by Michael Shoebridge | Dec 21, 2023 | Strategy & Capability
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...
by Michael Shoebridge | Dec 19, 2023 | China, Indo Pacific
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...
by Peter Jennings | Dec 17, 2023 | Policy
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...
by Neil Baird and Anthony Bergin | Dec 12, 2023 | Policy, Strategy & Capability
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...
by Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge | Dec 9, 2023 | AUKUS, Defence Budget, Europe, Indo Pacific, Podcasts, Ukraine
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,...
by Michael Shoebridge | Dec 7, 2023 | AUKUS, Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
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...
by Peter Jennings | Dec 6, 2023 | AUKUS, Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
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...
by Mike Kelly and Anthony Bergin | Dec 3, 2023 | Policy
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...
by Michael Shoebridge | Dec 1, 2023 | Defence Budget, Policy, Strategy & Capability
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...
by Marcus Hellyer | Nov 25, 2023 | Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
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...
