Harold Holt’s ‘all the way with LBJ’ campaign in 1966; Gough Whitlam in 1972 affirming the value of the alliance while proclaiming an Asia-focussed foreign policy; John Howard standing with the US after the 9/11 attacks; and Kevin Rudd in 2007 holding firm to the alliance while promising to depart the ‘bad’ war in Iraq while committing to the ‘good’ war in Afghanistan.
In those previous elections, alliance management stressed the enduring value of the alliance. In this campaign, Australia contemplates the US president as an unreliable bully, and the defence consensus adjusts accordingly.
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On 25 April 2021, I published an internal all-staff Anzac Day message. I did so as the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for Australia’s civil defence, and its resilience in wartime. The message was titled ‘The Longing for Peace, the Curse of War’.
I warned that while we rightly lament the folly of war, the greater folly would be to seek to wish it away, while others are still prepared to wage it in order to achieve their ends. I wrote of hearing the ‘drums of war’. I observed that free nations have to work for peace, while preparing for war. These observations attracted some interest, locally and internationally, including in The Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and the Global Times. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called me ‘a real troublemaker’. I must have hit a nerve.
In the four years that have since passed, war has broken out in Europe, Israel has been attacked by Iran and its proxies, commercial shipping has come under attack in the Red Sea, China has begun to conduct rehearsals for a military attack on Taiwan, and North Korea has intensified its threats against South Korea. Despite all of this, in Australia, as we rightly commemorate on Anzac Day the tragedy of past war, we remain indifferent to the risk of future war in our ‘sheltered land’.
This complacency is not unique to Australia. Preparing for war requires deliberate and collective discourse, and concerted national action. Free nations are becoming less able to execute this foundational function of state. Our societies are turning increasingly inwards, and are becoming atomised. Social media, fractured political communication, and the breakdown of traditional party systems are generating and accelerating these trends. Free peoples are increasingly focused on personal fulfilment or personal anxiety, or both. We pay less and less heed to the dangers of the real world, in favour of the pleasures and conveniences of the curated world. Unless an invader looms, there is an active aversion to thinking and speaking about war.
The governments of free nations are increasingly seen not as economic stewards and national protectors, but as service delivery organisations, whose task is to provide social benefits and supplement household budgets. Some might cynically see advantage in this state of affairs. It is easier to provide benefits than to demand sacrifices.
In Australia, in the absence of resources such as an inter-generational report on defence and national security (that would look out, say, 20 to 40 years) and independent bodies such as a defence equivalent of the Productivity Commission, there are no processes or structures to enable citizens to become properly informed. Political leaders have, with some notable exceptions, limited expertise or experience in defence or national security affairs, while military and civilian leaders in the field are invisible, unlike the governor of the Reserve Bank, whose pronouncements on the economy are carefully assessed and interpreted.
For all of that, there is no justification for engaging in a moral panic over whether Australians today still possess the ‘Anzac character’, where in the face of danger one simply gets on with doing with what needs to be done. If Australians had to fight for our liberty, sovereignty, and way of life, we would once again turn up. That includes the Zoomers of Gen Z. However, there’s the rub. Turning up would not be in issue. The problem would be the lack of preparation. If Australians turned up to fight untrained and unprepared, and lacking adequate arms, many would perish that needn’t, and the day might yet be lost, but not for lack of valour.
In these ever-darkening days, we need a modern-day John Curtin. A socialist, he wanted to lead on social reform and improve the lives of the working class and the poor. However, history set him a different task. As prime minister, he had to meet the challenge of mobilising a nation and fighting a war. He knew that government would have to lead and set the direction, and address the particulars, while the people would have to serve and make sacrifices. He also knew that in order to rally the nation, he had to speak of war in sober, precise and often technical terms, and at length.
In 1941, Curtin was intellectually and morally equipped to undertake this task because he had not waited for the storm to break. In the 1930s, as Labor leader, he had spoken honestly, grimly and presciently about what needed to be done. He had mastered the detail, and thought about the contingencies.
Ninety years on, the drums are beating once again. Lest we forget.
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In the sprint to deepen Australia-India defence cooperation, navy links have shot ahead of ties between the two countries’ air forces and armies. That’s largely a good thing: maritime security is at the heart of both countries’ interests. But too much imbalance will limit the relationship’s full potential.
Canberra and New Delhi made much progress in their defence relationship over the past 15 years. Much was made possible by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and successive Australian prime ministers. Their top-down direction helped spur bureaucracies on either side to transcend long-held habits and assumptions that precluded them from seeing each other’s full value.
However, the sheer pace of progress also meant parts of the relationship sprinted ahead in complexity and maturity, leaving others behind. This likely reflected pragmatism: defence organisations on both sides implemented ideas that were achievable and whose logic was well understood across governments. Maritime security cooperation, requiring a strong naval focus, was one of them.
