 It's an interesting time, I think, to start thinking you're new about Australian security. Still somewhat a new century. And also, of course, recently we have another new prime minister. So adapting to that may be interesting in the security context. And I know that Rory will have a few things to say about what we might expect for Australian security under the prime minister ship led by Malcolm Turnbull. So without any further ado, let me introduce Professor Rory Minkoff, the head of the NSC. Thanks very much, Matt. So ladies and gentlemen, first I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Turabala and Jagara peoples. And I pay respect to their elders past and present. I want to welcome you all to this special event, this lecture to introduce the work of the National Security College of the Australian National University. Today it seems pretty natural, I'm afraid, for us to talk about something called national security. But unfortunately, the term national security, while it's very easy and convenient, shorthand in the Australian public and political debate can also be quite a divisive shorthand. We have a problem there. Typically, the proponents of the term tend to invoke it to privilege a range of issues from the prevention of illegal migration right through to countering terrorism, building warships, usually in Adelaide, and explaining the purpose of military operations overseas. In this view, from this point of view, national security requires extraordinary measures, a high degree of secrecy, the exercise of executive power, strong funding, and an acceptance of risk and burden in the name of the greater good. The terms critics, on the other hand, also find it a pretty convenient and multi-purpose formulation. Too often they deploy it to deplore it to dismiss or demonise the policy measures enacted in its name. So typically, the critics of a national security approach will use this term as a catch-all for all the policies and all the decisions that they say should be rejected, as needless, as an affront to civil liberties, to humanitarian goals, and the rights and the needs of the many to enjoy untroubled lives. The critics portray national security as a political imperative that is the opposite of democracy, of liberty, and of compassion. This is a shame because security is the first duty of government. It may depend how you define security, but something about the security of the state, the society, the nation is very much tied up with the origins of government in the first place. And security, including securely managed borders, is essential for a nation before it can confidently and credibly really take action to help others. Now on balance, it's safe to assume that national security is popular. And even if we've seen a change in prime ministership recently, it's also notable that the very first briefing the new prime minister took was from ASIO. Opinion polling, such as that conducted by the Lowy Institute, shows solid majorities in favour of some of the measures that we've seen enacted in recent years. Data retention to combat terrorism, military action against Islamic State, for example. But even so, there are significant minorities in Australia that are broadly uncomfortable with the direction of policy. And understandably, they are concerned when the rhetoric of national security becomes mixed up with very specific interpretations of Australian nationalism. So clearly, as a nation, we have a problem. We have parallel monologues on security instead of what we really need, which is a national conversation. And all of this is happening at a time when by any objective measure, there are real and accumulating risks for Australia's interests. And when our expansive interests as a nation in a very connected world, our lifelines, you could call, outweigh our ability to protect them single-handedly. Now, of course, in a democracy, it's not reasonable, nor is it realistic, nor is it right to expect absolute unity of perspective and purpose, even in the face of threat. That is not in the nature of democracy. But even so, as a middle power, and Australia is a middle power with limited resources, we need to strive towards a high degree of consensus in the way, as a nation, we approach or perceive or respond to an accumulation of risk. Now, terrorism is probably not the greatest of those risks in the long run. But at the moment, it is the most immediate threat. And any government would be remiss not to try to counter it. But whatever criticism may have been made about the politics of national security under the former Abbott government, it's important that we form our judgements on the basis of actual policy, not on rhetoric. In my view, it's reasonable to assume that another government in the past two years would have ended up with a fairly similar set of policy measures, even though it might have explained them in a more inclusive and consultative manner, and perhaps with a few of flags. Proof of this lies, I think, in the very bipartisan way that Australia is learning to approach counterterrorism and violent extremism. Australia's recent counterterrorism strategy document, titled Strengthening Our Resilience, was released by the Council of Australian Governments, federal, state, territory, and local. And it was based on the informed advice of security agencies, not on ideology and not on a quest for partisan advantage. So that document is really worth close study. It's something of a role model for how we should be approaching some of these issues. It's worth remembering why terrorism, in this context, is a unique kind of threat. Beyond the ugly metric of life's taken, trauma-inflicted, and it's fair to point out that terrorism isn't the great taker of lives. It's not as lethal a force in our society as some of the other, I guess, threats on a day-to-day basis. But it has a very distinct quality that does make it a national priority. Because beyond the metric of life's taken and trauma-inflicted terrorism is really intended to shred the fabric of two great qualities, trust and tolerance, that go such a long way to defining Australia's identity and its success as a nation. And that's why pursuing the prevention of terrorism and building physical and psychological resilience as a nation against the next inevitable terrorist plots in Australia or on Australian soil will remain a priority for governments, and so it should. As I pointed out, the new Prime Minister's first briefing