Funding the Defence of Australia in 2025: 6 recommendations for urgent change

by Marcus Hellyer, Peter Jennings and Michael Shoebridge | Jan 14, 2025 | Defence Budget, Policy, Strategy & Capability

No-one wants war, but the risk of conflict in our region is substantially growing, and we could well find ourselves in war whether we want it or not. The challenge now is to rapidly strengthen the Australian Defence Force with the goal that our efforts, along with our...

This will be a year of living with danger

by Peter Jennings | Jan 14, 2025 | AUKUS, China, Indo Pacific, Policy, Strategy & Capability

If you thought 2024 was hard for defence and security, the outlook at the beginning of 2025 suggests this year will be even riskier. From 2020, all Australian defence ministers have said the strategic outlook has never been more challenging than since the end of World...

‘More of the same’ politics is a recipe for political death

by Michael Shoebridge | Jan 10, 2025 | Policy

If 2024 was the year of global elections, 2025 is the year voters want experimentation in politics and government – and they’re willing to elect risky people to deliver it. 2024 set a clear pattern: incumbent governments were punished by being chronically weakened or...

The PM plays spectator as the terrorism threat grows

by Peter Jennings | Jan 7, 2025 | Policy

Investigations into the terror attack on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans continue to move fast, with the emerging picture about the assailant, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, becoming more complex. On Friday morning 3 January AEDT, an FBI spokesman told a...

Not alert and not alarmed: our complacency puts us at risk, politically and socially

by Peter Jennings | Jan 3, 2025 | Policy

[Note to SAA readers: This article appeared in The Australian on 03 January 2025. Overnight the FBI investigation of the attack concluded that Shamsud-Din Jabbar probably planted two IEDs in the vicinity of Bourbon Street himself, before engaging in his vehicle...