It’s now time for both sides to take stock. Defence cooperation shouldn’t happen in siloes. The Indian army is more than just a counterpart to the Australian army. It is also the largest and most influential of India’s three services. Canberra is more likely to achieve its defence ambitions—even those relating to maritime security—if its objectives are well-socialised in the Indian army. Likewise, the Indian air force plays a greater maritime security role than is sometimes acknowledged in Australia.
More importantly, militaries perform best when their individual services work with and through each other to produce joint effects. The Australian Defence Force’s strong culture of joint operations—rather than functioning in single service siloes—is partly why it produces strong outcomes relative to its modest size. The value of adopting joint approaches to military affairs is partly why India is implementing historic defence reforms, including proposed tri-service commands.
Australia and India should build on the progress they have made so far and foster a balanced, cohesive approach to cooperate across all services and domains. They can start with four steps, as we identified in recent analysis for the Australia India Institute.
First, they should establish a regular bilateral air force exercise. Both air forces have already participated in each other’s multilateral exercises, which is a pragmatic start given the busyness of both air forces. But they can do more. Air force exercises don’t always require in-demand assets, such as fighter jets, to be fruitful.
For example, the two countries have strong interests in airfield defence. It is an important capability for Australia, which is improving its ability to operate from dispersed airfields, and for India, which must be capable of defending facilities far from New Delhi, such as those on Andaman and Nicobar Island.
The two air forces can also share useful lessons on how to integrate ground and air assets in support of military operations. This is occurring right now on India’s disputed land borders, and Australia accrued deep expertise on this in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Second, India could better balance its defence representation at its High Commission in Canberra by augmenting its defence adviser—a position exclusively filled by Indian Navy officers—with deputies from the air force and army. This is important because military officers, regardless of their inter-service experience, will tend to recognise opportunities for collaboration with their own service quicker than they will for others.
As an interim step, Indian air force and army officers who come to study at the Australian staff college could stay on after graduation as short term secondees at the Indian High Commission. They could drive new initiatives, armed with their experience of Australia’s defence system.
Third, Australia and India would benefit from broadening their view of existing military exercises from service-focused to domain-focused activities. For example, army Exercise Austrahind would be recast as the two countries’ premier combined land-domain exercise, not just an army activity. This would encourage planners to incorporate navy and air force elements, as well as space and cyber dimensions, as appropriate. Ultimately, land, air and maritime domain exercises could culminate in a regular tri-service exercise.
And fourth, both sides should create a forum to coherently determine what joint capabilities they seek to build across all services and domains. This might require the establishment of joint staff talks (on top of existing talks between their respective army, navy and air force headquarters). The forum could alternatively be included as a discrete pillar under the two countries’ regular defence policy talks, which typically address higher level policy matters.
If developments in the United States underscore anything, it’s that Australia must deepen its defence relationships in the region to help secure it. India is key to this effort. The two countries should be working to transform their discrete collection of valuable defence activities into a truly integrated defence partnership.
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Australia’s bid to co-host the 31st international climate negotiations (COP31) with Pacific island countries in late 2026 is directly in our national interest. But success will require consultation with the Pacific.
For that reason, no final decision should yet be made on which Australian city hosts COP31—particularly because this week’s announced preference to host it in Adelaide appears to have taken the Pacific climate community by surprise. Adelaide isn’t on the Pacific.
By making this announcement, Australia sent the wrong message to its potential Pacific co-hosts, and if collaboration goes ahead, there will be many more choices and investments to make.
To be clear, Australia should maintain its bid for COP31. Australia’s leaders need to grasp that hosting COP31 is a strategic win for Australia, but how it does so matters. It is an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships with the Pacific community at a crucial time in the region, given key partners such as US are withdrawing and competitors such as China are advancing.
Going forward, Australia should define COP31’s success in terms of strengthening its relationships with Pacific island countries. Failure, not just for COP31 but for Australia’s interests in the region, will come from decisions that work against those relationships
Viewing COP31 from a domestic policy perspective is a mistake, yet that is how Australia’s leaders appear to be approaching it. It is instead a much wider strategic investment aimed to firm up Australia’s Pacific partnerships on climate and security.
Australia’s narrow approach includes framing the rationale of hosting COP31 around the cost of the event. It’s right for federal and state governments to be prudent about practical aspects when it comes to choosing a host location for such a large event, but thinking of it solely in those terms ignores the important strategic benefit of hosting in the first place. Preparing for an event of this scale comes at a cost, but in purely narrow local economic terms, hosting COP26 in Glasgow netted more than $1 billion in benefits for Britain.
It may well be that the South Australian government was more interested in hosting than the Queensland or New South Wales governments—both of which make more sense logistically for Pacific participation. South Australia has advanced renewable energy deployment at a great scale. Hosting COP31 would allow it to showcase its efforts and domestic industry. But with co-hosting being a strategic priority, these decisions should be made in consultation with Pacific governments.
Again, potential economic benefits should not be the main driver of decisions around hosting COP31. Our aim should be to jointly advance Australian and Pacific interests in the region.
