Transcript

What are the real differences between the 2024 and 2026 National Defence Strategy – and why is this an evolution, not a revolution? 
How is Australia thinking about national resilience, and what does a ‘whole-of-nation’ approach to security look like in practice? 
Are we investing in the right capabilities – and at the right speed – to meet the challenges ahead? 
How do global conflicts, from Ukraine to the Middle East, shape Australia’s defence outlook and strategic choices? 

In this episode, David Andrews joins Sharryn Parker to unpack Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy – what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what it means for national resilience and deterrence.

Transcript

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.) 

David Andrews  

But, deterrence, I think as you point out, is more than just our military power. It's the ability of us as a society to be resilient and to absorb shocks and absorb pressure and then continue to stay in the fight effectively.  

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Sharryn Parker  

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. We are hosting today on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. My name is Sharryn Parker. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor seconded from the Department of Defence and the Australian Army in support of the National Security College and its mission. This week, we are here to discuss the National Defence Strategy and the release of this document that occurred just a week ago. I've asked David Andrews, somebody who will be extremely familiar to all of you, to join me this week as an expert in the area of national security, especially on the defence outlook. David Andrews, thank you very much for joining us today. 

David Andrews 

My pleasure Sharryn. 

Sharryn Parker 

Let's talk about the National Defence Strategy 2026. You were sitting in this exact chair in 2024, when the first National Defence Strategy came out. What’s changed between then and now? 

David Andrews 

I think there's been some small specific technical changes, but the big trends, the big picture has remained fairly consistent. I think you've probably heard in a lot of other commentary that there's many people talking about this as a evolution, not a revolution. And I think that's a very fair reading of what's happened in the NDS 26. And honestly, if we were anticipating much more than that, I think that's probably setting ourselves up for disappointment to some degree because the nature of defence strategy making or indeed any government strategy making tends to be more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But it does point, I think, in a very positive direction as to where the defence enterprise is heading and the priorities the government's laid out. I think looking at it from a sort structural standpoint, this is only the second one of these that we've had. And so what constitutes normal or indeed the norms of a National Defence Strategy are really still being better down in the Australian context. We can look to say the United States, has a structural, once every presidential term, there is a national security strategy, national defence strategy, and national military strategy that all come out in the first roughly 12 months of that term of office. Whereas we have this two year rolling cycle that just been initiated. So we're betting down some norms and some structures. We're moving away from that occasional defence white paper or defence strategic review model towards this. So, I think from a sort of structural technical standpoint, I think it's remained largely consistent, but some of the assessments have definitely evolved and that makes sense given the way in which the international security environment has evolved over that time as well. So we're seeing more of a focus on, I suppose, the war in Ukraine, the role of drones and uncrewed systems has become a bit more emphasised in this iteration as well as one of their little explanatory pullout boxes on fuel security, which I wonder why that might have been triggered in the last few months. So there's a few of those points that are keeping track with the changes in our strategic environment over the last two years, which is the whole point of having a two-year cycle of national defence strategies, is it's not necessarily going to make enormous dynamic change to the enterprise, but it helps ground it in evolving strategic realities and make those tweaks and changes and modifications to defences sort of long term acquisitions and intent based off just how quickly things are evolving around the world. 

Sharryn Parker  

David, I really like the description of moving from an occasional to a deliberate process. I agree. think strategy though is very difficult to do every two years. Your e-marker of evolution, not revolution, absolutely correct and necessary. I think one of the key things that has come out is this recognition of national resilience and you talk about the box around energy security popping out in this one and that may have actually been a late entry to this particular strategy document. What do you think of the National Resilience Arena and where it's going to go and what this document actually says about that? 

