Transcript

How has Australia’s security landscape changed over the last decade?  

How was the Indo-Pacific concept born, and how has it evolved?  

What are the biggest threats facing Australia right now? 

In this episode, Rory Medcalf joins David Andrews to look back on the past decade in which he has served as Head of the ANU National Security College (NSC). They discuss the evolution of global threats over this period and how NSC has shifted its work to respond.  

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

Rory Medcalf

Sadly, a lot of the national security issues that we've been talking about over the past 10 years are getting real and they will be intensely real over the next 10 years. You the future is here.

National Security Podcast

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific produced by the ANU National Security College.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Manager for Policy and Engagement at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Namburi people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

This week I'm joined by a very familiar figure to most, if not all of our listeners, the head of NSC, Professor Rory Medcalf. For those that aren't familiar with Rory, he has more than 30 years of experience across diplomacy, intelligence analysis and think tanks, academia and journalism, including as the founding director of the International Security Program at the Lowey Institute with the then Office of National Assessments and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. And he's been the head of NSC since 2015. This year is NSC's 15th year and we've just moved past 10 and a half years, Rory, since you were appointed head of NSC.

I thought it'd be a fantastic opportunity to have you on the podcast as sitting in the guest hot seat this time rather than as the host for a bit of a retrospective with NSC's human urtext. To assuage any concerns in our listeners, this was my idea. This isn't a self-indulgent process, but it's one that I think we have a lot to learn both from your experience in the role and how you've seen this sector grow over the last decade. So, welcome to the podcast.

Rory Medcalf

David, thank you. look, I'm glad you've acknowledged this was your initiative, not mine. I am privately pretty pleased though that you've asked me to give a retrospective because now is a perfect time to reflect on what we've achieved at the National Security College, how relevant I think it is to Australia's national interests during these challenging times. But also I'll try to take this as an opportunity to give some candid reflections on what we do well, we could perhaps do differently, what I've learned along the way, and really I think how we add value. So thank you.

David Andrews

So as I say, you've been in the role for a bit over a decade now, so that's serving at the helm under four prime ministers through four federal elections and now over two thirds of NSC's existence. What would you say are the most consequential changes you've seen to Australia's national security landscape in that time?

Rory Medcalf

Well, you're not making me feel young there reflecting on that deep history, but I think we do have some perspective at the college now on the strategic environment facing Australia. And I guess what strikes me having been in this role now for a bit over 10 years is how much our strategic environment has changed in that time. I think we anticipated some of those changes, but they're really striking home now with a vengeance, but also how much the national security awareness and conversation in Australia has changed.

So when I took on this role, the beginning of 2015, a lot of the Australian national security debate was pretty fixated on terrorism, which of course remains a serious issue, a serious risk. But there wasn't a lot of public awareness or even frankly, political awareness in my view of the geopolitical challenges, the way in which power politics was going to affect Australia's interests principally with the way that an assertive China is using its power. And I say is in the present tense because it's obviously manifesting more and more, but also the way in which nations generally would quite ruthlessly pursue their interests in a competitive world.

Back then, I think we were still, of us struggling with the tension between a very positive economic story on the one hand, and a story that somehow borders were breaking down and the world was headed to a kind of more cornucopian future of positive globalization and that the idea of interstate conflict was a thing of the past. Reconciling that with the reality that even then, 10 years ago, in China in particular, there was an awareness of a very relentless pursuit of national and ideological interest. Russia was under Putin already, I think becoming a formidable and aggressive force on the world stage. Just think to the initial attack on Crimea, on Ukraine, the shoot down of the Malaysian Airlines flight as well with the loss tragically of so many Australian lives.