Australia and its Pacific partners should prioritise the development and advancement of a COP31 agenda defined by key regional concerns. On climate, we are all digging ourselves further into a hole. Australia should work with Pacific partners to reframe climate discussions around addressing those fundamental risks.
Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are crucial for the survival of many low-lying islands and regions, including in Australia. Equally, we are behind on adapting to and preparing for climate effects, limiting our ability to mitigate. Global climate finance is seeing even more regression: the gap between what countries need and what will be delivered is widening, just as global investments in development and resilience are dropping.
COP31 is an opportunity for Australia to shift regional views of its approach to climate and security. It’s a chance to demonstrate to Pacific leaders that Australia legitimately wants change and is willing to make sure the Pacific voice is heard. To do this well, it needs the support of Pacific countries who have proven time and time again that their voices are worth hearing.
It is still a long road to hosting COP31. Turkey’s competing bid remains active, and the next decision on Australia’s bid will take place this coming June. But if Australia does not secure Pacific support ahead of that vote, it won’t just be harder to land the bid; it will also be less worthwhile, and the damage to our Pacific relations will hurt our regional interests.
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Following Canadian authorities’ discovery of a Chinese information operation targeting their country’s election, Australians, too, should beware such risks.
In fact, there are already signs that Beijing is interfering in campaigning for the Australian election to be held on 3 May.
In Canada, China evidently prefers the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to the Conservative opposition. In Australia, we are seeing messaging against Opposition Leader Peter Dutton—suggesting that Beijing wants the Labor government of Anthony Albanese to be re-elected.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Electoral Commission are cooperating to guard against China’s now well established habit of trying to shape foreignelections.
For Australian voters, especially those consuming media in languages other than English, the information environment is crowded and contested. Overtly, there are foreign official state channels (communications by foreign governments) and state-controlled outlets (those funded and editorially controlled by foreign states).
Covertly, there are attributed and non-attributed channels. Attributed channels operate under foreign state oversight without publicly disclosing affiliation. Non-attributed channels aren’t directly linked to foreign states, but are nonetheless aligned. The interwoven and reinforcing nature of these channels is part of the cause for concern, particularly as they operate outside regulatory or journalistic oversight.
Politicians usually refrain from commenting on foreign elections, though Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister this week raised eyebrows by saying he personally hoped Labor would win Australia’s. China’s interference is different to such one-off instances: it’s persistent, widespread and surreptitious.
Indicative sample of state-affiliated entities, it is not an exhaustive list. Source: 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats Report, March 2025.
In early April, Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Taskforce revealed that a Chinese-language influence campaign backed by Beijing was targeting Chinese-speaking Canadians on the popular multi-function app WeChat. The messaging promoted Carney as a strong statesman, subtly framing him as a leader more capable of managing relations with the United States.
The taskforce found that the campaign originated from Youli-Youmian, a popular WeChat news account, which Canadian intelligence linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The authorities had also picked up on the account in June 2023 and January 2025, when it targeted other members of parliament. This time the authorities found ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’—the use of a network of accounts to amplify a narrative disguised as organic public opinion. This activity peaked in March.
This tactic mirrors a developing pattern of Chinese electoral influence, where efforts are not always confrontational but rather cloaked in affinity and praise. Unlike the older image of disinformation campaigns as combative, these efforts are subtler. They don’t necessarily involve falsehoods and are not sought by the candidates themselves. This makes detection, let alone public consensus on countermeasures, more difficult.
In contrast, China-supported messages targeting Australia’s federal election have taken an overtly critical form. They often show up on state-aligned media, such as the Global Times, and on Chinese social media platforms, such as Rednote and WeChat.
For example, in response to Dutton’s concern a Chinese research vessel might be mapping Australia’s undersea cables, the Global Times accused Dutton of ‘beating the drums of war’ and using China as a political wedge in the election campaign. The editorial, which was also reposted in China Military news, took aim at what it framed as ‘paranoia’ and ‘double standards,’ pointing out that Australia’s own naval activities in contested waters, such as the Taiwan Strait, were not similarly scrutinised. Australian mediaoutletspicked up this Global Times article and reported it widely, feeding directly into Australia’s public election discourse.
Screenshot showing Global Times article republished by China Military.
Screencap of 7 News coverage of Chinese state media articles.
Popular Chinese-language WeChat accounts have also amplified such narratives. One outlet, Australian Financial News (AFN) Daily, is a self-described financial media platform. It recently published a series of highly circulated articles, collectively read more than 100,000 times, portraying Dutton as ‘a reckless, Trump-aligned figure unfit for leadership’.
Headlines included ‘Chinese people absolutely loathe him! If Dutton takes power, Australia will be in chaos!’ ‘华人极度讨厌！达顿上台后，澳洲大变!’ and ‘Completely doomed! Dutton’s rise will crash Australia’s housing market!’ ‘彻底完蛋！达顿上台，澳洲房价必将暴跌!’ Despite AFN’s nominal tie with Australia, its official account IP address traces back to an organisation called Changsha Aoxuan Culture Communication. The IP territory is registered to Hunan, China.