this week was from ASIO. In countering terrorism, there's little question that countering radicalisation and showing up the hollowness and the falsehood of extremists' narrative are essential tasks. But even the best efforts on this front will take patient investments of time and trust, and there is still significant lack of trust when it comes to community engagement on these issues. In the meantime, it's imperative not only to minimise the number of Australians who are attracted to the terrorist cause at home or overseas, but to minimise the harm they can do. Right now, the most pressing national security priority therefore must be to prevent atrocities of a kind that could gravely damage harmony in multicultural Australia. What should concern us as much as the possibility of the next terrorist attack in Australia is what could happen the day after. We really don't know how, or as we get our society is, and we don't want to find out the hard way. So the question becomes, how do we maximise the security community's chances, the chances of the security agencies to succeed in preventing terrorist violence without neutralising our long-term capacity as a nation to demonstrate through our own values the falsehoods of terrorist propaganda. And all of this is fine to criticise counterterrorism in the name of democratic freedoms. But to do so, I think it's incumbent on the critics to do two things. One is to offer their own best ideas on how to reduce the chances of terrorist attack. And secondly, to acknowledge a willingness to risk those attacks and their impact on the very qualities of tolerance and trust that I think we all cherish. There's also a wider landscape of risk and response that I want to touch on briefly here today that must define Australian security in the years and decades ahead beyond terrorism. I'll offer a very brief survey of that security environment and then return to some questions on how we can manage and moderate the impact of these risks and I'll welcome a discussion, a Q and A short beyond this. This endeavour, this encouragement of the national conversation is very much in line with the work of the college, the National Security College which I've been very privileged to leave since the beginning of this year. Normally the college does not get an enormous amount of press, which is fine because most of our work occurs behind the scenes. Since we were established under the Rudd government, we've trained large numbers of personnel in the Australian national security community, including civilian officials, defence personnel and police, both federal and state, including from this state. We do this through short courses that encourage fresh thinking about today's and tomorrow's challenges and building a cooperative, whole-of-government approach to managing that. We also have a strong and growing academic program and a few of my colleagues from the academic program are here today, which is aimed at equipping a new generation of thinkers, scholars, masters and PhD students to really think critically and in depth about these issues. This is about the college preparing people for careers as policy makers or practitioners in the security community or as the informed watchers that the security community no doubt needs. And we're becoming known in all of this also as a trusted broker for dialogue and policy engagement. For example, this year, the college has convened consultations between the government and the business community on cyber security and consultations with independent experts about the future operating environment for the Australian Defence Force. All of this is consistent, in my view, with the nation building ethos that inspired the foundation of our university. My own commitment to the college, however, is a national institution and that's why it's very important that we get out of Canberra as much as we can. And as a partnership between the university and the government, is that we will foster effective, innovative and inclusive approaches to national security. And this means ensuring that the Australian national security community, the departments and agencies, remain informed, connected and responsive in a very fast-changing world. To help in that mission, we're expanding our engagement with business and the wider Australian community and that's one reason why we're here in Brisbane today. An essential step in thinking about security is to have a very clear sense of what it is we're seeking to protect. To repeat, security is the first duty of government, but the big question is the security of what. The answer has changed before and it will no doubt change again. There's a very rich debate about precisely what are the national interests, what are the national values that require protection and advancement in the name of security. Shortly, one of my colleagues, Adam Henchke, will join the conversation on this. Adam is a specialist on the ethics of security and yes, there is such a discipline as the ethics of security, it is not a contradiction. And Adam will have more to say about this. As for Australian governments and their officials, at least since Prime Minister's Radhan Gillard and probably before that, they think about security these days as very broad indeed. This is not in my view some kind of indiscriminate securitisation, as some colleagues would call it, but every single issue imaginable, simply to justify spending or secrecy or special measures. Yes, as I've said, a few of flags around the place probably wouldn't hurt if the aim is creating a more inclusive national conversation around security, but accepting a broad and encompassing way of thinking about security is not about marginalising other issues or unduly alarming us all for purely political reasons. Instead, I think it's fair to say that in a connected world, most of the population has come to expect that government will do more to handle the complexities and uncertainties that confront us. It's the daily reality of connectedness in our lives, our economy, our communications, really a reality that has changed so radically in the past decade or two and will continue to change. It's this daily reality of connectedness that is compelling us to think about security in increasingly broad terms. So national security is no longer the simple formula of last century when it was about protecting sovereignty from foreign attack or subversion. It's now about a lot more than protecting the territory of