And so over the last decade, I think we've seen a journey from that sense that somehow national security and strategic challenges were not front of mind for most Australians and for most of our political class to a recognition that sadly these issues are going to be front of mind and that in a way all the other layers, the economic dimension of security, cohesion in our society, protection of our democratic institutions, the ability to mount effective military deterrence but also effective diplomatic statecraft, that all of these things are actually connected. And we're seeing that now today, I think.

forcefully in international affairs. So I'd like to think that what we've learned through the college during that time and what we've sought to teach through the National Security College has reflected the realities of Australia's situation.

David Andrews

Of course now I suppose we're seeing a situation, as you say, things are breaking down a bit, but also that the public sentiment and the public understanding of security is changing a lot as well because whether it's from Chinese economic coercion or from, I guess now the challenges with the Trump administration, all of these things are very much constantly on the front pages, they're being felt by everyday Australians. So I suppose that also changes a bit of the dynamic of where the institution fits in that sort of public communication and community uplift role, would you say?

Rory Medcalf

So let's talk a bit about what the college is, if you like, and the role of the National Security College. And again, reflecting, when I took up this role at the start of 2015, there was a clear sense that our business, first and foremost, was education in quite a narrow sense, and I think a very positive and valuable sense. I don't mean that negatively at all, but education without necessarily looking at the much broader capability uplift that we've embarked on over the past 10 years.

We were doing what we were set up to do under the Rudd government in 2010, that is, we were training and educating substantial numbers of Australian government officials through our short courses. We also had an active academic program to develop deeper expertise among future generations, students who might go on to work in government or might go on to other careers. And those were very important foundations for the college.

But I think that quite actively over the past 10 years, I've tried to help redirect the college to look more expansively at the idea of lifting national capability across the board. And that includes public awareness, but it also includes, for example, national security literacy among our parliamentarians. And now it includes work that we're doing very directly as community outreach and community consultation.

I guess, beneath all of this, there is a narrative or a concept and that is a much more inclusive approach to what is national security and something that I was, I think, convinced and passionate about from the beginning of the role was that we should not think of national security very narrowly. There certainly were some voices in the academic and policy community who would take a very narrow definition and would try to sort of point out to us at the National Security College that somehow National security was only domestic issues and I never bought that argument.

I think the boundaries for many years now have been breaking down between what is domestic and what is international? What is security? What is economics?  What is the role of people in security? What is the role of technology in security? And we're seeing all of that reflected now in the need for a much more comprehensive approach to national preparedness.

So think that's a slightly long-winded way of saying that in trying to redefine and reinterpret the role of the college over the past 10 years as being about overall national capability uplift. And that is something that is now very reflected in our governance and in the relationship we have with government. We were trying to anticipate the way the world was changing and frankly trying to keep pace with the way the world was changing. And that remains a pretty deep challenge.

David Andrews

To slightly think a bit broader across our sector, let's say. So whether you call that the think tank sector or research or universities, however you want to classify it, there's more bodies like ours in the Australian ecosystem now than there would have been 10 years ago, or least they're much more established. How do you think that reflects the shifting perceptions from the other side?

So much as you were trying to take in a sea on a particular path and expand that remit, obviously that's been endorsed at each stage by government and by the university, but what sort of role do you think they see for an institution like ours? Is there a bit of a feedback loop or is it mostly us sort of pushing to take on a bigger role?

Rory Medcalf

I think it's both and I think let's situate this in that ecosystem as you say. So Australia, a middle power, lots of potential but quite finite resources and I do think that people are at the core of that. The quality of our human capital is what it's all about and that's where I do strongly support the education mission of the college.

But because we have finite resources, we need to marshal them as effectively as we can and do that in this very contestable democratic framework that's close to Australian values and identity. And so universities and think tanks, and these are quite distinct institutions, have very important roles to play. So do the media, so does other forms of public engagement. And I guess I try to help position the college to span as much of that as possible.

You know, the ideal model for us is one where we, and I will address the core of your question in a moment, but the ideal model for us is one where we conduct deep academic research or deep and rigorous policy-oriented research within the university context, making use of the expertise of experienced policy practitioners as well as subject matter experts among the academic community.