Example of headlines targeting Peter Dutton.
Official account information for AFNdaily in Chinese (left) and English translation (right).
China’s approach differs with local conditions. In Canada, efforts involve community-level micro-targeting through Chinese-language media platforms. In Australia, efforts have been at a macro level, with state media weighing in on elite political debates. But in both cases, the aim is the same: to seed confusion and divide public sentiment, ultimately reshaping policy trajectories in Beijing’s favour.
In the lead-up to the federal election, the presence of such narratives in Australia’s information environment may distort the truth at a sensitive democratic moment. Democratic resilience depends on transparency of the media and information environment. It’s increasingly requiring us to engage with new forms of information manipulation.
Ultimately, Chinese electoral influence reflects Beijing’s ambitions and tests the strength and self-awareness of democracies. By treating this challenge as either overblown paranoia or merely a problem for intelligence agencies, we risk missing the point. Our democracy and sovereignty require our elections to be based on Australian perceptions of what our politicians are telling us—whether truth, untruth or half-truth—not on what foreign adversaries such as China are secretly feeding us.
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The time is ripe for Australia and South Korea to strengthen cooperation in space, through embarking on joint projects and initiatives that offer practical outcomes for both countries. This is the finding of a new ASPI report by an ASPI visiting fellow from South Korea’s Defence Acquisition Projects Agency (DAPA), Sangsoon Lee, on the opportunities ahead for Australia and South Korea in terms of space cooperation.
Lee’s paper makes clear that there are opportunities to boost space cooperation and development to mutually benefit both states in areas such as national security, economic growth and resource management.
The paper argues that the first area of collaboration should be in joint research and development into small satellite technologies. These are satellites under 100kg, which, if developed collaboratively, could build domestic manufacturing skills and infrastructure in this important technology area. The paper notes that constellations of small satellites are more effective in strengthening resilience in the face of growing counterspace threats. Lee provides the example of South Korea requiring small satellites to enhance surveillance and reconnaissance of North Korea, and he notes that Australia also has a requirement for Earth observation satellites to support civil and defence needs.
A constellation of small satellites, jointly developed by Australia and South Korea, could thus benefit both countries. Although the current Australian government cancelled the National Space Mission for Earth Observation (NSMEO) project in June 2023, the requirement that it was to meet—for space-based Earth observation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance— remains in place. By jointly developing such satellites, the paper argues, the Australia and South Korea could gain benefits not only from enhancing sovereign space capability but also through developing rapid technological innovation cycles.
Building on from collaboration on small satellites, the paper then suggests collaboration in the critical area of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). This could be achieved by establishing suitable ground stations in Australia to support and enhance South Korea’s planned Korean Position System (KPS) and the Korean Augmentation Satellite System (KASS). Australia is optimally located for ground stations, as Japan has recognised in an agreement for this country to host the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. Furthermore, by hosting these ground facilities, such collaboration would complement Australia’s existing Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN), which is also used by New Zealand. The overall outcome would be to enhance the accuracy, diversity and resilience of PNT services open to both states.
By far the most significant aspect of South Korean and Australian space cooperation could be space launch. Through streamlining procedures and regulatory arrangements such as launch permits export licenses and payment of export-import taxies, cross-border movement and launch of commercial rockets could become more efficient. To this end, the paper recommends that South Korea and Australia should negotiate an agreement to build and operate a permanent space launch site that takes full advantage of Australia’s proximity to the equator and distance from potential threats.
Rockets launched close to the equator for easterly orbits gain the starting advantage of the Earth’s rotational velocity, so the launch cost per kilogram is lower than for launches from higher latitudes. For those orbits and also for orbits that cross the poles, launches from Australia do not endanger people by flying over heavily populated territory. South Korea lacks proximity to the equator, and its rockets must dodge the territory of neighbours.
Lee’s paper notes that some cooperation is already underway in regard to launch. South Korean defence company Hanwha Group is exploring use of Australian launch services through a partnership with Gilmour Space, which intends to launch its Eris 1 rocket from Bowen, Queensland. Korean firm Innospace has signed an agreement with Equatorial Launch Australia for launch services from that company’s proposed Cape York space port.
In addition to streamlining regulatory arrangements for easier collaboration, Lee’s paper argues that a dedicated South Korean launch site, established by Seoul, could then benefit local economies.
Finally, the paper argues that there should be increased collaboration in space situational awareness and space traffic management as part of broader cooperation in space security. This makes inherent sense given the reality that space, as an operational domain in its own right, is highly contested and likely to become a warfighting domain in a crisis. Boosting cooperation on space situational awareness is a key step towards collaborating on deterrence through resilience, which other aspects of cooperation, such as small satellite development and responsive launch also contribute to.
