Towards a New Australian Security
George Brenan: We acknowledgeand celebrate the first Australians on whose properties we converge and fee our respects to the elders ofthe Ngunnawal people past and current. At our final episode for 2014 we farewelled Professor Michael L’Estrange so it’s fitting tonight that we start this year with the inauguralpresentation from our new principal, Professor Rory Medcalf and, in a manner that is, that’s why we startedthis year a little later than usual. We wanted to start witha presentation from Rory so we thought we’d sort of give hima few weeks to settle into the job before we asked him tostand up in front of a crowd. I’d like to start by acknowledginga number of patrons here tonight. There actually is the Ambassador forArgentina and dean of the diplomatic core, the is chairman of the EU delegation to Australia, Ambassador for Morocco, together with diplomaticrepresentatives from New Zealand, PNG, ASIO, Singapore, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Pakistan, and Brunei.Senior ANU collaborators Robin Stanton, Clive Williams, Hugh White, and Bill Tow. Commonwealth partnersincluding Dr. Margot McCarthy, Mike Pezzullo from our advisory board, senior staff from our participating agencies including Richard Moore, Robyn Coslovich, Rod Brazier, Martin Hoffman, and Angus Campbell. And a number of NSC friends including Allan Gyngell, Angus Houston, Chris Barrie, Bob Cotton, some onetime staff, Mike Norris, David Connery, and some fellows, John McFarlane, and also another friend, David Irving. Before we begin, in the event of emergency, you need to head out the multipleglass doorways in the foyer and head up to the main roadand across into the car park.If you need the bathrooms, there aretoilets in the aisles at either mission, either end of the corridor. If you could also make sure thatany mobile or referred inventions that you’ve got now are eithersilent or they’re turn out. Our proceedings tonight willtake the usual format that we use. So there will be a presentationfollowed by questions and rebuttals. I’ll then invite Dr.McCarthy fromDepartment of “Ministers ” and Cabinet to obligate a few brief remarks, and then we’ll move to a receptionin the Cadbury Spring Bank Room. That’s the same venue as we used forProfessor L’Estrange’s farewell last year, for those of you who were here and if not there will be NSC staffto show you the practice. I’m not going to introduce RoryMedcalf tonight in the normal way of talking through a tedious profile. I think you all know he assembled us from the Lowy Institute and a profession in government including foreign affairs andthe office of National Analysis. I don’t really proposeto say more than that. In a lane, you know, it’s the CVis what comes you employment and now he’s here.So it’s what he does nowthat he’s here that matters and you’ve all come to hearwhat he’s got to say and what he proposes to do. So I’m going to invite Rory to takethe rostrum and offset his remarks.[ clapping] Rory Medcalf: Thank you very muchfor being now ladies and gentlemen. It’s really quite humbling to havesuch a distinguished gathering and I’m delighted that I was ableto leave it to George Brenan, our Director of Strategy andDevelopment to do the honors of rostering so many ofthe dignitaries, senior officials, the esteemed colleagues that are in the chamber today, saves my wheeze for the business of the hour.The Australia National University, as we all know but sometimes forget, I think, was established with reallyan unashamed society structure ethos. The destination was a world class universityin the Australian national interest with, following the completion of the Second World War, a weather eye on our national security. And precisely over five years ago, the National Security Collegewas established in, I consider, quite a same tone. So I look forward tobuilding on its record, building on the founding achievementsof my predecessor, Michael L’Estrange, Professor Michael L’Estrange, AO, and carrying forward, the work over the years ahead.My commitment to thisimportant national organization is the fact that it will foster effective, inventive, and all-inclusive approaches to national defence. In my view this meanshelping our friends in the office, the Australian national protection parish, to remain informed, to remain connected, and to remain responsivein a nature of change. Part of this involves challengingthe security community and the wider Australian community to think and to think anew.And hence the entitle of today’s speech. Why thought anew aboutnational certificates? Some would debate Australiahas hardly been more secure in a macrocosm of transnational questions, cross frontier difficulties, we have the singular geopoliticaladvantage of an island continent. Our region is relatively affluent, relatively peace. We have vast national resources monies and a developed economy thathas undergone decades of growing, even now. We have high per capita incomes, high-pitched per capita wealthacross the society and to all appearances, a resilient multicultural society, and above all most of ushave known, ceaseless peace; free from conflicts eternalor internal, freedom from fear. Perhaps it is that we 21 st centuryAustralians are so mesmerized with the centenary of ANZACjust now accurately because so few of us havedirect knowledge of war. The Second World War, which scarredso many Australian families, was a lifetime ago. For many of today’s Australians, the only prolonged ordeal with any kind of armedconflict on our soil, the warfare with, the massacres of, the first Australians is evenharder to imagine still.The conflicts of recent yearshave really been involving only a very small minorityof the Australian parish and has affected only a very smallproportion of our population and their families. So looking to the present, looking to the future, many of us seem to presume thatwhatever menaces there may be, whatever challengesthere may lie onward, they will not challengethe fundamentally democratic cozy sort of Australia, the Australia that we are all familiar with. Now this is presumablybecause either the hazards are not our question, they’re far away, or we’re sufficientlyprepared to meet them. And certainly as we seeassembled here today, and I would reiterate this level, Australia has a highly professional national insurance community. Relevant agencies and departments , not to mention the Australian Defence Force, the Federal Police, are substantially resourced. Most of them, much more sothan 10 or 15 year ago. They captivate good people; talented, trained, dedicated. This parish is betterjoined up or connected and thus better managed than ever, with collaborative leadership navigating operationalcooperation in real term, informed by intelligence servicesat home with the need to share.Recent improvements tothe counterterrorism machinery, I imagine, attest to this. Federal and government experienceis being shared. Exercises are being learned. And nor does Australia’s national securityeffort hanker for high level political