We then seek to translate that knowledge into very policy relevant ideas, recommendations, judgments, options. We try and do it with a very future focus and we might touch on a little entity at the college here called the Futures Hub, which I think has been very successful over those years. And we try to get those recommendations to decision makers as really alternative material for their thinking about policy.

And we try to do this in a transparent way in the national interest, a transparent and trusted way. Now each of those elements touches on what a different part of the ecosystem does. So universities do some very distinct things with regard to high quality academic teaching and rigorous academic research. Think tanks have the agility and the connections with the policy community and the license to push boundaries. And then of course, within government, there's all sorts of classified and trusted advice that goes to government that most of the public never have the opportunity to see.

And so we are trying to bridge as much of that as possible and I make no apologies for that. The demand side of that, I think is there. I think to answer your question, that is that although the existing ecosystem of think tanks and universities do some fantastic things, as you mentioned, I worked for a number of years at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, which I think remains a great Australian think tank on the international stage. And I've also worked in inside government as well. But each of those institutions also has their own limitations.

And I think the advantage or the privilege that we have at the National Security College is that through our engagement with government - 19 agencies of the Australian government have effectively invested in the National Security College – we are trusted. We can work in a semi-insider capacity through educational programs with government and through ensuring that when we produce quality advice, it can reach the right thinkers and decision makers in government. But we can also play in the public domain and we can also draw on deep academic expertise.

Now, there's a risk there that all of this stretches us too thinly. And so a constant challenge we have here is being able to reconcile all of these priorities. And yes, we are responding to demand signals, but increasingly, I think now that the National Security College does have a solid reputation in the policy world as well as in the educational world. We already had that education reputation when I joined this organization.

Now that we've got that reputation as effectively a policy powerhouse, as well as an educational provider, I think that we're in a position to set our own agenda to an increasing degree and recognise that we don't just listen to the demand signals from government and the community, but we can also recommend what we think national priorities should be based on the very deep exposure and wide exposure we've had to a wide range of opinion.

And those recommendations may well chime with where government's going, they may well chime with where community sentiment's going, but I hope that sometimes we're getting ahead of the curve. And I think the work that we've done, for example, on national preparedness and resilience, we might touch on that briefly, work that we did a number of years ago on economic coercion and foreign interference. There are some very clear examples now where colleagues at the National Security College have helped anticipate and shape the national agenda in constructive ways.

David Andrews

You've spoken a little bit already about the education dimension of what NSC does. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more on how that education role is connected to the national interest, whether that's the pure academic education as well as the education of people across the public service?

Rory Medcalf

Well, I think you used the allusion earlier to an urtext. So let's have an origin myth as well, the origin story of the National Security College, which is a true story. And that is Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and I should pay tribute particularly to Duncan Lewis, who was then the National Security Advisor, recognized the need for, as they saw it, a school or a college to build a community out of the Australian national security agencies and institutions and to build that community through education. To break down bureaucratic silos, to recognize that, you know, for example, know, Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Defence, the intelligence agencies, and what eventually became the Home Affairs Department and others should all be working as closely together as possible and building frankly a shared national security culture.

So a lot of our education mission hasn't been simply about imparting the latest specialist knowledge or the deepest specialist knowledge. We're never going to be a one-stop shop for that. There is a healthy range of partners out there in the academic and the think tank community and frankly the professional development community among agencies. But what the National Security College can quite uniquely do is be that safe space for bringing together all of those cultures to build frankly a new hybrid that can maximize the knowledge and the talent that we have. And so we see examples, we see some great case studies. I've heard stories of groups of Australian government officials who've come through our signature executive courses and have formed informal inter-agency working groups on the basis of those courses.

So on issues ranging as widely as the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic or even the very traumatic evacuation from Afghanistan some years ago, we hear cases of groups of officials who began to break down inter-agency boundaries through studying together in the National Security College and have gone on to translate that throughout their careers. And so just to wrap up on that point, David, you the education mission of the college is really twofold. One is that executive and professional education of many thousands now of Australian government officials who've gone through our programs.