Lee’s paper concludes with a recommendation for a space dialogue that brings together government, the private sector and civil society. This can help build collaboration and see a regular sharing of perspectives on both practical collaboration and policy development. Outcomes could include a government-to-government agreement on space launch cooperation and there could be a technology working group to support cooperation in areas such as small satellite development and PNT.
That would provide a foundation for more ambitious cooperation, with Lee’s paper considering ‘moonshot’ projects such as a lunar rover to be jointly developed and made by South Korea and Australia. Others could be a collaborative mission to a resource-rich asteroid and or research on technologies such as space manufacturing, resource utilisation and space logistics.
Australia and South Korea are both new space powers, so it makes sense for them to work together to make faster progress in using the space domain to their mutual benefit. Sangsoon Lee’s analysis is excellent and thought provoking. It represents a good contribution to any future discussion between South Korea and Australia on strengthening space cooperation.
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The international challenge confronting Australia today is unparalleled, at least since the 1940s. It requires what the late Brendan Sargeant, a defence analyst, called strategic imagination. We need more than shrewd economic manoeuvring and a tough assessment of defence capacity. Despite immediate election concerns, this is a time to question long-established assumptions about how Australia is positioned in the world. The Trump chaos, for all the damage it is bringing, could help Australia develop a fresh international identity.
Eight decades ago, between the fall of Singapore and the 1951 ANZUS Treaty, Australians could no longer put trust in the British Empire. Also, despite America’s large contribution to the Pacific War, there was no certainty of a United States security guarantee for the future. Analysts on both sides of politics increasingly began to think about a regional identity for a more independent—potentially more lonely—Australia.
The American alliance then allowed Australians to postpone such an accommodation with Asia. Now, in the words of Heather Smith, speaking at a 1 April security forum convened by Malcolm Turnbull, the post-Cold War order has collapsed ‘along with the norms and values that have underpinned the US-Australia relationship’.
How to imagine today a more autonomous Australia? Escalating British, European and Canadian engagement has obvious advantages—but this can reinforce Australia’s otherness in our region. Gareth Evans is right to insist we have ‘more Asia’—but what does that really entail? What is the roadmap for a deeper Asian engagement? Japan will continue to be important—but an explicit tightening of security relations with Japan delivers to China an unnecessarily provocative message. Australia’s Indian engagement will grow, but may present a similar problem.
The obvious strategy for achieving ‘more Asia’ is to capitalise on the relationship in which both sides of Australian politics have invested most heavily: Southeast Asia.
This is not to say that individual Southeast Asian countries or their regional organisation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), offer Australia the type of economic or military advantage once gained from the United States, although ASEAN as a grouping is our second-largest trading partner and has a GDP larger than India.
Nor can we be confident we share values with Southeast Asians—or that we will not sometimes have tension with one ASEAN country or another. There has also been frustration with ASEAN institutions when it comes to getting things done.
Our ASEAN priority, however, should not just focus on practical endeavours. In identifying ASEAN as the framework for achieving more Asia, what matters is that their institutions are inclusive—embracing all major players in the region. In an increasingly fluid environment, they offer an established arena for engaging not just with Southeast Asian countries but also with Japan, India and South Korea—as well as China. In these institutions—sometimes on the sidelines of meetings—Australia can build bilateral or mini-lateral endeavours without provoking one major power or another.
There are no serious downsides to this ASEAN emphasis. Washington, Beijing, Tokyo and others recognise Australia’s long commitment to this part of Asia. Our early support for Southeast Asian nationalist movements, our status as ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner, our founding membership of ASEAN-led institutions (the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, the ambitious Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement, our vigorous practical cooperation across the region and our government’s declarations supporting ‘ASEAN centrality’—this record also gives Australia a claim to ASEAN’s continuing attention.
What we must avoid is claiming a leadership role. Australia’s long-term closeness to the United States sometimes enhanced our regional authority—and added to the prestige of our liberal democratic values. We need not back away from such values—and can expect they will still attract respect in parts of Asia. There is also reason for pride in the part Australia has played—certainly from the period of the founding of the United Nations—in developing an international rules system. The new era, however, will demand patient negotiation with non-liberal perspectives.
Although the liberal rules-based order faces resistance in Asia, there is nevertheless a strong commitment to rules and principles that facilitate international interaction. In a genuinely multipolar world, ASEAN’s consensus-seeking institutions provide an ideal forum for the type of give-and-take deliberation—negotiating across different normative frameworks—that will be a feature of rules development.
Inter-state relations more generally will require openness to ‘Asian values’. For instance, we tend to see Southeast Asians and others as hedging when they are unwilling to align with one power or another—and ignore the claim to a ‘principled pragmatism’ (as Malaysia often states). When Southeast Asian countries refuse to join an alliance, or to promote one ideological position rather than another—or when they accept the need to operate in a China-centred regional hierarchy—they are influenced by a heritage of foreign relations principles often different from Western traditions.