scrutiny. I need scarcely mention that. Whatever our own capabilities, we also benefit from a militaryand intelligence alliance with what remains the world’smost formidable ability, the United Nation of America. So given all of the above, why bother thinking aboutAustralian national certificate? Why should we try tothink about it anew? Well the short answer is thattoday’s and tomorrow’s Australia faces an era of change, of skepticism, and fragility. Our horizon of probability is expanding. Critically, the divergence that mattersmost to our security is no longer the so called’ breath ocean’ divergence, that has long stipulated whathas been seen to be a moat between Australia and the world. Instead the gap betweenour national interests and our ability to protect those interests.That spread is large and it’s growing. And in a life of rising complexity, of interconnectedness, and above all, of misgiving, the need for us to be preparedto become difficult decisions in order to protect those interestswill similarly retain originating. Now what are those interests? For a person of 23 million people, Australia’s interests areunusually extended. Exactly consider the scale of notonly Australia’s gigantic field, but our broader tract andmaritime prerogative, which mixed, impels up somethinglike 5% of the earth’s surface. Australia benefits from an exceptionaldegree of connectedness with the world.This brings with it a relianceon rules, on fiat, on the global commons, on springs oftrade, commerce, knowledge, and people. These are national strengthsby all means. But they bring with themvulnerabilities and interests that need to be protected. So a contemporary definitionof Australia’s interests must go far beyond the obvious priorities of protecting the physicalsecurity of citizens, monarch region, and natural resources. This description of interests must alsoinclude maintaining national exemption, including independence of war, societal cohesion, and ademocratic political system. Australia will need to maintainthe conditions for boom as well including have secured energyresources, to energy supplies, and international markets. Overarching all ofthese responsibilities, Australia needs to work to protect and advancement stable and peacefulregional and international order.Now of course, hypothetically, a future Australian governmentcould try to diminish the space that it chooses to definenational security interests. It would be a perfectlyvalid political select to utter. For example, we are also able try to wind back ouraccumulated smell of responsibility for parts of our wider region such as governance, fiat, evendisaster relief in the South Pacific. That sounds like a prettyharsh thing to say today, but I’m talking about politicsin the long term. Indian Ocean search and rescue, Southern Ocean fisheries safety, activities in support of our verylarge Antarctic Territorial claim. Now doing these things, that is withdrawing fromthese responsibilities would acquire Australia a very differentand very insular kind of country and in the long run, a less secure kind of country. So in my opinion, we need to guardagainst and depres strongly, that kind of future politics. But we can’t consider itto be impossible.So instead, in my opinion, our interests are likely to remainextensive and quite rightly so.
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But to protect and advance those interests, we need to place a premium onpartnership with other countries. Those partnerships in turnare a reason for Australia to uphold a reputation as a stick, ability, reliable collaborator in the international organisation. What might’ve been called honourin the days of the preceding years. We need to be seen as a country thatis serious about protecting its interests in the contexts of rules based orderand respect for the law. Such international credibility as a partner has a very hard edge to it. It’s both an asset and a national interest in itself. Now in these substantial nationalinterests that I have registered are considered alongside the patterns of changeand risk in today’s world, and I won’t go intogreat detail about those, but think of the projected globaltrends that you read about in reports such as those produced bythe US National Intelligence Council, but the publicly available global trendsreport one thing becomes very, very clear and that is that the burden ofsecurity risk on Australia’s interests is large and accumulating.So we need to refresh our thinkingabout how worldwide trend will intersect and interactwith our own interests. Those trends include, very briefly, the implications of unruly technologies, of social media, of demographic switchings, resurgent nationalism, particularly in our region, but is not simply in our region, reserve danger, environmental degradation, and climate change. More immediately, however, among this widening array of perils, the most obvious, in my opinion, are indicated below three: first the risk related to coercion, jeopardies of miscalculation, and conflict escalation in our immediateregion and our wider area in the IndoPacific, or IndoPacific Asia.This refers, frankly, to howChina is using its proliferating strength and how other nations respond to that. Strategic competition and conflictin Asia challenges directly our security and financial interests. We can’t disguise from that. Secondly, the hues ofaggression in other parts of the world we’re witnes , notably, by Russia. Despite the repugnance ofthe shot down of MH17, Australia cannot afforded to concentrateits limited certificate capabilities for long on the Ukraine situation. However, at least on the above-mentioned issues, we are one country that can afford absolute frankness in our finesse and that can be wider thanthe international efforts to manage that situation. And thirdly, violent bigotry, Jihadist terrorism globally and now at home, and I will return to this in somedetail last-minute in my remarks.To go back to the firstly level, Australia’s sphere is becoming morecentral to global supremacy offsets and strategic frictions. Powerful financial communications aremaking this the era of the IndoPacific and I think that’s becominga widely accepted notion is not simply in this country, but now across Asia. These blueprints include, East Asian abilities’ penetrating and growingdependence on the Indian Ocean for its sea lanes as well ason Australian resources for trade, for proliferation, for exertion. This is really about civilization. It’s about keeping the populationsof these rising dominances slaked, their rising middle class, and their societies stable.It’s about produce sure that the AsianCentury remains on a positive course. But these economic and social patternsare having tactical ramifications. Witness, for example, the veryfast advent in recent years, of China, as an Indian Ocean naval power with submarines in Sri Lanka and warships activity closeto Australia’s Christmas Island. As the successful and simultaneousvisits last year by Indian “Ministers ” Narendra Modiand Chinese President Xi