ARTICLES
Labor adrift in a sea of foreign policy impotence
The Albanese government ends 2023 adrift on national security and foreign policy, like the HMAS Toowoomba in the Sea of Japan a few weeks ago, propellers snarled and hostile forces looming. Four examples from late December expose Anthony Albanese’s malaise: failing to...
Refusing Red Sea mission is a failure of kit and conviction
The Australian navy is small and its ships are ageing. In our region and elsewhere, it has fundamentally failed to keep up with the threats that confront Australia. The Albanese government’s response to an informal US request to send a warship into the Red Sea to...
A grumpy strategist meets a China business consultant
In this 15 minute interview, the ABC's Geraldine Doogue talks about Australia and China with SAA's Michael Shoebridge and China business consultant Geoff Raby. They cover the political relationship and security, economics, China under the Chinese Communist Party,...
Gaza statement a prime example of moral posturing
The biggest flaw in the joint statement on Gaza from the prime ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand is that there is not a single sentence offering practical advice about how Israel might exercise its “right to defend itself”. In just 429 words we have an...
Prime minister Albanese’s strategic fleet folly
It’s long been Labor policy to stand up our own flagged and Australian-crewed merchant navy for the nation and its defence. Less than one per cent of Australian seaborne trade is carried by Australian ships. The Australian fleet currently stands at 15 vessels over...
2024: elections in a fragmenting world; Future Fund forgets Australian industry – & export controls, again
Episode 9 - 2024: global elections bring a fragmenting world, investing everywhere but into Australian industry, and those pesky proposed export controls | RSS.com Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge look at the implications of elections from Taiwan, to India,...
Awkward truths about US and UK AUKUS challenges
Three reports over the past two months are required reading for anyone involved in or scrutinising the Australian Government’s work on AUKUS. Two are US reports and one is from the UK. None are from the Pentagon or the UK Ministry of Defence, instead each...
A glimpse of things to come – AUKUS hastens slowly
Last weekend the three AUKUS defence ministers met in California to reflect on what their joint statement called the “exceptional progress” in the agreement. Richard Marles was effusive: in what has been “a truly momentous year” the three countries had made “an...
Where to after the dust settles in Gaza
In agreeing to ceasefires Israel has been put in a terrible dilemma. It must weigh one clearly stated war objective of freeing hostages against the other key objective of the permanent elimination of the Hamas terror and war making capability in Gaza. But...
As Defence’s core functions fail, what’s the plan for change?
A defence force has to have three things work well to be effective: it has to recruit and retain the skilled people it needs, it has to choose the equipment a military needs to succeed in conflict, and it has to operate and support that equipment. On all three...
Landing craft create paths for shipbuilding
Finally there is some good news in the defence shipbuilding space. On Thursday 24 November, the Australian Government announced that the West Australian shipbuilder Austal would build the Army’s new medium landing craft designed by NSW shipbuilder, Birdon. That’s good...
AUKUS own goals – Australia’s disastrous new draft export controls
AUKUS own goals - Australia's new draft export controls | RSS.com "It looks like Australia just gave up its sovereignty and got nothing for it" - Bill Greenwalt (intergalactic expert on US export control laws): This episode focuses on the proposed new Australian law...
Missing his moment: PM afraid to say difficult things but comfortable leaving our military in harm’s way
At APEC in San Fransisco, Mr Albanese told us this about his meeting there with Xi Jinping “I also had an opportunity to meet with President Xi and to thank him for the welcome and the discussions that we had in my visit to China recently.” He added: On ‘breakthroughs...
Australia has lost its strategic authority at APEC
In a brief media doorstop after arriving in San Francisco, Anthony Albanese used the word “important” 11 times to describe his visit and the necessity of attending APEC. He said seven times that he was “catching up” with various leaders, from presidents Joe Biden and...
AUKUS Plan B: delivering greater military power faster – the B-21 Raider
After the release of the damning – self-written – summary of the Defence leadership’s failed advice to the government on the $45 billion Hunter frigate, no one can have any confidence that other key decisions on military capability are any better. In their own words,...