Working alongside our Asian neighbours—putting our point of view, of course, and acting where possible as a bridge to the United States and European states—Australians may also learn from Asian experience in handling major power ambitions.
Trump’s chaotic tariff policies provide an immediate opportunity. The whole region faces a common threat. With ASEAN leaders meeting to discuss a coordinated response, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong speaks of strengthening ‘our network of partnership with like-minded countries’. ASEAN will reach out to China, Japan and South Korea—already indicating some willingness to set aside bitter rivalries between them. As a middle power with strong experience in trade negotiations (including through the Cairns Group)—and seven decades of intimate familiarity with America—Australia has much to contribute to Wong’s networking.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called Canada ‘the most European of non-European countries’. Using the ASEAN framework to engage in tariffs, rules and other deliberations, could help build Australia’s post-America identity as the most Asian of non-Asian countries.
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When the US Navy’s Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1908, it was an unmistakeable signal of imperial might, a flexing of America’s newfound naval muscle. More than a century later, the Chinese navy has been executing its own form of gunboat diplomacy by circumnavigating Australia—but without a welcome. The similarities and differences between these episodes tell us a lot about the new age of empires in which Australia now finds itself.
Both were shows of force. The former expressed President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy of speaking softly while carrying a big stick—the original version of peace through strength—while the latter aimed at disturbing the peace.
The Great White Fleet’s visit was a spectacle. Australians cheered as 16 gleaming battleships, painted white and with shiny trim, paraded into Sydney Harbour. A flight of steps, the Fleet Steps, was specially built in the Royal Botanic gardens to receive the American visitors.
The visit was a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in making the invitation and by US President Teddy Roosevelt in accepting it. Both Australia, a young federation deeply tied to the British Empire, and the United States, a rising but not yet super power, saw value in signalling US Pacific presence to Japan.
For Roosevelt, the fleet also presented his big-stick foreign policy to European nations: the US had arrived as a global power. Just as important, he saw the fleet’s world tour as helpful in explaining to the American people why they needed to spend money on defence, including ships, as their country opened up to global opportunities but also threats. Deterrence, preparation, social licence all strengthened national resilience.
Deakin saw the chance and didn’t just invite the fleet to Australia but engineered the visit. He wanted the visit to kindle the notion in Australia that it should have its own fleet. Irregular Royal Navy deployments to the Far East could not guarantee Australian security.
Also like Roosevelt, Deakin knew that a passive approach to defence policy would not keep the nation safe in an era of rising military powers, with a strategic shift to proactive engagement needed urgently, not only once a crisis had begun. He was especially concerned about Japan’s growing sea power but, again like Roosevelt, he also had an eye on Russian and (later) German sea power.
While Deakin wanted a national navy and was an empire man, he thought it prudent to start building a partnership with the US. Not yet replacing Britain as global leader, it had burst on to the strategic scene only a decade earlier. It had annexed the Philippines in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and, in the same year, the Hawaiian Islands. These made the US a Pacific power.
Both men in the early 1900s understood the connection between European and Pacific security and both set out to protect their national interests by working together against European and Asian powers seeking to create instability and spheres of influence.
As Russell Parkins well describes in Great White Fleet to Coral Sea, Deakin noted in one of his written invitations to the US that ‘No other Federation in the world possesses so many features of likeness to that of the United States as does the Commonwealth of Australia’. Roosevelt later acknowledged he had not originally planned for the fleet to visit Australia but that Deakin’s invitation had confirmed his ‘hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency’.
This was naval might wielded with soft edges: immense firepower floating on the harbour, and friendly chats over tea ashore.
Today the strategic environment again involves European and Asian powers—Russia and China—seeking spheres of influence, only the dynamics of the naval visit couldn’t be more different. No time for afternoon tea, just the reality that Australia faces a security threat from Beijing that demands national preparedness and international friendships and alliances.
When Australia and China encounter each other at sea, the interactions are adversarial, accompanied by dangerous Chinese manoeuvres, high-powered lasers shining into cockpits, chaff dropped into Australian aircraft engines and sonar injuring Australian navy divers. These are not friendly port calls but dangerous military activities and displays of coercive statecraft.
The Great White Fleet sought goodwill and alliances. China’s naval behaviour is an assertion of dominance. If the Australian public were in any doubt about how Beijing intended to interact with the region, China’s behaviour in this most recent episode should be instructive. The lack of warning given to Australia was a warning itself of what is to come. Beijing wants us to heed it and submit.
We must not submit. We must learn from the incident and change Beijing’s behaviour.
When a Chinese naval flotilla last made a port call to Sydney, in 2019, it was met with some public unease, if not alarm. Australia had, after all, approved the visit. But through a combination of Canberra’s ignorance of history and Beijing’s aim of rewriting it, the visit was approved without recognising that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Not long after the negotiated port visit, China suspended ministerial-level engagement as part of coercion to bring Australia into line. Despite some warming in relations in recent years, Beijing chose not to give Australia advance notice of live-fire exercises. The same Beijing that only a few years ago gave notice of a visit now has the confidence to fire at will.