I think pretty soon we'll be approaching the 20,000 mark and we can safely say that tens of thousands have gone through our doors, but also the hundreds of students who've undertaken deep academic study with us and have gone on to careers, whether it's in government or whether it's in the non-government sector or indeed as academics. We now have, for example, academic staff who began their lives with us as master’s students, Master’s, PhD and now on staff. We're seeing that enormously satisfying effect of intergenerational influence. And I think that is education at its best in the national interest.

David Andrews

Still sticking with this, I suppose, bigger sectoral considerations, we recently had the release of the Varghese review into Australian think tanks. Now, it would seem odd if we didn't talk about that to some extent, but was there anything that you took away from that that you thought was particularly pertinent to work we've done or that validated or challenged any of the things that relate to NSC particularly or the future of the sector more broadly?

Rory Medcalf

Lots there to unpack. So I think most listeners who are interested in Australian national security would be broadly aware of the independent review into strategic policy work. The Varghese review undertaken by eminent former senior official Peter Varghese last year. And that review looked particularly at think tanks, but also university affiliated institutions such as the National Security College who received substantial funding from the Australian government.

And I guess, you know, we can all form our own view about that review and it's available publicly and I encourage everyone to take a look at it. But the review was I think particularly about ensuring not only value for money, but also value for the nation, you know, impact from these institutions. For the National Security College, it was an illuminating and useful story that the review told because I think it recognized that institutions such as ours cannot exist without some degree of government buy-in, but nor should we be entirely dependent on government support. We need to be active in building our own impact and building our own sustainability.

But importantly, although there's been some criticism of that review, it did make the point that the aggregate of funding and the aggregate of resourcing that Australia provides for institutions like ours, and it's not a massive amount of money, it's a few tens of millions of dollars around many institutions, is an incredibly valuable investment in the national interest and frankly good value for money and should be if anything, increased. But we've got no illusions that money is in short supply.

So I found that review to be a pretty positive indication of the work we've done, the model that we have where we have independence balanced with a sense of responsibility towards the national interest, which is in our charter, that we are responsive to the kinds of policy questions that government needs answered. I think that's a pretty useful model going forward for a whole range of institutions in our sector. But just to wrap up on that, what I'd love to see for the future is growth in this sector.

That is growth in the number, the scale and the quality of entities that provide alternative insight to government. Evidence-based, respectful, practical, future-facing insight to government on policy challenges and security challenges. Those entities could be standalone think tanks, they could be affiliated with universities, they could be of a wide range of scale.

Entities like those in Australia only work if they're a healthily competitive ecosystem, so that there's collaboration and respect among them. And I actually think that is the direction of travel. I will also take that opportunity to talk a little bit about the university sector, if you don't mind, because there is a lot of scrutiny at the moment on the Australian university sector. There's clearly a bit of scrutiny on this university among others.

And there's understandable concern within the university sector that the relative scale of investment in Australia and research funding from government is not sufficient. On the one hand, the university sector is expected to be a massive contributor to the national interest and universities are a source of great comparative advantage for Australia. But on the other hand, this requires serious and sustained investment.

That conversation has a long way to play out and I think the National Security College will only be a small part of it. But I think if we were looking years ahead, we are going to have to develop new metrics for impact and value from whether it's universities or think tanks in supporting the national interest because whether we like it or not, we're living through a very confronting time internationally and for Australia as a middle power to protect its interests and have influence, it's going to have to much more efficiently harness what it has.

David Andrews

So noting all those different changes that you've outlined about Australia's regional environment and I guess our security posture, what's worrying you most at the moment?