Australia or even individual Australian lives. The expansive version of national security today really includes maintaining, I think, many other elements of our lifelines, the kind of international, transnational and domestic order that serves our interests as a middle power, as a country that cannot advance its interests through influence, through coercion and through force. It's about preserving national freedoms including independence of action, the cohesion of our society and our democratic political system. Now to protect and advance these interests, these extensive interests that are so much larger than our national capabilities, we will need partnerships with other countries including but not only our ally, the United States. A connected world places a premium on partnership among nations with the community and with the private sector and those partnerships are in turn reason for Australia to uphold its reputation as a secure, capable, reliable contributor in the international system. We need to be seen as a country that is serious about protecting its interests and upholding its values such as a fair go in the context of a rules-based order and respect for the rule of law. This international credibility as a security partner, credibility, reliability, reputation, honour, call it what you will, this is a national interest in itself. It's also a very precious national asset and the best way to reserve a reputation is to take action that proves that reputation is warranted. That's one reason why, for instance, it's in Australia's interests to take an enlightened approach to accepting refugees from Syria. This is not at odds with firm policies on border protection or forceful action against the very extremists whose brutality many of these people were fleeing. Of course, how to manage the mix and balance of our commitment to fighting terrorism and stemming the cascade of disorder in the Middle East, including whether and how Australia can realistically achieve a meaningful strategic effect. That's the question, not whether we have a right or a reason to contribute in the first place. Meanwhile, however, our greatest strategic challenges are in the realm of geopolitics closer than home in what I would call our Indo-Pacific region. They're related to changing balances of power, the use of force, and the ways in which planning for our future may be, in fact, will be frustrated by the interests, the concerns, and the destabilising behaviour of other countries. That's what strategy is all about. So a vital interest for Australia is to preserve a rules-based order internationally, including in our dynamic Indo-Pacific maritime region, which is really the new global centre of economic and strategic gravity. This, in my view, is the very order that is being eroded by the uncertainties around China's growing power, its military power, its power more generally, and patterns of behaviour of affronting and acquisitive behaviour in the global maritime and cyber-colonies. That behaviour is something that should seriously concern our business community and the wider public, and not only our professional security cast in Canberra. This issue relates not only to the manufacture of militarised islands in the disputed South China Sea, or very much in the headlines, the displays of power intended to shake confidence in the system of US alliances on which the regional order has relied. The problem also relates to the widely reported theft of information from business and governments in many countries. This has reportedly occurred on a massive scale in the United States. There is every reason to assume that we face this risk in Australia as well. So a critical question for us, for Australia as a nation, is whether we should continue to quietly accept the erosion of the conditions underlying our security and freedom of action, or if we need to call out the concerning aspects of Chinese actions beyond China's borders, why will waiting and why will later be any better and sooner, and what are we prepared to do beyond words? Another question is whether our efforts to build a deeper and durable economic and political relationship with China with all of its own internal uncertainties, whether this should be offset or indeed more than offset by our efforts to diversify our strategic and economic equities in Asia and globally. Australia has every reason in my view to take the initiative in building new coalitions of power to uphold a rules-based order of the region. Alongside the US alliance, we are right to be strengthening our security ties with the likes of India, Japan and Singapore, and to be looking for every opportunity to do so within Indonesia and mindful that now is a very difficult time to be doing that. This is not about containment to use the word that's so often used by Chinese commentators to criticise this idea as if it's offensive, as if the idea of other countries talking with and cooperating with one another is somehow offensive. Instead, it's about the perfectly normal behaviour, perfectly normal strategic behaviour of balancing. It's about hedging against adverse future contingencies, however unlikely they may seem. And interestingly, whatever media speculation there may be right now about our new prime minister's views on China, hedging is a strategy he previously and publicly has endorsed. Hedging does not mean positioning ourselves halfway between China and the United States. It means guarding against bad possibilities. For example, the possibility that a powerful China may use its power in ways contrary to our interests, or that stumbles in China's rise, bring their own risks and uncertainties. Containment is entirely the wrong word for this prudent balancing strategy. Containment is word misappropriated, if I can say, from the Cold War. When the US and its allies did seek to weaken the Soviet Union, including by hurting it economically. Now, Australia and its partners are hardly seeking to contain or weaken China economically. We're, I think, the free trade agreement is a case of point there. We are connected with China economically and through our society, and we're trying to build better security understandings with Beijing and all of those things are right. But we should have balance and options in our strategic settings. In a complex, uncertain, deeply connected world that is vulnerable to shocks now that can cascade rapidly across borders, our national watchwords need to be