Australia must stop being surprised by every new Chinese military or hybrid warfare development. Beijing’s confidence is growing in all domains, including cyberspace. With intrusions known as Volt Typhoon, China’s intelligence agencies were outed in 2023 as having pre-positioned malware for disrupting and destroying our critical infrastructure. This should also be seen as a rehearsal for later cyber moves.
And now, for the first time in the modern era, we have seen a potential adversary rehearse its wartime kinetic strategy against Australia. Yes, the Japanese did surveillance and intelligence gathering before World War II, but this circumnavigation with live-fire exercises takes us well beyond intelligence collection. Beijing has been undertaking ‘intelligence preparation of the battlespace’ for some time with ships it frequently sends to Australian waters to observe our exercises or to conduct oceanographic studies (which improve submarine operations).
Just as the Great White Fleet helped to inspire the development of an Australian navy, the Chinese flotilla should warn us that our own fleet needs to be larger and ready to assure our security. The rhyme of history is that distant fleets operating in Australian waters matter and should spur our own thinking (and act as catalysts for action) regarding Australian sovereign capabilities.
After all, these episodes underscore an enduring truth about Australia’s geopolitical reality: we are a regional power situated between global hegemons and their very large navies. One could even say that we are girt by sea power. But this is not new territory; it is the blessing and burden of geography and history.
Whether it was navigating the transitions from British to American primacy in the Pacific or more recently adjusting to China’s challenge to the US-led order, Australia has always had to manage its strategic relationships with agility and nuance.
The key difference, of course, is that Australia welcomed the Great White Fleet in 1908 with open arms. Today, Australia finds itself on the receiving end of an unwelcome presence by ships that appear uninterested in friendly port visits. This demands a response that is not reckless but is firm enough to avoid being feckless.
Although the position is difficult, the Australian government should not think it must walk a tightrope in dealing with China. The strength of response to Beijing’s aggression should depend on the minimum needed to deter more aggression, not by a perceived maximum that will leave trade and diplomatic relations unharmed. European countries have made such mistakes in handling Russia—declining to hold it to account in the hope that Putin would keep selling gas to them and delay military action.
There’s no use in pretending or hoping there is nothing to see here except one-off instances of unpleasant behaviour. China’s aggression follows its concept of dealing with the rest of the world, and it won’t stop. Quiet diplomacy won’t deter Beijing from more dangerous behaviour but will embolden it to repeat its actions. Each instance will show Australia is incapable of doing anything about it until Beijing—mistakenly or intentionally—goes so far as to make conflict inevitable. Australia’s time to stand up cannot wait until a live fire drill becomes just live fire.
As Teddy Roosevelt put it, big-stick foreign policy involves ‘the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis’. Navigating the best response to aggression therefore requires clarity about what is at stake.
What Australia does in the South China Sea—where it operates in accordance with international law alongside allies—is not equivalent to China’s recent foray into the Tasman Sea. Beijing’s actions represent yet another demonstration of reckless behaviour, following its dangerous harassment of Australian forces. By making various attacks—with lasers, chaff or sonar—China shows an undeniable pattern of attempted intimidation. When Australia sails into international waters, we do so to maintain the rules-based order and promote regional stability, yet when China does the same it is often to undermine the rules and destabilise the region.
The intimidation is in fact regional; it’s not just about Australia. Just as the Great White Fleet demonstrated America’s arrival as a Pacific power, China’s naval activities signal Beijing’s intent to reshape the region’s strategic balance. Australia, as it has done before, must adapt. It must spend more on its own defence capabilities, deepen relationships with like-minded democracies and maintain the diplomatic dexterity that has long supported its survival in a world of rising and falling empires.
Most importantly, the government must bring the Australian public along for the voyage. The threat from China should surprise Australians no more than the threat from Putin should surprise Europeans.
Knowledge is power and the Australian public can be empowered, and therefore prepared, not to be shell-shocked by China’s aggression. It should instead be reassured that the Australian government has the situation in hand and that defence investment is a downpayment on our future security. It should be reassured that the spending makes conflict less likely.
Australia is not a major power, but we have the world’s 13th largest economy and are not without influence. We should stop seeing ourselves as a middling middle power. We definitely shouldn’t act as a small power. We should be confident as a regional power. Our voice, actions and choices matter at home and abroad. It’s why Washington wants us as an active partner and Beijing wants us to be a silent one. Australia’s global advocacy for a rules-based system, and its public calling out of Beijing’s wrongdoing have been highly valued in Europe, Asia and North America.
Smaller regional countries rely on us to stand up to Beijing where they feel unable, while Europe increasingly knows the fight against Russia is also a fight against Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partner, China. And an Australia that stands up for itself and our friends will again demonstrate the value of partnerships to our ally the US.
Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet epitomised show of force as a means to deter conflict as well as preparation should deterrence fail. (Its cruise was also an exercise in long-range deployment.) The time for deterrence and preparation is with us once again. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said this month that China was ready for war, ‘be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.’