Rory Medcalf

I fear that we may get so fixated on the defence debate and the defence side of security that we forget that has to be nested in a much deeper and practical understanding of how to protect our national interests. Personally, I think that there is a good case for Australia to have substantial and indeed increased defence spending. Personally, I think there are good arguments to try to preserve the AUKUS arrangement and do everything we can to adjust the US alliance in our interests. But at the same time, that's not all we can be doing. And so I worry that we forget that potential adversaries to Australia could, frankly, subvert the nation, could bring the nation to its knees without firing a shot, without using any kind of military force.

Imagine circumstances where much of the defence force is tied up with dealing with natural disasters or the impacts of climate change, where there's perhaps a maritime blockade of Australia because of crisis elsewhere in the region or conflict elsewhere in the region, where our social cohesion is being undermined by sabotage and disinformation and the deliberate cultivation of differences among parts of the Australian community, where there are attacks on our infrastructure, banking, information, water, you name it, undersea cables, and where effectively this is all happening at the height of the Australian summer holidays. I do worry that we're not focused enough on preparing our population to be resilient in circumstances like that. And yet it's fixable, it's doable.

David Andrews

sounds like a lot for the people drafting the 2026 National Defence Strategy and a possible future national security strategy to keep in mind.

Rory Medcalf

Indeed. I think that should be a priority issue to be addressed and it's not going to be fixed simply by some magic number of defence spending and it's certainly not going to be fixed by a kind of Maginot line of ships in the water.

David Andrews

One of the most enduring aspects of your time here at NSC has been the promotion and the wide uptake of the term Indo-Pacific as a concept that sort of frames Australia's region and the wider region that we exist in. And I think notably through your 2020 book, Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future. Now was hoping you could reflect a bit on that idea and that experience, both from a personal level, but also as an example of impactful policy analysis from a non-government institution.

Rory Medcalf

Yes, the Indo-Pacific. can't escape that label and no problem there. So I didn't anticipate that the Indo-Pacific idea would become so influential so quickly in Australia or in the international system. I did see it as an idea whose time had come and my work on that and the work of others, because I certainly don't claim any sort of sole credit there, there are a whole range of of thinkers and policymakers who've had a hand in this. In fact, I should just mention in passing that one of those minds, the late Brendan Sargeant, a former colleague here at the university and the Australian Defence Department, I think was the key person inside the policy community who pushed the Indo-Pacific concept more than a decade ago now.

But my own efforts to instil Indo-Pacific thinking in the broader policy debate and the public debate have chimed with a recognition in other countries, in Japan for example, in Indonesia, in India, in Europe, and of course in the United States as well, that we can't think about our region in those narrow constructs of the late 20th century, the old East Asian hemisphere map that Gareth Evans used to have where Australia's interests suddenly stopped mattering as soon as you went west of Perth. That's a little ungenerous but that was a kind of a mindset that suited the 1990s.

We're now in this two ocean system where Australia is quite central to a much larger region and where the global centre of economic and strategic gravity has moved to this region. So global interests are engaged. This means that Australia actually has more agency and more centrality than we've had in the past, as do some of our friends such as Indonesia and the other Southeast Asians, whether we make the most of that is another story. So I think it's interesting that a lot of the Indo-Pacific debate has focused on the idea that this is all about balancing China. And I think it is partly about balancing China and providing sort of an intellectual framework for building coalitions to balance Chinese power. But it's also a very realistic recognition of the system that we're all operating in.

And that's why even in a country like China that doesn't like the term Indo-Pacific, there's a recognition that that is the strategic environment we're going to be active within. How did we get here? So the Indo-Pacific is a good case study for policy entrepreneurship. And that is that it's never the work of one person or one institution. It's really about anticipating change in the international environment, promoting ideas that push the boundaries of what is accepted discourse - I do remember plenty of voices being sceptical or even ridiculing the idea - but also recognizing that you have to work with those in the bureaucratic community and the political community to gradually foster comfort in new thinking.