David Andrews  

That's one of areas that I was actually pleasantly surprised by was the amount of additional detail that was provided this time around compared to the 2024 version when it comes to some of the sort of whole of government responsibilities and inputs when it comes to the national defence model which they've laid out. Now, I think there's sort of an adjacent discussion that could be had around the merits or otherwise of a national security strategy and or national security advisor. And I think, to me, those issues still haven't quite gone away because I'm not naturally comfortable with defence being the enterprise that establishes a national security strategy, which is kind of what the national defence model is, is it's looking at all these different whole government inputs to Australia's defence and security, but many of those exist outside of the Defence Department and the Australian Defence Force. So whether defence should be the one writing the strategy, I'm a little uncertain, but putting that to one side for the time being., it's laid out this very clear and I think useful explanation of what the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet does in terms of whole government coordination on national civil preparedness. It talks about the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in terms of integrated statecraft and home affairs, leading national resilience efforts, and also the work that's done by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, as well as the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. So, it's giving that full spectrum of national security agencies or inputs at least into the national defence model. To some extent benchmarking that against what's being done in places like Sweden and Norway, which are also name checked for their total defence sort of approaches or strategies which they've been developing over many years. So, I think it's making an acknowledgement of that whole of government whole of nation approach. As I say, I'm still a little, little uncertain whether that should actually be done by a separate sort of separate document or something that sets it out that's less centered on principally on defence and more centered on that whole of government picture. But I was, I guess those were some things I was hoping to see was more detail on how this has turned from a concept into reality. And they're starting to spell that out, which to me is a very positive thing. 

Sharryn Parker 

So what of the idea then that this document isn't supposed to be the document that drives all others, but it is merely a call to arms by an organisation, the Defence Enterprise, that sees into the future quite clearly and is putting it out there for all of those other departments, all of those other areas that must stand up now to move forward on this idea of a national strategy for security. 

David Andrews 

Oh, look, I think that's fair. And maybe to provide sort of the other side to my own argument, I'll give it to myself somewhat, is that we don't have another structure that would provide that kind of whole of government strategic sort of foresighting, forecasting, strategy making that we don't have that body. There's a little bit of it that's done through the intelligence community, but it's not necessarily their principal focus in the way that that strategy and defence are naturally interconnected concepts and processes that people are trained to do within that enterprise. And, given the pace of change, standing up a whole new body to address that and then writing more documents to try and establish patterns of coordination that don't currently exist would only push us further and further behind. So, I think there is a strong practical case for leaving it centred in defence. It's more just that kind of sort of inherent conceptual or bureaucratic tension you might say that I'm, I'm grappling with a little. And clearly there's strong input and, sort of buy in from these different departments as it lays out that each has a principal focus on leading on a core pillar of this. And so Defence is very, the strategy itself makes clear, this is not singularly or principally a Defence responsibility. It has a set of responsibilities under national defence, but this is just the way in which they're being articulated. And I guess when you also have the Defence Minister being the Deputy Prime Minister and having, I suppose, a wider scope of interest across the whole suite of ministries and portfolios, that does also provide a different kind of, I suppose, authority or perspective of who's issuing or approving this document. It's sort of going through the National Security Committee of Cabinet process. You have a lot of other buy-in and contribution from across government. So, yeah, I think your point is quite correct that there’s, that, the time is now, we can't afford to wait around for other iterations of this, but it's maybe something to explore in the long term. So, it's not a problem that has to be dealt with today or indeed yesterday, but I think there is maybe a case to explore how this evolves into a bigger architecture or how it sits within that bigger architecture of strategy making in the years to come. 

Sharryn Parker 

And I think the one thing that is consistently provided alongside the idea of strategy is that it's not a strategy unless it comes with money. And the second part of this document is even bigger, the integrated investment program. There are a lot of being spent or intention to be spent in this document into the billions of dollars. That money has got to come from somewhere and this is what challenges some of those other departments. and some of those other areas of the Australian community. What say you to how Defence is actually outlining that in its IIP versus what others could take away from it? 