Jinping spectacularly confirmedAustralia’s field has attained us and there’s no turning back. Here with the IndoPacific, we at last have a definition ofour predominantly Asian region that automatically includes Australia. So that kind of expirations at leastone domestic debate. The downside is that this draws theregion’s frictions our problems more. This is an inevitability.It’s not a select. Regional power offsets arechanging with China’s rise and its rapid growth year on yearin military spending. Such alteration could encouragerisk making by some regimes, whether by China, as itasserts its new strength, or by others as they seekto set borderlines early in this new’ Great Game ‘. Yet being closer to the world’seconomic and strategic centre of gravity induces it impossible for us to treat theseunsettling regional defence dynamics including the Southand the East China Seas, as if they were purelysomebody else’s business.Now in all of this we are far from helpless. The sentiment that our strategic force inits broad sense in insufficient for us to have any impact on regional seek, I think that idea is outdated and overdid. Australia can contribute toregional order and security including as part of the emergingbalance of credibility or’ balance of uncertainty’ that will be critical to deterrents andstability as Chinese ability thrives. We need to think harder abouthow best to make this contribution. This includes how toencourage other superpowers, other regional superpowers through our own precedent or through constituting inventive and functioning’ midriff player’ factions, if I can call them that, with Asian certificate partnerssuch as Japan and India. Our central IndoPacific geography, our advanced maritime abilities, our interoperabilitywith the United Nation, and our regional surveillance advantagesall provided us with an advantage now. It’s false in my opinion, to suggest that the alliancewith the United State comes at the expenseof Asian partnerships or of pragmatic multilateral finesse. These approaches can be mutuallyreinforcing if we handle them smartly.The presence of US Marines in Darwin isalready proving of some benefit to Australia in involve third countries in training as confirmed, for example by a threenation rehearsal involving China last year, and I believe there will be more exerciseswith third countries in the years ahead. There’s also remit for us to workmuch more with China as a defence provider in the region as the search for the MH 370 aircraft demonstrates.The need to find ways of working withChina as a security collaborator will intensify as Beijing expands the pursuitor gives the pursuit of its IndoPacific economicand strategic interests through the so called maritime Silk road, which in my view is reallyChinese for IndoPacific. The challenge is to ensure thatcloser cooperation with China does not come at the expense ofour US alliance or regional harmony in continue the title kindof regional order.That is one that recognizesChina’s legitimate interests while also upholding rulesand discouraging coercion. In all of this we need to berealistic about the potential as well as the limits of securitycooperation with China under conditions of regional mistrust and we have to assumethose conditions will continue. Navigating all of these intricacies will require much better resourcingof our apology commitment or what we might call our explanation finesse and that is not a contradiction in terms. This place of our explanation policy hasin my view, been treated and resourced as a third lineup controversy, as almost an afterthoughtin some cases for too long. In all of these circumstanceswe need to work smarter, as I said, combining diplomatic andsecurity capabilities accurately because our relative regionalweight could diminish as other IndoPacific strengths increase theirown through sustained economic growth. These do not just include China. They include Indonesia, as well as India. We will want to focus onpartnership with these powers while maintaining a sense ofproportion and national selfrespect. Working partnership employs whenothers respect our interests and recognize thatworking closely with us is not intended to be doing us a spare; it’s in their interest too.In all of this we should seetechnological change as involving at least as much opportunity as risk. Disruptive technologies will adapt calculationsof armed advantage in our region. So we need to think anew abouthow to be on their right side. Australia has peculiar opportunities, as I’ve said, a combination of technology, of geography, and a US alliance, to keep and sharp its edge in areas like surveillance and intelligence. We need to be willing likewise toinvest considerably more in emerging capability neighbourhoods like seat, like cyber, and autonomous or at leastunmanned organizations which in fact dres quite well thecharacteristics of our geography and our small but educatedpopulation base. Australia likewise needs to beunsentimental and unapologetic about seeking and maintainingasymmetric defence advantages in an unpredictable neighborhood. After all, to reiterate where I started, our vigor, knowledge, craft, and human links with the outside world perform today’s Australia a dynamic prosperous situate but they too realise Australia vulnerable.Thus, for example, countless Australians, including our business community are becoming well aware of the serenity with which cyberspace can be used fordisruption and espionage by foreign entities. This should be of greater concernto the Australian public than Australia’s own existingor proposed security measures such as in the area of data retention. More Australians are likewise becomingconcerned about the vulnerabilities of our seaborne security of energy supplies lines andour frankly frugal stockpiles of liquid gas far below the 90 day oilsstockpile indebtedness we’ve signed up to underthe International Energy Agency.The need to build energy resilience isemerging as a national security priority. Hence the appeal for interesting new ideas like converting metropolitan transportfleets to Australian natural gas to reduce acute dependenceon diesel imports. All of the risks and vulnerabilitiesmentioned so far suggest that the figure and the kind ofsecurity contingencies or situations that could affect Australia’s interestswill grow in the years ahead, will be challenged to do more thingsin more residences. As I’ve said, Australia’s own securitywill therefore require a willingness to conclude cautious but meaningful contributions securingour lifelines to the wider world. Australia will need toprotect its sovereignty in order to provide securityin a perturbed region and to contribute to the security ofthe broader IndoPacific and beyond. This will sooner or later involvequestions about whether Australia, alone, can always be the security provider of last-place and sometimes firstly resort in the SouthPacific and Papua New Guinea. In theory, a future securitycrisis across PNG could overwhelm ourcapacity to respond.To recapitulate then, Australia’s interests are