In the case of the Indo-Pacific, I history was our friend. In fact, It's interesting that one of the most powerful emblems of the Indo-Pacific, that is the pivoted map that you see often now of Australia, where our West Coast and our North Coast have been pivoted even more towards the top of the map. The West Coast is sort of towards the top of the map. Recognises in a kind of a portrait frame, our close connections with Asia, our close connections with India, Southeast Asia, China, North Asia as well, whether it's economically or in terms of the security environment we have to work in.

That map is from 1848 and part of my research, working with some very good research assistants, was to find this map from the Journal of an Australian Explorer back then and recognize that what's old is new again. And I find it very satisfying now to be traveling around different parts of Australia and to be informed by government or corporate colleagues who I encounter about this fantastic map that they've stumbled upon. So sometimes I bite my tongue and don't say that I had a hand in that map, but other times I guess I've had to acknowledge that as a small success in policy influence. But look, to wrap up that part of the conversation, as I said, I recognize that any new idea, an influential idea in policy has many parents, many progenitors. And also we always have to be willing to change our minds.

And so, you know, there are strengths and weaknesses in the Indo-Pacific idea. It's interesting, for example, that, you know, friends in Pacific Island countries don't particularly like it because they feel it isn't great for their own agency. But also some of the dynamics that have brought this Indo-Pacific moment about, particularly, for example, the growth of China and India as externally facing trading and economic powers with military footprints to follow, the centrality of the Indian Ocean in economic connections between Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa and so forth. All of that could change. So it'll be fascinating to see what the Indo-Pacific era looks like in a couple of decades from now, or the Indo-Pacific concept looks like in a few decades from now when, for example, Arctic sea lanes are much more central to the world. We have to constantly be ready to change our minds when the facts change.

National Security Podcast

We'll be right back.

What roles should nuclear technologies play in our world? How do we ensure they're used and managed safely, securely, and responsibly? Nuclear Matters is a new podcast from the Australian National University College of Systems and Society. Through this series, we explore the complexities surrounding nuclear technologies in Australia that support everything from critical medical treatments to energy generation. If that sounds intriguing to you, search Nuclear Matters in your favourite podcast player or click on the link in this week's show notes and hit subscribe. That way, you'll never miss an episode.

David Andrews

Obviously, a lot's changed in the last six months. Are you still confident that China won't map the future? And what more do we need to do to ensure Australia's freedom and sovereignty in those years ahead?

Rory Medcalf

When you publish a book, you work with your publisher on a creative and provocative title. And so we did come up with the subtitle or the secondary title of the book, Why China Won't Map the Future. And I stand by that at one level because the book was never meant to be a sort of a China collapseist dissertation. I wasn't saying that somehow Chinese power was fragile or an illusion or that China was going to collapse.

But I was arguing and I stand by this, that China would become more powerful in a multipolar Indo-Pacific, in a region of many powers, of the agency of many powers. And just last week I was in Malaysia with the foreign minister launching some work on conflict prevention. In her speech there, she again emphasized the importance of the agency of many powers in the Indo-Pacific. So think that is an idea that is alive and well. I also think though that on the question of China and the future, we have to avoid the parochialism of the present.

I mean, right now we're recording this in July 2025 when China is looking on the up and America is looking on the ropes. It seems to have put itself there. But as I said, it is a multipolar system and the internal problems that China has had accumulating for decades have not gone away. There's still plenty of speculation about what happens if and when there's leadership succession. There's the fundamental question of how dangerously the Chinese leadership has tied their own legitimacy and authority to the need for an assertive posture abroad, especially against Taiwan. In other words, it's a high risk future for China.

So I still stand by that view that whatever we do as a nation in our relationship with China has to be deeply risk informed. And that could be risk informed engagement, which I hope is the kind of engagement that the prime minister is on at the moment. It's certainly a concept that I've been keen to encourage in my own work with government on China policy, or whether it is risk-informed diversification of our economic relationships and a recognition that no matter where things with the United States go under the Trump administration, Australia has to make itself more capable in a security sense. And that goes back to the mission of the National Security College where I think we can really help on that journey.