David Andrews  

So yeah, I think ultimately this does come down to money, comes down to investment, comes down to lots of long-term commitment from government. And any budget process will have its breakdown of things that are in the immediate budget, things that are in the forward estimates, things that are in four, ten-year planning windows. And we can only really assess what comes down in the short term, because that's when the money's actually been committed. So, I think it makes a lot of sense that they would release this ahead of the budget in May. So, I think we'll have a bigger picture in a few weeks time as to how these defence spending priorities sit within the wider picture of government expenditure and any sort of cuts or redistributions that might be going on. I think we've also seen in the last week or so a lot of conversation about the National Disability Insurance Scheme, including some pretty drastic changes to that, which has always been a pretty core Labor priority and interest over the years since they established it. So, I think we can also look at say the Defence estate audit and the divestment of properties that are being proposed there as well. So, both of those are, I think, indications that the government is trying to find ways across the budget and within the defence budget to save money so they can reprioritise into things like this, which are very money intensive and need that quite quickly to stand up the, whether it's to sort of to make orders and pay them down or to build up industrial outputs and capacity to get these things moving. Now, that's all good. I think the question then is whether enough money is being spent on the right things and quickly enough. And that's something that a lot of other people have discussed so far. So, I probably don't need to get too deep into the specifics on that. But, I think I'm sympathetic to the position the government finds itself in, while at the same time, recognising that there is a pressing need. So I want to try and sort of be fair to both positions here is that I see an intent in this strategy from the government to do the things that it said it was going to do, which is to spend more money on defence, to prioritise capabilities and geographic domains and regions that are most centrally linked to the strategy it's laid out. And I think it is pursuing that and I see evidence of that. Whether it's doing so as much as we might like or as quickly as we might like. Probably not. But at the same time, there's almost a never-ending list of things that people within our community would like to spend money on. And there's always going to be an extra thing that could be done to make Australians safer and more secure. But that has to be weighed up against this whole-of-government sort of set of priorities. And I think particularly right now, I'm very conscious of the economic pressures across Australian society generally. And I think we have to accept the defence is one part of that. And yes, it we the Defence has a unique place in defending the nation. And that if you can't do that, or you can't do the rest of it very well, that is all true. And I have that as my starting point. But it's also not separate from the nation. The defence is one part of Australia. And if people can't buy houses, if people are worried about issues like the flow of fuel or the flow of migration that's shaping political debates within Australia and all they see is the government doing, which I know this isn't true, but if it is perceived that all they see government doing is spending money on defence, that probably doesn't help address those fundamental problems that are core to our wider national security and national resilience. And equally, if we're saying, if you're redirecting resources and people from building houses, to build defence infrastructure, that's going to change their dynamics as well. It affects rates of inflation, it affects rates of government spending, it creates those, in some senses, positive distortions to the economic market, but it continues those things that are really dragging down the stability and the security of our public discourse and our polity of our people as a community. So, I think they are really having to grapple with a lot of complex decisions. Not that they weren't before, but I think sort of it's not just the international environment that's changed over the last couple of years, it's the domestic environment. And that's where I, I guess I start with a position of sympathy to the government's sort of financial circumstances that doesn't let them off the hook, of course. And so, people have rightly, I think, commented that when we talk about shifting the assessment of GDP spend from one model to another, which makes it look like we're hitting 3 % in how many years’ time as opposed to 2.4 or 2.5 or something. Look, at one level, I appreciate that. I think it points to a rate of spending that is not rapid in its increase, let's say. But by the same token, if we're being asked to, if the US measure is to say we've decided that every ally now has to use this NATO model of 3.5% and one and a 1.5% on other sort of non-core defence tasks, I don't see why we would not make that adjustment ourselves. It just seems foolish to talk in one language that is not what's being spoken by our principal ally. So, I think that's a little bit of a sideshow, but underlying that, I guess the question of how quickly we're increasing spending remains there. And I could definitely see a case that we should be doing more quicker. But I still remain sympathetic to the wider Australian political and economic situation in which we find ourselves. 

Sharryn Parker  

Hmm. Sympathy is a funny thing. You know, we can allocate sympathy around to different areas and try and figure out a way to make everybody happy. But we all know liberal democracies work when they are backed by hard power. And this document actually aligns itself to the delivery of that hard power. We are, if I may borrow the term from another social commentator, in a parlous state with many of our, you know, military capabilities. And one of those though is how people who would do us harm perceive of us and our weaknesses. They are attacking some of those weaknesses and many of those sit in the space and the cyber domain. So, we're spending a lot of money at the moment on hard power, which, you know, as a member of the Defence Force, I absolutely accept. But I would say that the place that we are currently reachable is across the cyber domain. And when my children are having to defend against bots that are reaching into my household and telling them what to think and how to think and why to think, I consider that a really, really difficult place for Australian families to be. So, what does this document actually say about how we defend against that and how we actually put into practice a strategy of denial around something that is already in our personal space? 