largeand they’re stretching. Our sovereign securitiescapabilities cannot keep pace. So there is a premium onpartnerships to guide our interests in an indeterminate world-wide. New menaces has not been able to replaced old ones, but assembled them on a morecrowded horizon. We cannot protectour interests alone. And yet to have the best chance of structure and maintainingthe partnerships that we need , not only with the United States, but with the other partnerships we need, we must also have the credibility that comes with doing our bestto provide for our own security. And so the concluding questionI have for you is this. Are we really doing our very best? It can be argued that Australiacontinues to fall short of its potential as an effective security actor. We’re still with economies in transition, from the Australia of the past or the Australia of the past few decades a number of countries that relied for its security primarily on the combination of a stableregional and global environment and a not specially involving US ally.Perhaps it’s become a bit, undoubtedly it’s become more demanding over the past decade. But now the tactical environmentis less stable and the ally is more demanding stilland hitherto frustratingly, it’s becoming less than clear aboutits own strategy or its own priorities. Added to that, our own ability to set security priorities is being shaken up by worseningdangers of fear and radicalization at home and worldwide. Now of course, a national securitystatement focused exclusively on terrorism is a misnomer. It’s imperfect. Amid entirely justified present day frights we are not able lose sight of the fact certainly strategic risks.We don’t want to find ourselves ina majestic replay of the announce 911 years. For at least five years after 911, a program emphasis on terrorism, on Iraq and Afghanistan by Americaand to some extent by its friends, procreated it harder to anticipate or respond to the way that China’s rise wouldaffect IndoPacific regional stability. We can’t afford to go there again. But how then to set priorities? For example, how to prioritizethe immediate security threat? And I have no question that it’s animmediate protection threat, of terrorism, the wider strategic priorities of thechanging IndoPacific regional succession, and dealing with longer term trendsstill like security rights backlashes of environmental pressuresand climate change. The simple rebuttal, and it’sa simplistic react I know, is that we need a layered response; a response that deals with each difficulty on its own timescale.Nor should we imagine that all ofthese risks exist in parallel worlds. They interact in ways that weare just starting to understand. A common thread is the wayin which they menace lineup. And improving our ability torespond to one challenge through supporting seriousnessof purpose for a beginning through build national resilienceand through wording protection partnerships can help to some degree, in its response to others. Now in acquiring our ownnew defence capabilities to respond to this era of ambiguity, we do need to be constantlylooking for flexibility, for adaptability, for versatility. Like it or not, dedicating substantial resources tonational security broadly defined, will need to be an consented partof the Australian plan countryside for as far ahead as we can see.In all, this is hardly a situation in which we can afforda national security debate to become any more politicized. Whether on counterterrorism, whether on the coalition forces, the rise of China, the preparations for the majorcapabilities such as submarines or how to cope witha disturbed community, we need a maximum of politicalconsensus on those issues. The good report is of course, that a large measure of consensusand bipartisanship has long existed, for instance on the importanceof the US alliance.And some of the backer segments ofthe past are actually withering away. Striking among these is theincreasingly artificial debate between a restrict’ Defenceof Australia’ abstraction, formerly associated with Labour, and a farflung expeditionary approach to military force posture associated with the Coalition. I would argue that a moreaccurate and contemporary way of thinking about Australian grandiose strategy is the idea of securing our lifelinesto an interconnected world. Or at least preparing serious contributionto the security of those lifelines, including to encourage spouses. The mind of the protection of ourlifelines in an unpredictable nature apart from anything else, is a nice way of calling time on thisweary expeditionary versus DOA controversies that so many of us are familiar with. But a country of our limited capacitiescannot afford to be complacent about maintaining andbuilding consensus.It needs to be renewedwith each generation. And there is a hidden fragility, in my opinion, a possible fragmentation of publicopinion and political ideas across much of the national securitydefence and foreign policy agenda, including on the best waysto respond to terrorism or the strategic change in Asia. Just because we haven’t seenthe full evidence of this yet doesn’t mean that it’s not coming. How cohesive is Australia onmatters of security really? How pliable are we really? What do young Australiansthink about these issues? And in a country where more thanone in four of us was born overseas, where our major municipalities, our major metropolis, the number of us born overseasis more than one in three, what do first and secondgeneration migrants think about Australiannational security issues? There’s a changing organization of research inthese areas including some polling data, including at this universityand at the Lowy Institute there’s a need for moreand for depth analysis because there aremany Australians now, more Australians utterly ascontributing members of this society from more regions, including fromEast Asia, from South Asia, from the Countries of the middle east, which entails a much morecomplex mosaic of views about security issues thanAustralian governments have ever had to deal withor are addressed to in the past.This will determine national consensusbuilding on security issues harder. It will also make it more necessary. Now how will any of these societalshifts in sentiment about its safety and external plan translateinto political party programmes or the views and stancesof Parliamentarians? After many years in whichvery few Australian politicians had any direct experienceof the defence force or other fields of national security, their numbers have started to grow; their ranks are beginning to grow.That’s a welcome developmentin my view. It “wouldve been” simplistic though to assume that this will translate into uncriticalpolitical support to the military, and nor should it. It would also be good to have a clearsense of what different political forces such as the Greens, for example, are proposing as practical alternativesto existing national security programs. What would a extensive Greensnational security policy look like? What we cannot afforded isany further