Israel is playing by the rules in war against Hamas
Penny Wong has called on Israel to stop “the attacking of hospitals” in Gaza. Australia was “particularly concerned with what is happening with medical facilities … I would make this point in relation to hospitals and medical facilities – international...
The Travel and Accountability edition: Tuvalu, leadership failure and the Hunter frigates – and the B-21
The Travel and Accountability Edition: Tuvalu, leadership failure & the Hunter frigates, and the B-21 | RSS.com Australian PM Albanese's world tour ends with a bright spot in the South Pacific. On the $45 billion Hunter frigate program, an internal review of the...
Hoping no one joins the dots: what Mr Albanese’s three visit journey shows the world
You have to wonder what Joe Biden, Xi Jinping and Cook Islands’ Mark Brown make of prime minister Albanese’s combined visits to them in the last three weeks. Looked at individually, each visit makes sense. But the problem is that, unlike the pre-internet days, what...
Aust-US alliance is thriving in new areas, less healthy at its military core
Anthony Albanese’s visit to America has done three things. It has broadened the ambition for the alliance into new areas like critical minerals production. It’s revealed a new, deeper dependency on American ‘big tech’ for our government. And it’s highlighted the...
Despite AUKUS, the Navy’s strategic risk is growing
Eighteen months ago, I wrote in The Australian that “there are very dark clouds on the capability horizon. We are facing the strategic risk of both of the Navy’s core combat fleets ageing out before replacements arrive”. At a time of growing regional threats, the...
Pandas, lobsters and turkey talk push security to the side
It suits Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping to keep the Prime Minister’s China visit focused on symbolism rather than substance. The Communist Party-controlled Chinese media is presenting the visit as an opportunity for Australia to atone, in the words of Beijing’s...
What price has Australia paid to get Mr Albanese’s meeting with Xi Jinping?
The meeting between Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping in Beijing this week is the culmination of the Albanese government’s efforts to show it has stabilised the bilateral relationship between Australia and China. The stated goal expressed by Foreign Minister Penny Wong...
Grumpy Strategists: The Estimates Edition
The Estimates Edition: a recruitment crisis, fragile fleets & lessons from America | RSS.com In Episode 6, Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge get into why the complex, top heavy leadership structure of Defence affects performance and demotivates those below it....
We need a Defence organisation that can operate at the speed of its external environment
The Defence organisation is top heavy, over managed and under led. It has become so organisationally complex that it can’t understand or govern itself, let alone have the bandwidth or time to engage with and understand what’s happening in the world outside its...
Defence budget gloom sinks in
“Gentlemen, we have run out of money, now we have to think”, is a quote attributed both to the physicist Ernest Rutherford and to Winston Churchill. The attribution is probably erroneous in both cases, but it’s a sentiment Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles might...
Darwin Port: leaving a key strategic asset in Chinese hands is unfinished business
Yet another review has defended the absurd 2015 Northern Territory decision to lease the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company for 99 years. The lease continues to dog successive federal governments and is undermining defence planning. Just weeks into replacing Tony...
In Washington, Mr Albanese must be a contributor to collective defence, not a needy bystander
Mr Albanese is visiting Washington at a time when US defence and foreign policy is focused on support to Ukraine resisting Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion and the new war between Israel and Hamas provoked by Hamas terrorists’ mass murders and hostage taking....
We should learn from Israel that strategic shocks can happen here too
Israel’s intelligence services and military were clearly surprised by the Hamas attack but an equal mystery understanding what strategic goal Hamas was trying to achieve. Achieving surprise delivered Hamas a brief tactical advantage and a propaganda coup but the...
Breaking cyber’s endless loop
New ideas, structural reform are needed - not just more money. The 2023-2030 Australian Government cyber strategy looks likely to be announced soon. It’s unlikely to be backed by substantial new funding. Across the board, in the defence and national security...
Battlefield helicopters: the ghost of failed capability transitions yet to come?
The ghost of Christmas yet to come scared the bejesus out of old Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol with its vision of Scrooge’s miserable future. The Australian Army’s failed utility helicopter transition is scaring the bejesus out of me because...