David Andrews  

Well, as you say, Sharryn, that the strategy of denial is kind of, it's the fundamental principle that the strategy is built around. That's the one it's laying out as a means of defending Australia. And I think that is primarily conceived of as a conventional military deterrent and denial approach. So, it's the use of long-range weaponry. It's the use of maritime and air forces to project power forward and secure our immediate geographic region. But deterrence, I think, as you point, out is more than just our military power. It's the ability of us as a society to be resilient and to absorb shocks and absorb pressure and then continue to stay in the fight effectively. Now that might be at a kind of small local individual level in the everyday to use your example of sort of bots and disinformation and cyber intrusion. That's an everyday task that we're all grappling with. No matter how old or young we are, we're all face to face with that in this digitised world. But it also becomes much more pointed in a potential conflict scenario. Because if we're thinking about just the scale of cyber intrusion that could go on the way in which that our systems are so reliant upon that electronic domain to stay functional. If we're thinking about the keeping the lights on and the power on in hospitals, keeping control of our water supply and all these sorts of things rely upon on digital and cyber resilience. So, I think we, you're absolutely correct, that we don't want to just focus on the big grey or olive-green things that shoot smaller things. We also need to be thinking about what this looks like across that whole national defence model. And that I think really comes down to individual societies and systems, which are all connected through that electronic cyber domain. 

Sharryn Parker 

So will some of those costs, and this is where Australians will actually ask the question, some of those costs are going to undersea warfare up to $130 billion on AUKUS Pillar 1 and that is the provision of the Virginia Class submarine. There's also AUKUS Pillar 2 and a lot of money being spent into that environment and I find that a lot of, you know, a lot of the document is not spent on actually discussing where that is actually going to go, but we can add all of that detail up to a preference to leaning toward the exquisite as opposed to what is actually needed. Do you have any commentary around this idea that Australia loves to lean on the exquisite capability as opposed to the necessary capability that is perhaps less exquisite, more off the shelf? 

David Andrews  

We're hopefully making a step in the right direction when it comes to dialing back in some of those preferences for modification, shall we say, when it comes to the acquisition of the upgraded Megami frigates, which we are told will have minimum changes to specifications and requirements from the Japanese model. Whether that's is actually born out in practice, I think we're probably best to wait and see. I have my doubts, but at least the intent is there, let's say. So, let's celebrate the intent, but move it towards reality. One thing I reflect on a lot when it comes to the uncrewed system debates in Australia is just the nature of our geography and how it changes our priorities. So, to look at the example of Ukraine, they, of course, have, they're fighting across their entire country every day. So, they need to have coverage of all of that. Now they don't just have uncrewed systems, that's part of their mix and the document does lay out that as well. But they also have the advantage of exterior lines through Europe and supply lines and support and a secure Western border where they can receive supplies and munitions and things of that nature to keep them in the fight. Australia doesn't, we are extremely isolated. Even just the size of the nation we're talking about is a continent. And so we're trying to even maintain interior lines is incredibly difficult, let alone those exterior ones, as we're now seeing, say, with fuel supply. And at the moment, with some exceptions, I don't necessarily see that uncrewed systems are able to deliver what we need to do to defend Australia because of the range that we need to cover. We’re talking about sort of the massive sea states, whether it's in the Pacific and Indian Ocean or literally in the Southern Ocean, thousands of kilometres of distance that the coverage we need is so enormous that I think the weighting still inevitably has to be on these larger and more exquisite systems. But I'm reassured to see that there's an increased priority in the National Defence Strategy, as well as I guess in some recent days in the outskirts around the acquisition of some new Bushmasters, including with the future addition of counter drone directed energy weapons on those, so building in a very least the defensive system against those drones and building the kind of the scalable footprint for the large number, the triticale, the low cost within our sort of concept of war fighting. I'm maybe not the precise expert to say on what that looks like in the Australian context. know we have people across defence who are working on this day to day and that there is a sort of a footprint to grow. But I guess my natural caution is that I just don't think we can throw our lot in with those systems to the extent that some people might like, because I just, the threats that we are posturing against, I'm not sure that they are, at this point in time, able to do all of what's asked. I think my focus may be more on the defensive side, is we're seeing the impact of, whether it's say Ukrainian attacks on Russian strategic bombers or on their Black Sea fleet, we're seeing the effect of uncrewed systems on stationary, non-hardened targets that aren't sort of mentally in the space to respond to that. Now that I think is a real threat that we could conceivably face and that we can and should focus on is, yes, building up the sort of our own attritable forces, but defending assets we do have because of that isolation and that distance we need to cover, I think becomes an even greater priority than it might otherwise do. 