politicisation of the national security debate, not just on the part ofthe government of the working day, but by any side.Thus for instance, their purchases of the next submarine, and for that are important, the one after that, needs to be based coldly onensuring the best capability and our ability to sustain itas well as on rate, that includes what may be themultibillion dollar opportunity cost. The other certificate capabilitiesor social programs we would not be able to affordfrom a political decision to accept a big’ performed in Australia’ or’ earn in South Australia’price premium. Now of course politics is not the onlypart of the national security house that we need to get in order. Australia cannot opened for nationalsecurity to be solely the interest of a professional Canberrabased security caste. Many of you my friends, many of you my colleagues, many of you in the apartment today, which, confident in the knowledge that it is striving forthe national interests, really expects the rest of the countryto let it get on with the job.I hear a few musics ofrecognition of that gues. The national securitycommunity needs to accept that intense intelligent publicconsultation and outreach will be a constant requirementand a priority for policy building. It’s not window dressing. It’s not an afterthought. It’s not a carton to click. It’s core business and we needto keep trying to do it better and this watching comes from my havingspent the past eight years living in Sydney and involving with business and otherparts of the Australian society including multicultural Australia. Well, so be it. We have to work much harder to ensurethat the security debate in Canberra is recognisable to the wider population and is recognisably in their interests. This is a necessary, but it’s also an achievable undertaking because like it or not, national protection is becomingeveryone’s question. That’s why it must now be, in my opinion, their own nationals priority to ensure that no part ofthe community feels like it’s being treated as the problem.For instance, we should not becritical of a whole community, Muslim Australians, based onthe actions of a tiny minority of misguided beings. Those are not initially my statements, but those of ASIO DirectorGeneral David Irvine who’s with us today and whoI am pleased to announce today, will be joining the National SecurityCollege as a visiting colleague. The need to ensure thatNational Security policy is owned, right across Australian society, is also why government is correct to seek to connect the idea of citizenship with the idea of responsibilityas well as rights.Incidentally on the eveof the Gallipoli Landings, or the centenary ofthe Gallipoli Landings, there’s a good case for more to be doneto associate Australia’s ANZAC history with civic importances ofcitizenship and responsibility rather than with heritage. And I think there is a risk in associatingANZAC too much with heritage, we’re beginning to seesome of that in my opinion. There are many in the community who seems to think that national security’s not their own problems or indeed who is of the view that national security program is the problem; it’s an unwarranted affront to autonomies, it’s a sinister political stunt, it’s a diversion from other governmentpriorities in hard fiscal durations, it just maintains us in business. Now all the persons who sincerelyhold those views need to be willing to suspend theirpreconceptions or their posturing; suspend the scheme possibilities, and are also involved in a firstprinciples conversation.This should be an openminded speech about how best to preservethe security and the cohesion of the society that has affordedall of us levels of political opennes, of personal opportunityand physical safety, that most of humanityhas never suffered. Now as some have discovered, the national conversationabout defence so far is not really a conference at all. It’s been a case of very differentconstituencies and communities talking across one another. In addition to our core work hereat the National Security College in learn authority officialand provisioning academic education, core piece that I need tomaintain and will retain as ultimate priorities of the college, the National Security Collegewill contribute to that conversation.We proudly partner withleading research universities and much of that contribution should be through rigorousand independent experiment that we will commissionand we will support. Our investigates contain various viewsand they convey them and they will continue to do so. We will also be a platform, nonetheless, and a convener for constructivedialog and discussion with the national interests at heart. One mode to get this nationalsecurity conference on to a more worthwhile track must be acknowledged that Australia’ssecurity problem compels multiple responsesacross several experience proportions. On terrorism, for example, there’s little question that counterradicalization and demonstrating the emptiness ofthe Islamic State and narrative are essential chores. But even the best efforts on thesefronts will take time and trustbuilding. In the meantime, it’s imperative not only to minimize the numberof Australians attracted to the terrorist causeat home or overseas, but to minimize the harmthat they can do.Right now, the most pressingnational security priority must be to prevent furtheratrocities of the manner that would damage social harmonyin a multicultural Australia. And it’s the damage that we donot yet know how we would repair. The question then becomeshow to maximize the security community’s chance ofsuccess in preventing terrorist violence without poisoning the nation’smedium and longterm capacity to deteriorate the appeal ofterrorist propaganda. This is not a choice; both are priorities. Thus it’s incumbent upon the criticsof counterterrorism measures to offer their best projects on how to reduce the the opportunities of further terrorist attacks. Of alternately, to acknowledgetheir willingness to risk those attacks and their potentially atrocious impacton Australia’s core calibers of social long-suffering and trust.A brand-new and inclusive Australiansecurity approach must extended to include other jeopardies as well. It will involve a recognition that we needto face multiple challenges at once, some that can be metor restrained by restraint or limited by principally military means. But others that cannot. A new Australian securitywill involve a recognition of seeking to mitigate or adapt to the security suggests ofchallenges like climate change is not an alternative strategy to ensuring that we havea leading edge armed designed to guard our own interests against a breakdownin ambiguou regional order. Again, it is very important to do both. The timescale is notthe same for every threat. In fact, some threats aregoing to confront us more in the immediate times aheadthan in the longterm.So it may be a matterof weathering the gust. That means we cannot be complacentabout old fashioned threats like stateonstate coercionwhich are very real