David Andrews

Now, without just focusing on your book and the rest of the work that's going on here, assuming that you would rank this song as one of those, what else would you consider to be your proudest moments in your time at NSC?

Rory Medcalf

I would turn that around, David. It's not so much my proudest moments, it's the proudest moments of the National Security College. And I think certainly the book on the Indo-Pacific was a valuable breakthrough for me and the college provided a great platform for that. I'm immensely grateful that the college hosted the launch of that five years ago, which actually was a rare moment of bipartisanship in Australian foreign policy. Bringing together the then foreign minister, Maurice Payne and the then shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, to co-launch the book, I think was a really strong moment for the national security college and a strong moment for the debate.

But most of the achievements that I associate with the national security college over the past 10 years have not been my achievements. They've been the achievements of this highly motivated, committed, diverse team that we have. A team that includes subject matter experts, university professionals, administrative staff, but also communication staff, policy staff, and lots of secondees out of Australian government agencies. And when I look at the proud moments that that community has generated, very high on the list would be the big conference we held last year, Securing Our Future, which was I think the most substantial gathering to talk about Australia's future security that I've certainly seen in my lifetime only to be outdone by the next conference that we hold a year from now.

And which also, by the way, was the launch pad for our national community consultations work that we're doing. I'm also very proud of the work the college has done on building a much more inclusive Australian national security community. So two conferences on women in national security, a whole set of processes and events, sometimes behind the scenes on building a more holistic national security community on the careers of women in national security on cultural and linguistic diversity and national security. And I have colleagues who've initiated and driven those fantastic initiatives.

The work we've done on engaging with the Australian Parliament, again something of a breakthrough for the college, and the work we've done on thinking about the future, the so-called futures hub. Look, last of all, and it's a long list, so I just can't name everything, is that intergenerational aspect, the fact that we see students who've gone on to careers now in national security. You know that the institution is a success when you see that intergenerational impact when you see your students or your former students who've risen to senior levels in government service or who are senior advisors to ministers or who are journalists or making other impact on the national debate. When you see your students who are next generation academic researchers and teachers who really are bringing knowledge and influence to new generations.

David Andrews

Well, obviously in any role over a decade and in any life as well effectively, you learn a lot along the way. So sort of thinking back in the time you've had here at NSC, are there things that you wish you knew earlier or that you would do differently if you had your time again?

Rory Medcalf

What would I do differently? It's a good question. Look, I think a core part of the role here has been leadership. You know, it's only a small institution to lead, but it is a complex institution. And I guess I've learned along the way that, you need to make some quite difficult decisions quite quickly. So we navigate, for example, a really singular set of relationships of many government agencies and the university, the Australian National University, which is quite a complex institution in itself.

And yet the National Security College has quite a privileged place at the nexus of those two worlds. So I think in retrospect, there are times where I probably could have worked to leverage that a little bit more quickly. Things like a relationship with the federal parliament, for example, which is a real highlight of our work. We've only picked that up in the last few years. We could have moved sooner on that. Things like our attempts to help the national debate on preparedness and resilience, we're moving on that now. We could have perhaps moved a few years earlier.

I think in many ways the challenges and opportunities are a microcosm for the nation and that is bringing together scarce resources during complexity and during confronting and challenging times and doing that for the national interest. I think we've got a good story to tell, but I certainly think that the greatest achievements of the college have been in last couple of years.

David Andrews

Where would you like to see NSC and perhaps our sector more broadly over the next 10 years?

Rory Medcalf

Well, sadly, a lot of the national security issues that we've been talking about over the past 10 years are getting real and they will be intensely real over the next 10 years. You the future is here. So that idea of policy institutions or research institutions or educational institutions somehow being able to sit back and admire the problem is dead.