Sharryn Parker 

You know, what is a positive is also a negative. You know, with Australia having both one of the largest maritime and largest land domains in the world to defend, it's a big question on how we actually stretch that money, I think. One thing it does highlight is that the Indo-Pacific is a theatre. However, many people consider us to be in a global contest right now. So, when we talk about Europe and what is occurring in Ukraine. How does that actually relate back to the modern Australian defence problem? 

David Andrews 

Well, as we're just saying, I think it certainly relates in terms of the, the bit of path of capability development and the nature of how wars are fought is we're seeing innovation at an enormous scale going on, on the ground, in the air, at sea, in Ukraine at the moment. And that's, think, teaching us all the lessons on how wars are likely to be fought in the future. We're also, of course, seeing the involvement of North Korean personnel on the ground with Russia who now going back to train the North Korean military on how to fight these wars, I think we can be fairly confident that there are people from, whether directly or not from the PLA doing the same for China, much as we have Australian personnel who are helping train Ukrainians in the UK or elsewhere. So, it's drawing in people from around the world, at least on the sidelines of that. And I haven't, I haven't sort of fully gamed out this historical analogy, so I could well be slightly off-piste, but it reminds me a little bit of the involvement of the international legions in the Spanish Civil War in the lead up to the Second World War. It's a way in which different forces got practical training at somewhat of an arm's length from their own enterprise and brought those lessons back to then build into, whether that's the development of Blitzkrieg as a strategy or a tactic. But again, maybe it needs a bit more thought, but that's just something that I've been remaking on a little bit is whether those models are a useful historical comparison. I think it's certainly provoking a desire for states in the Indo-Pacific to do more together. I think we're recognising collectively that the threat environment is changing and that those conflicts that might start in a regional setting have a risk of spreading much further, much more quickly. And first time around, it was the, sort of, the grain shortages and the fuel shortages in Ukraine, which then had flow and effect through Africa and Europe. We're now seeing the Strait of Hormuz and the war with Iran having those at an even potentially greater scale throughout the global economy. So, I think we're seeing some of these conflicts and these wars highlighting the interconnected nature of the global economy and the global defence enterprise, not just the of conceptual and the strategic. We're seeing those real practical, biting economic realities. So, we look at, say, the European context, they're spending a lot more on defence now, they're doing a lot more locally as well. Now we can't ignore the fact that a large part of that is driven by US behaviour, which has forced them in that direction as a response to the way they feel they've been treated. And I think practically have been treated by the Trump administration. And so they are trying to build an even greater deal of self-reliance or self-sufficiency than we are or we could be capable of. But it's tightening those partnerships with Japan and to some extent with the Philippines as well as we're doing more and more with the Philippines as they are facing these threats on China. I think the internationalising dimension is there. I think there's still a necessary focus on what is precisely happening in our near region. But that doesn't change the fact, as you say, that these are connected into a wider global international set of challenges that are evolving by the day. 

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Sharryn Parker 

Can I ask you a question about the US? You know, do you think that this is a deliberate strategy by the US? Its behaviour toward Europe, its behaviour toward its allies, its behaviour throughout the world at the moment? 

David Andrews 

To try and compel them to spend more on defence? 

Sharryn Parker 

Yes. 

David Andrews 

I think yes and no, or maybe yes in two different ways. I think it's something that, that US governments have talked about for a very long time for 20 years or more to encourage allies to spend more on defence and security. I think that that's, that's true. So, in one sense, yes, I think it's a strategic objective of theirs to, get allies to carry more of that defence burden. By the same token, I don't think what they have been doing is principally focused on that. think the commentary and the attitudes towards Canada, towards Greenland, Panama, Venezuela, I think they point to a rather different strategy, which is not fundamentally, has no fundamental interest in allies and partners, basically. I think that's a significant risk. And it shows a level of disdain and contempt for their long-term allies and partners in many respects. And I think that's an enormous, enormous disruption to the system. So, it's one of the points which is absent in the strategy is a real consideration of the destabilising effect that the United States is having on the global order and on the attitudes and approaches of its allies and partners. Now, again, I understand why we haven't gone into a lot of detail on that in the strategy because it's, that's a very fraught and risky line to take when we are so reliant on the United States for our security and as the government does correctly point out that they are fundamental to achieving a balance of power in the Pacific. That's an unavoidable reality. But it's also somewhat unavoidable to acknowledge that they are having a significant destabilising effect on that same order that they are notionally trying to uphold. So, I think there is a level of intentionality there in the long term. But I think all of their precise decisions are not necessarily seeing as a coherent interconnected strategy because, to take the European example, they then turn around and say, ‘well, no, you can't build your own defence industry. You have to keep on buying our stuff’. Well, that's not actually if they wanted Europe to spend more money on defence and become more self-reliant, that's not how it's going to happen. But it is within the self-interest of pursuing greater investment and co-production with the United States, which again, make sense for an industrial and economic standpoint, but it's disconnected from that bigger objective. So, I'm not necessarily seeing it played out with a great level of interconnectedness and foresight in the day to day, but it does certainly sit within a bigger long-term, I guess, of trend of US government intent. 