today. Just because we’re mindful of pressureslike climate change into the future. Eventually a new and inclusiveapproach to Australian security requires that as a society, we step up our efforts to engage andemploy all the qualities “were having”. Advanced technology, tactical geography, a strong ally, promising collaborators, private sector increasinglyconscious of security, an educated population, outstanding cultural diversity, and of course, our democratic system, our democratic values.Thus the facts of the case thatthe Australian Defence Force and other policy and security authorities are lifting their game in ethnicand gender diversity is good. But it’s not good enough. To accord the new mold and thepotential of Australia’s dynamic society, decorations of recruitment andemployment in the security society is necessary fresh attention. Cyber capabilities, for instance, could well be a natural fit for a new kind of reservist, a national cybersecurity reserve, involving creativework layouts, and resilient exchangeswith private industry would alter traditional notionsof what soldiering is about and what new generations withnew talents can do for their country.And I scoot to add, this may be a civilian reserve. It may not kept strictly a military reserve. It’s something new. We haven’t yet kind of imaginedreally, even what it could be. There’s a pilot schemes in the UKunderway at the moment that might provide some penetration. So just as Australia political and social historyhas been about increasing inclusion, so too would I argue that inclusiveness will be the essential qualityof the new Australian certificate. To conclude, that is inclusivenessin several ways, a wide all-inclusive definitionof national security interests, an all-inclusive understandingof the means by which we need to protect andadvance those security interests, and finally, an inclusive, adaptable mobilization of our diverse national resources. Beings, the private and public spheres, geography, engineering, and partnerships both within other countriesor with other nations and within our own country. As we know, as we’re teach, I predict, defence is the first duty of authority. Even so, the idea thatI’ve proposed tonight of a new and all-inclusive Australiansecurity may be open to the accusation, to use the academic term of’securitizing’ the issues preferably too much and I stand accused.But such are the times thatwe live in and such, in my opinion, is the challenge onward. Thank you.[ praise] Jeff Lazarus: My name is Jeff Lazarus and I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. With the situation which happenedin Sydney in the Lindt Caf, there appear to me very obvious that Monusreally was a very dangerous individual who really should have beenunder surveillance from ASIO. He was out loud there saying, you are aware, I’m an Islamist. I’m brutal.
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I detest government. Yet he wasn’t under anyproper surveillance from ASIO. What would you say to ASIO about that? And what would you say, likewise, to the “Ministers ” Tony Abbott who started to criticise Muslim leads for not speaking out enoughagainst Islamist radicalisation in the context that I think they are and they’ve been promiseda lot of coin for programmes to carry out counter Islamistradicalisation programmes but the federal government hasn’tactually delivered that money.So what would you say to Tony Abbott? What would you say to ASIOabout those two things? Rory Medcalf: Thanks. That’stwo very substantial questions. And two important questions and I speculate merely very briefly what I’dsay to the first part of that question, I necessitate, as you know, there’s been a review. It’s pretty exhaustivelylooked at, its own history, Monis’s history, leading up to this incident, and apparently this has led to a lot ofhandwringing about the kind of failure, but not, it shows, a systemic failure. It’s a string of failures and of course there’s nowbeen plenty of move to try and address those various kinds of, shall we call them, gaps inthe system in the future. This is, there’s no guarantee, of course, that another incidentlike this couldn’t exist or that another individuallike this is out there, or that he’ll be stopped by thesekind of techniques again in the future.But I think that, as I’ve said, earlier, lessons were learned, mood and federaland this will be pursued into the future. I wouldn’t really have moreto say to ASIO than that. But the second point I thinkis actually more important to the message about social cohesion that I was trying to convey today. Now the Prime Minister’snational insurance affirmation, and I’ll use that expression even though it wasn’t a completenational security account, couple of weeks ago, I think was less controversial andmore balanced in its substance than a lot of the mediacoverage would have us belief. Unfortunately, there’ve been, you are aware, plenty of specimen we can name where some of our political leaders including this Prime Minister have decided to add one ortwo pipelines to their statements that they certainly didn’t needto add and that frankly, were counterproductive to their core, their core message and you’reobviously alluding to a line that they Prime Minister started like that.But I think that’s got tobe taken in the context of the relatively uncontroversialmeasures in that statement. I conclude the relatively widepotential for community support of some of those measures, of most of those measures, and including information on this pointabout society mobilization, it’s not true to say that there’sno resourcing out there for that. The resourcing is lessthen I’d like it to be. But there are subsidies available.The challenge is to build trustwith community organizations to take those grants up andbegin putting them into practice. And that’s precisely why I’ve draw the quality. I mean you just said Muslim leadershave a different scene about that. Accurately why I’ve madethe point that we need, we, the national security community, need to be a lot more constant and a lot more intensive in itsengagement and consultation and interestingly, the pattern I’ve been given, is the New South Wales Policewho 20 or 30 year ago, if you said these were a representation of, you know, artistic sensitivityand politeness, you are aware, you would havebeen sort of roared at. But in fact, their experience inWestern Sydney in the past 20 times become increasingly positive and community leaders havetold me that that’s the simulate, that constant contact withmembers of the community that needs to be followedby federal agencies.One of our problems is thatwe have a federal plan and federal agencies haven’tbeen regularly on the sand in some of these communities. And if they had been in morein less difficult times, people would have wondered why. So I take your points on board.