by Marcus Hellyer | May 22, 2023 | Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
Australia needs to mobilise in order to address the strategic challenges it is facing. The Defence Strategic Review (DSR) proposes ways to do that. However, the 2023-24 Defence Portfolio Budget Statements (PBS) does not yet incorporate the recommendations of the DSR....
by Michael Shoebridge | May 22, 2023 | China, Ukraine
Australia’s attendance at the G7 and Quad leaders meetings in Japan helps Anthony Albanese back home. It portrays him as a respected, influential international leader. But the price of sitting at these tables isn’t smiling and participating in photo opportunities,...
by Peter Jennings | May 21, 2023 | China, Strategy & Capability, Ukraine
The best that can be said of the statements, declarations, compacts and media transcripts from Anthony Albanese’s meetings in Hiroshima is that they make a thin gruel. We now have a Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact with the US, which...
by Anthony Bergin | May 20, 2023 | Strategy & Capability
The Defence Strategic Review recommended our fighting forces be released from most of their domestic disaster-response role to concentrate on deterring wars, and winning them if deterrence fails. The DSR found that the increasing use of the military for disaster...
by Anthony Bergin | May 19, 2023 | South Pacific
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Papua New Guinea early next week and then go on to Australia, despite the cancellation of the Quad Leaders’ summit. Fortunately, Prime Minister Modi’s visit to PNG wasn’t linked to US President Biden’s cancelled visit to...
by Peter Jennings | May 18, 2023 | AUKUS, China, Defence Budget, South Pacific, Strategy & Capability
US President Joe Biden’s decision not to attend a summit of the Quad countries in Sydney is disappointing but not unexpected. Given the perilous negotiations in Washington to avert a default on government debt, it is more surprising that Biden is still intending...
by Anthony Bergin | May 18, 2023 | South Pacific
The Defence Strategic Review points out that if climate change accelerates over coming decades it has the potential to significantly increase risk in our region. As affirmed by the 2018 Boe Declaration, climate change “remains the single greatest threat to the...
by Anthony Bergin | May 17, 2023 | Reading
As a Chinese spy balloon flew over the US earlier this year many Americans may have asked what’s going on with China. This book is a good place for them and others to find answers. Newsham is a former marine officer with first-hand experience of China and the...
by Marcus Hellyer | May 10, 2023 | Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
The bottom line up front: The Albanese government’s May Defence budget is disconnected from its own Defence Strategic Review. Defence funding and the plan for spending is business as usual when instead we need urgent action. Simply committing to the now seven-year-old...
by Marcus Hellyer | May 4, 2023 | Defence Budget, Strategy & Capability
Like all big policy statements, the public version of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), released on 24 April this year, is a mix of the good, the bad and ugly. Of course, depending on your point of view, a piece of information (or its absence) could fall into any...