Sharryn Parker  

So, noting the US remains, you know, a key partner and ally across all of our defence strategy. How are countries in South East Asia interpreting the strategy itself? 

David Andrews 

Well, there's a number of countries who are, I think, identified quite specifically as priorities and by name within Southeast Asia and East Asia more broadly. So, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, those are probably the ones that have received the biggest priority and focus, Indonesia as well. And that all makes sense. I think it's a fairly condensed, compact list of priority partners that Australia wants to be working with. I think sometimes in the past, these kind of documents have a tendency to sort of to list everyone in the entire region. And then you sort of get into the sort of the technical parsing of, well, was this one mentioned first or did like how long was its paragraph where was here? Whereas here, I think it's got a lot more of a focus on those that we do have close military ties with and practical ties with. So, the Philippines being one where, as I say, we're doing a lot more than we used to. whether it's joint exercises, whether it's cooperative activities through that exclusive economic zone, they're really at the forefront of Chinese maritime coercion. And so that remains a principal interest. Malaysia and Singapore are our partners through the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which again gets a bit of a name check here as something which in recent years has pivoted to more of a returning to a more of a focus on conventional military operations and training. And of course, our deep partnership with Japan on capability terms as well as a fellow ally of the United States is an ad-check there. think Indonesia is maybe the one that we are, it'll be interesting to see how that develops. And I say that sitting in Indonesia as I am right now, but they're a country who maintains close partnerships with lots of countries around the world, including Putin's Russia. And so that really will be a dynamic to watch. 

Sharryn Parker  

Do, does Indonesia perceive reassurance or escalation from this NDS? 

David Andrews  

I would be reasonably confident they would see it as reassuring because I think that the theme that we've, I think, been talking about consistently is that this isn't really a major departure from previous Australian strategies or commentary. These are the things that the government has been talking about for several years now. The role played by China and Russia and others, that's not exactly a secret that we've been, we've been hiding away our concerns about and the major developments that have been taking place, I think have been well communicated. The biggest one of course in the past was the way in which AUKUS was established and that did create some consternation within the region, I think understandably, but I'm reasonably confident that a lot of those disruptions are now behind us and particularly with the establishment of the Jakarta Treaty, I think that points to a really positive direction in bioreactual ties with Indonesia. And I think we probably expect to see more in sort of the bilateral cooperation and exercise stage. I think it's a long way short of a formal alliance or anything like that. I think that's not the direction we're talking about, but I think there's lots of opportunities there to model the reassurance that we're asking China to provide. That's a constant theme throughout the strategy as well is that this is built up by China but it's cupping without clarity, without reassurance, without that sort of transparency that we'd like. This is a way that we are being transparent. We're laying out our intent and our plans and how they operate throughout the region. And now there's a basis from here for our defence and foreign affairs officials to go forth and explain these issues in greater detail throughout the region. 

Sharryn Parker  

Does the Defence Five Power arrangement follow that entire perspective? 