( Bill Tow) I’m Bill Tow. I’m the head of the InternationalRelations Department in the Bell School. Rory, thanks for your wonderfuland, dare I say it, magisterial expedition de compas of the tactical environment andAustralia’s location within it.Two other rising starsin addition to yourself in the county’s national defence society, Nick Bisley and Andrew Phillips, recently wrote a piece for thedouble I doubled S journal of existence in which they argued thatthe US pivot programme and by extension Australia’s rolein “its really” very broad. And what they argue is thatin terms of prioritization which you spoke of in your address, certainly North East Asia is where the action is, and that to move amongst very broadof a geographic circumference would actually dilute the effectivenessof both the United Nation and its allies’ efforts to essentiallyrealise the longterm regional stability.I’m wondering if you might address theBisleyPhillips controversy in that framework. Thank you. Rory Medcalf: Thanks Bill. And you are aware, just forthe record, Bill was my, I recall first International Relations lecturer. I was one of his first studentswhen he was fresh off the plane from Los Angeles sometimein the 20 th century. So It’s wonderful, wonderfulto see you Bill. And expressed appreciation for. And I feel I might not be doingwhat I’m doing today if it wasn’t for your, for your muse. Look, the statement that theIndoPacific is too vast a region to be strategically meaningful and that we’re diluting our capabilities and diluting our interests by looking at that canvas, it’s superficially attractive, but it’s based, I reckon ona exceedingly 20 th century view of regional financial strategic dynamics and the behaviour and interestsof the countries concerned.Now if China wasn’t becoming moreinterested and more active in the Indian Ocean and didn’t are dependent upon the Indian Oceanfor its oil imports, if Japan and South Korea didn’t rely on traderoutes to the Middle East and Africa for their most national existence, and if they didn’t indeedrely on their relations with us, for their national survival, and of course we’re as muchan Indian Ocean country as an East Asian country, then I would buy that thesis.If the United Commonwealth wasn’t lookingat Australia partly, I picture, to improve its accessto the Indian Ocean , now that there are question marksover the future of Diego Garcia, it’s a little speck, but it’s borrowed from the Britishfor many years, again, I’d buy that. And finally, if Indiawas not a rising power, rising military power withtrading relations into East Asia and gamble of tensionswith China are growing, again, I’d buy that thesis. But nothing of those things are true. So I kind of think that that wasa great essay some time ago, although Nick and Andrew aregood friends and collaborators, I would have to disagree withthem on that one and therefore seems that our government’s on the right trackwith the IndoPacific concept .( Leszek Buszynski) I amLeszek Buszynski and I am a call comrade withthe National Security College. I was very interested inone of your earlier statements. And that was that Australia requirespartnerships with other countries. But regrettably, you didn’t elaborate. So I’d like to ask you, give you an opportunity to give ussome background on that and which countries do you think, which parts of the region, IndoPacific region, do you think Australiashould develop partnerships with. And I infer that you wouldinclude Indonesia on this list. And would you say that ourrelationship with Indonesia has been recently subject toexcessive populist pressures? Rory Medcalf: Well where do I start? Populist pressures on which slope? On which area? Look, I won’t centres very much onthe political issues you’re referring to. I don’t think that’s mybrief here this evening, except that I’ll say that of courseIndonesia is one of the countries that we need to developas a protection partner.I did mention it, but I probablyburied it in a fairly, a reasonably confusing sentence. So I, it was there. I would rate Japan and Indiaabove Indonesia in the near term as strategic partners because these countries have really seriousstrategic capabilities and interests. Indonesia’s still trying to figure out, in my opinion, what kindof strength it wants to be, and really, whether it can exploitits awfully tactical geography right in the middle of the IndoPacific, right astride the sea lanes whether it can actually use thatin an outward gazing way.And I don’t think it’s reachedthat decision yet despite some of the rhetoricof the Indonesian president. So Indonesia will beone of those partners. And that’s why we will need to continue to work on that securitypartnership with them. But as I said, prevent a sense ofproportionality and selfrespect, and I believe we’re aboutto come to one of those periods where the selfrespect issue is going to bepretty high on the agenda of both countries and that will require seriousdiplomacy on both sides. One asset we have in the relationshipwith Indonesia is the alumni , has still not been, pathetic to say, students of the National Security College, but I hope that will change in the future, but the defence officials anddefence officers, ADF policemen, who’ve served in Indonesiaover the years and have developed veryclose links at senior levels with the Indonesian security communityand their copies here.We need all these weaves ofpartnership to get this relationship through what will be another rocky patch. But at a strategic tier we have quiteconvergent interests with Indonesia. This idea of release coalitionsin the region, this idea of maritimesurveillance cooperation, that’s got Indonesia written allover it if Indonesia’s interested. David Goen: Hello Professor Medcalf. I’m David Goen. One thing that I guess it probablydepends on the timeline you’re looking at foryour review of security. But one issue which I thinkstarts off being economic but immediately turns into a security issuethat obsesses the Hell out of me , not for me but for my childrenor my grandchildren, is perhaps we’re approachinga new industrial coup and the departure of workas neural networks, machines, take over virtually every job. And I just wondered if you thinkthat is a security issue and when is the question? Rory Medcalf: Gosh. Look, I shouldn’t laughbecause I know it’s a serious, it’s a serious questionand I have kids too.I wish they would work at themoment[ laughter] but that’s, that’s another story. Look, looking at a moderately restricted feel, there are, heartbreaking to say, advantagesfor Australia in all of this, I would suggest. I mean we, you know, we should, we should be embracing the unmannedor autonomous revolt in defence engineering because it will actually suit us, I belief much better thanit will suit certain other countries in our region in the years ahead.And then the flip sideof that is, of course, how do you meaningfulfulfilling helpful work for humans. Look I’m not going to, that’s such a big country, I’m really not going to gothere in any great breadth. You’ve got methinking about that tonight. But I think in the short term, it’s seen as beneficialfor security capabilities. In the longer term, of courseit’s got problems, particularly , not so much better for us, but for