We need to show, along with our ally the US and other partners, that war is not what we want but is something we are prepared for. If we cannot show that we have a capable stick, and the intention to use it if required, we will be defeated with or without a fight.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: ‘Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil.’
The past tells us that navigating strategic competition requires a blend of strategic foresight and political agility. The echoes of 1908 should serve as both warning and guidepost for the uncertain waters ahead.
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With the execution of global reciprocal tariffs, US President Donald Trump has issued his ‘declaration of economic independence for America’. The immediate direct effect on the Australian economy will likely be small, with more risk from the confluence of tariffs on its key trading partners. But the global effects of the United States’ tariff regime will extend beyond the economic effects, with implications for America’s reputation as a trusted and reliable partner. All the while, China stands ready to fill the gap.
With Trump’s latest executive order, from midnight on 3 April the US will impose far-reaching tariffs on other countries to compensate for the alleged combined impact of foreign countries’ tariffs and non-tariff barriers on US exports. Emphasising the ‘fairness’ of the approach in a White House Rose Garden address on 2 April, Trump said the reciprocal tariffs of up to 50 percent equated to just half of the trade measures levied by those countries against America. These were complemented by a baseline tariff of 10 percent on goods from every country—except for Canada and Mexico, which are already subject to tariffs of 25 percent. The 10 percent would not be added to goods already subject to tariffs, such as semiconductors, steel and aluminium.
The 10 percent levied against Australian goods exports to the US will likely have a minimal impact on Australia’s economy, despite being estimated to constitute a direct cost the Australian industry of US$1.6 billion. Speaking to the media after the tariff announcement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the tariffs were unwarranted and ‘not the act of a friend’. But he also sought to reassure, noting the exports constituted less than 5 percent (US$16.6 billion) of Australian goods exports. By comparison, more than 30 percent of Australia’s exports are sold to China.
Australia provides duty free access to US imports under the 2005 Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. However, the Trump administration’s concern with Australia is likely with what it considers non-tariff barriers as outlined in the findings of the USTR report on Foreign Trade Barriers (PDF), of 1 April. The report details several longstanding US concerns with Australian biosecurity regulations on agricultural products (certain meat and fruit imports), issues with Australia’s policies on pharmaceuticals (which mandate a price for drugs under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) and payment for news content on social media. While it doesn’t mention Australia’s recent social media protections for children, this has also been raised by the US tech industry as a non-trade barrier.
The 10 percent tariff scenario will impose short-term direct costs on Australian industry. Most affected will likely be Australian beef and other meat products, exports of which to the US were worth US$4 billion in 2024 and accounted for more than a quarter of US imports of foreign beef. The US has been Australia’s largest market for beef in recent years. Despite having a large beef industry, the US relies on certain imported beef products. This could give a degree of leverage as Canberra progresses long running negotiations with Washington on the issue. Albanese has ruled out any compromise on other US concerns, in particular social media protections and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Australia’s trade-exposed economy will be more vulnerable to second and third order effects as some of Australia’s key trade partners respond to these new tariffs. While tit-for-tat tariffs may depress the Australian economy, greater impact will likely come from regional partners adapting trade strategies and adjusting supply-chains to minimise their exposure, and from businesses delaying investment decisions due to uncertainty around US and other governments’ policies.
Four of Australia’s top five trading partners, accounting for 44.3 percent of Australia’s two-way trade in 2023–24, are subject to higher US tariffs: China (a 34 percent tariff), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (26 percent) and India (27 percent). Developing or emerging economies, such as Vietnam (46 percent) and Indonesia (32 percent), will likely find it harder to absorb the effect of tariffs, due to their reliance on export-driven growth and deep integration in global manufacturing supply chains. The resumption on 2 April of exclusion of goods from China and Hong Kong from duty-free de minimis treatment will be an additional hit to the Chinese economy.
The Indo-Pacific is home to most of the world’s people. It accounts for 60 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of global economic growth. Since former president Barack Obama’s much vaunted Pivot to Asia from 2011, the US has sought to focus more strongly on the region for strategic and economic reasons. Despite some efforts such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, US protectionism has hampered meaningful progress on US trade with the region. By comparison, China is likely the top trading partner for most countries in the world, particularly in Asia. As China actively competes with the US for influence with these countries, steep US tariffs on their exports may cause them to orientate away from the US market, deepening this trend. Tariffs will undermine US efforts to establish itself as a preferred partner in the Indo-Pacific region while providing China with ammunition to support its claims of American self-interest and unreliability.
This article has been corrected in several places. It now says the direct cost to Australian industry from Trump’s tariff on Australia is estimated at US$1.6 billion, that it will likely have minimal economic impact, that the administration’s Australian concern is likely with what it sees as non-tariff barriers, that Australian pharmaceutical price regulation applies not only to imported pharmaceuticals, and that the tariff on India is 27 percent.
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