David Andrews  

I think there's probably a level of sort of healthy discussion amongst the five powers as to what their priorities are and how they perceive it as an entity. Now, I certainly wouldn't want to go out here and say that the FPDA is the basis for, again, like a major sort of force projection enterprise. Its focus is exclusively on the protection of Malaysia and Singapore. So that's what it was designed to do. That's what it maintains. But over time, it has evolved to take on a range of new aspects of conflict or of threat. So, it includes things like humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and cyber security and anti-piracy, as well as those core military tasks around sort of maritime warfighting, maritime domain awareness, of integrated air and sort of zonal defence and things like that. So, it started off with a quite direct military role. It then evolved broader role over the intervening 50 years. And now over the last few years, it has started to recenter more of that original military purpose within its planning and operations. So, I think that's an interesting trend line that it's showing that kind of even for countries that maybe don't have as much capability like New Zealand, or in a difficult political strategic spot like Malaysia and indeed Singapore's world, perhaps lesser extent. It is still following those kind of trend lines we're seeing in the broader regional security environment, which is the recognition of threats and challenges are more prominent than perhaps they were even five years ago. And it's people trying to use those existing structures as best they can to prepare for that. Or in the case of things like the Quadrilateral cooperation between the US, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, establishing new patterns of cooperation to, again, shore up a level of collective deterrence and cooperation in the region as well. 

Sharryn Parker 

Yeah, yeah. David, can I ask you one final question? Deterrence by denial. This strategy emphasises it. What does that actually look like in practice for the Australian Defence Force for the next couple of years? 

David Andrews  

My instinctive question is deterring who from doing what? Now, I appreciate that those are questions that would be answered in a classified version of this document rather than in the public unclassified documents. So we can't be too picky in what it lays out. But it looks to me like the trend lines have sort of been laid down and the intent is now moving from planning to delivery. So the fundamentals of the strategy would of course be a lot further along had we started this process 10 or 15 years ago. And we wouldn't still be waiting for new fleets of surface vessels or of submarines or indeed armoured fighting vehicles for the army and things of that nature. But that can't be changed. Where we are and all of those expectations have been laid out through the Defence Strategic Review through the 2024 National Defence Strategy and now in the 2026 Defence Strategy. So we're seeing a set of priorities that have been reinforced and embedded over the last three years. So I think that's on production. It's on guided weapons, particularly to include some mission stocks and sort of magazine in depth. It's on industrial cooperation on new and innovative forms of defence and war fighting. But it's doing those as quickly as possible and as a greater scale as possible. So I think the strategy is fairly well set. The issue now is on delivery. And so that is not something that can be fully addressed through a 120-page document and an accompanying other 120-page document. But it's showing us what government wants and has been consistent in asking for several years now. So I think some of the reforms to defence have been laid out in the NDS as well, whether it's around National Armaments Director and some of the changes there around capability development acquisition and management. think that is, as it always has been, fundamental to bringing forces and capabilities online as quickly as possible and to the highest degree we can in the short term. Of course, what can be done in the next two-year cycle, I think we have to be realistic that it takes time to build factories, build production lines, train workers, recruit people, train them to operate these vessels and other pieces of equipment. That's one of the challenges of a two-year cycle is it set a lot of expectations between documents when actually some of these are about building those long-term pipelines. Again, it doesn't let the government off the hook. They have to keep on putting money and attention into this to make sure that happens because it doesn't happen without constant focus. But we have to be realistic and say some of these things, will take a long time to develop. And that's where the whole of national defence model really comes to the fore, is it's looking at what other parts of government can do to support this mission. Is it our diplomats finding extra fuel supplies or trying to get slightly ahead of another competitor within the manufacturing pipeline for X or Y? Is it our scientists and our industry experts finding new and innovative ways to build things better, build them cheaper, recycle materials, become more fuel resilient. These are all positive things which can be done more quickly. And we just maybe have to be a little bit circumspect over how quickly we can bring some of these brand-new capabilities online in the next two years, which I'll also note the next, if it's released at this time in 2028, will be right around the next federal election. So that also raise an interesting question about what NDS 2028 looks like and whether there actually will be one released before the election. And if there was a change of government, would it be maintained and respected? So that's, think, a really interesting transition point for the whole NDS model is the 2028 version. 

Sharryn Parker 

Yeah, it's a great, look it’s a great point to actually end on. I really like your term deterring who from doing what. It opens up a whole load of other questions, a whole load of other subjects to debate and discuss and probably leads us in a, or puts us in really great position to have a number of key discussions around what the national defence strategy means for national security strategy moving forward. So, David Andrews, thank you very much for your opinions and consideration today. Really appreciate it. We'll talk again soon. 

David Andrews 

Thanks, Sharryn, great to be with you.  

National Security Podcast 

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