countries withmuch larger populations, that will have to deal withsocial dissatisfaction, that will have to deal withunfulfilled apprehensions. I speculate the bigger problemis much shorter term. It’s the next, in the next 20 times, it’s whether the not middle classes but the developing categories in India, in China, in Indonesia can find all types of workand any kind of education and I is of the view that, to me, will determine whether wehave a stable regional say and I think we can worry a bitabout the future of work more generally beyond that point.But I’m going tothink about that one. male: Hi Professor Medcalf. I’m just wondering, do you think we’re reaching a pointin the domestic terrorist threat where the socalled lone wolf affects actually, there’s an element of inability indisrupting and confronting these attacks and whether the measuresto confront them might have unacceptableimplications to privacy, etc. Rory Medcalf: Yeah. Now look, that’s sort of the core question that I fantasize needs to be properly debated by the connoisseurs of counterterrorism measures as well as by the supportersof counterterrorism measures.And I think we just don’t know yetwhat the social ramifications of a much, a significantly larger scale incidentthen what occurred in Martin Place would be in this society. There was fantastic mobilization ofcommunity cohesion in is solidarity, particularly with Muslim Australiansaround the incident. That was a great thing. But that was one incident. It was one man. It’s quite imaginable that therecould be bigger and worse occurrences and more of them. Really because it’s extremelydifficult to prevent those incidents doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. And I conceive no governmentwould survive not attempting to prevent the next terroristincident or the one after it. The last-place think you wantis any kind of vigilantism which I predict is the alternativeto government action. But it’s a debate importance having. I have my own view, having read the review of the JointParliamentary Committee on intellect, their review on metadata, you know.I accept their recommendations. I think they’re on the right trackand I even gives the impression that reporters are goingto begin to accept what “re coming out” at the other end as well. But this will be a ongoing debate and if we can have it on firstprinciples then I’m all for it. Ruth Pearce: Hello. Thank you very much. I’m Ruth Pearce. I wanted to ask about your partners’partners, multilateral … Rory Medcalf: Yeah.( Ruth Pearce) finesse. Where does that fit in yourcontext of National Security. It just seems that, you know, internationally, regionally, you are aware, there’s ad hocery now, G20, etc. Where is multilateral well, protection, foreman? Rory Medcalf: You’re luckyGareth Evans is not here because he would’ve shaped youto that question.[ laughter] And we wouldn’t have beenable to say no. Now look, I repute I use very sparingly the word pragmaticmultilateralism at one point when I was referring to partnerships and I study the ideal outcome, of course, is one where wecombine strong bilateralism, the alliance, in my view, minilateralism, small-time factions, very functional blocs, with multilateralism.I hate to say it, but most of the security problemsI can see in this survey are not going to be solvedby the United Nation. You is a well-known fact that. We all know that. We can’t somehow takethe UN out of that equation. We wouldn’t want to. I speculate the mobilizationof our UN seat last year after MH17 was pretty serendipitous. I think the governmentinherited something that it didn’t specially feel the is necessary that and unexpectedly obligated very good use of it. There will be moreopportunities like that, I am sure, in the future. But I time don’t thinkUN world multilateralism “il go to” compile much difference in the regional security tensionsI’m talking about.And then how many times havewe heard the UN Security Council talk about the South China Sea or theEast China Sea in the past 5 years when they’ve been movingin the direction of flash points? So I think we just need touse that for norm construct. We need to build regionalmultilateral institutions. I would situate more priority there and use that as a wayof giving informal rules for rising abilities like China. But we are only can’t rely on these alone. And the credibility I has spoken about; constructing our own capabilities, improving our bilateral partnerships and maybe minilateral arrangementsfor things like disaster relief will help us, I envisage, to then mobilize blocks and caucuseswithin those multilateral organizations when the time comes.So that’s my, that’s what little euphorium I can offer youon multilateralism. But it’s important. Dr. Margot McCarthy: Well thank you Rory. And thanks to members of theaudience for reaping Rory out on some of the themes of his addressincluding the future of work. It was exclusively a few months ago that in this auditorium I wasthanking Rory’s precede for his efforts in starting upthe National Security College and we were delighted that someone withRory’s very distinguished background in policy development, analysis, and advocacy was selected to build onMichael’s achievements. And Rory’s address tonight andthe discussion it’s generated should certainly only reinforced ouroptimism about the quality that’s generated by the partnership between the Commonwealthand the College.When the idea of the collegewas firstly promoted it was to enhance the capacity of officials acrossthe national security community and by that I don’t think we justmean the Commonwealth, but many of the people in this room, to achieve whole ofgovernment outcomes and to lead racial change in their own fields. And what I peculiarly likedabout Rory’s remarks tonight was that while leaving us a reasonablemark on the whole of government figurehead, he was frank about how verymuch more we have to do in the area of artistic mutate. Because if you live andbreathe National Security, it is possible, and you can understand, to snatch an example out if the aura, why the expenditure ofyour committee of closet might not want to fund your good idea, it can be usefully confrontingto have someone ask, Why do we even bother talkingabout national protection at all? It’s even better to be forced to stepback from today’s particular problem and to reflect instead onthe wider national interests that our labours are eitherprotecting or advancing.And best of all, Rory’s coining of the quotation, Canberrabased security caste and there are many high priests and priestesses with us tonight, encapsulates the jeopardies to the unusually interests that we’re striving to protect of insularity and contentment. And that is the case whether we’re working on maximisingAustralia’s trade and investment interests or discussing our cybersecurity policy, or, and perhaps particularly, countering brutal extremism.So thank you again, Rory. And I know I say on behalfof numerous parties here tonight, how much we’re looking forwardto working with you.[ clapping ].