The National Security College and our whole sector, universities, think tanks and the like, are going to have to be deeply engaged in the national interest in the years ahead because we don't know what the shocks or crises will be or when exactly they will come, but we know that they will happen. I think that there are other structural issues we're going to have to come to terms with as well. You know, issues about resourcing, issues about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce. Issues about the future of Australia's security partnerships, including the alliance with the US.

Government is going to have to get more and more real about those issues and going to have to be open to constructive advice from our sector. And our sector is going to have to be confident and timely and respectful in the way that it offers that advice. So really an acceleration of what we've seen in the last few years. I wish colleagues and eventually successors all the best with that challenge.

David Andrews

You've had what I would consider to be a fairly unique career path in the Australian policy system. So first, you were a journalist, then a diplomat in India, in Japan and Papua New Guinea before pivoting to intelligence analysis at the then office of national assessments and subsequently moving to the Lowy Institute as we talked a little bit about and now NSC over this past decade. So what advice do you have for the next generation of Australian national security professionals? I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who look at your career and think, how do I get that? So how did you or how do you?

Rory Medcalf

Well, firstly, think that list of the things I've done suggests I've never had an honest job as a friend has once pointed out introducing me at a conference. But look, the reality is, David, that emerging professionals in the Australian policy community, the national security community, the foreign policy community, are growing up in a very different era to the one, I guess, where I was socialized in the 1990s. I took the rather unlikely decision in the 1990s that it was worth investing one's career in security and strategic issues at a time when the world seemed to be focused on economics and globalization and really the breakdown of borders and the abolition of interstate conflict.

The tragic reality is that my accidental interest in those subjects a few decades ago has been usefully prescient. And I guess professionally I've benefited from that investment. My biggest advice to young Australians who want to make a contribution in the national interest is to be flexible and agile, to look for opportunities, but also to be patient. We get a lot of people at the National Security College who want to look at careers in particular parts of government, for example, and our advice to them is always, maybe you can go through that door, but maybe you should be open to a different door and be open to lateral movement.

I think also as someone who came into the bureaucracy from an earlier career in journalism, I was someone who was always a little bit uncomfortable with hierarchy and process. I'll be kind of honest about that. And while I've learned over time the need to respect hierarchy and process, I think that younger Australians should always be looking for opportunities to have impact and make a difference outside of the traditional bureaucratic structures.

So I think some of the most inspiring things I've seen in my time at the college have been young Australians who've set up their own youth organizations, Young Australians in International Affairs or the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit or organizations like that, where they're building their own professional networks, their own career networks. They're making a difference. They're getting noticed. That's probably the model for the future. And that's something that doesn't replicate my own experience.

So I think that openness, that curiosity, that flexibility - that's the way to go. And finally, don't be afraid to move in and out of government. Don't think of any particular job as a job for life. And I know you yourself have worked in government and you're now here in the National Security College in the grey zone, I guess, as we would see it. One of the weaknesses in Australia is that a huge amount of talent gets locked up in purely government careers without the opportunity to move in and out of government.

And a lot of other talent doesn't necessarily consider government careers or the national interest to be their thing. And by the time, perhaps later in life, they are interested, the system doesn't adapt to let them in. So the more career mobility that you can have, the better in my view. I think that's the way of the future and the system's going to have to evolve to that if Australia wants to make use of the brilliant human capital that it has.

David Andrews

Well Rory, that is an enormously wide-ranging conversation on what has been a highly interesting and impactful decade of time here at the National Security College. And I suppose in some ways also tying a of a bow on many things that have been continual threads throughout your entire career to date. So thanks so much for spending the time with us on the podcast and for sharing those experiences and insights with the audience.

Rory Medcalf

My pleasure.

National Security Podcast 

Thank you for listening to the National Security Podcast. We welcome listener feedback and suggestions at any time. So please get in contact at natsecpodatanu.edu.au. For more important conversations about Australia's national security, please subscribe to the podcast, our YouTube channel and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to receive the latest updates.