resilience, adaptability, and diversification. Indeed, these same principles of China should be applied to our future defence planning, which is, in my view, one reason why paying multi-billion dollar premiums to build warships and submarines in Australia could well prove to be a misplaced priority in national security terms. Simply put, building them in Australia will cost many billions of dollars more than building them elsewhere. That money could be put to other purposes that would be good for national security but also for national wellbeing more broadly. For instance, it could go a long way towards investing in new defence capabilities and technologies in space and cyber, unmanned autonomous systems, putting ourselves at the winning edge of the disruptive change that we've been warned about. Or some of that money could go towards building national resilience, competitiveness, and wellbeing in ways that would contribute to security as a side effect to other priorities, such as investment in education and infrastructure. But instead we're seeing the wrong kind of bipartisanship on this issue. By all means, our future Navy ships and submarines should be fully sustained in Australia and that itself will generate jobs. But national security and the national interests do not seem to be the paramount considerations in the debate right now. Either way, Australia needs to be braced for strategic shocks in our region and as a nation we can't hide when they occur. Geopolitics, life or not, is back as my colleague Matt Sussex will have more to say about shortly. And this is not just about the rise of China, I should add, it's also about the attitudes and actions of other powers too, including Russia, India, and Japan. Now of course the idea that there will be some kind of strategic breakdown in Asia and that we might even find ourselves one day in a confrontation with our largest trading partner, these are deeply uncomfortable thoughts for many Australians, we'd rather not think about them. What we cannot avoid thinking about on a daily basis though is domestic security to go back to where I began. A vital interest for us is to preserve the trust and the tolerance that underpin a multicultural society, the very cohesion that is threatened by those who would spread fear and cruelty in the name of Islamic State. In such a way, Australia is becoming more like our Asian neighbors, treating the prevention of domestic disturbance and communal strife as a security priority of the highest order. This is an established problem for instance in India, in Indonesia, in Singapore. I'm afraid it's a new normal for us we have to think of it as a new normal. Another interest Australia has become accustomed to upholding is stability in our neighborhood, the South Pacific which of course is pretty close to this part of Australia. A region, I should say the South Pacific, a region with disturbing trends in governance, in human development and environmental pressure and crime. The relative success of Australian interventions in the region previously in East Timor, in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands has unfortunately created a burden of expectation that we will always be the security provider. Last, perhaps even first resort, whatever our other problems, internationally or indeed at home. This is an expectation that unfortunately we will need to carefully manage in the years ahead. Including for instance, as the future of Bougainville is potentially reopened around an independent surrender. Some other major concerns are also becoming connected with national security. Prominent among these, the preservation of the conditions for our prosperity such as the security of our energy supply lines, the protection of our critical infrastructure. As I've said at the beginning, Australian security is now deeply in time with our lifelines, flows of trade, investment, information and people to and from the rest of the world. No island is an island anymore. Yet there seems an alarming lack of awareness in our community about our profound and growing dependence on cyberspace. Not only from information and communication but also to sustain our material wellbeing. My colleague Adam Hinchke will have more to say about cyber security shortly. But just suffice to say that the internet is now the internet of things and pretty soon it will be the internet of everything. Yet this dependence of our real economy, our real economy, our real polity on the digital economy is yet to translate into a concerted national effort, including coordination on the private sector, state governments and the Commonwealth to protect this absolutely critical interest. Our future wellbeing, including our economic competitiveness will rest on ensuring a national cyber security edge. Politics and culture, as I've said, means that security debates related to terrorism are going to be divisive, unless treated with extraordinary sensitivity. Cyber security, on the other hand, seems an issue ready made for building national consensus and big initiatives to minimise and anticipate future risk. Here at last we have a security issue ready made for a government that says it's focused on innovation on the future and our competitive edge. Here is a security issue that is about unity and about partnership with a big role for the private sector. A national cyber security strategy should involve major investments in the cyber skills that our banks, our telecommunications providers and our security agencies all increasingly need. That's why the government's whole-of-nation cyber security review this year has been such an important process and one that unfortunately has received a lot less media coverage than steps or missteps on issues like border protection or run or counter-terrorism. It's dearly to be hoped, it's strongly to be hoped that our new Prime Minister, with his well-known focus and knowledge on matters to do with communications and innovation, will recognise the finalisation of a cyber security strategy as an urgent national priority. So to recapitulate, Australia's security interests are large and growing, our security capabilities cannot keep pace so there's a premium on partnerships to protect our interests in a pretty uncertain world. Those partnerships need to be with other nations, with the private sector and right across the spectrum of the Australian community. Hence the need for national security leadership now, focused on mobilising greater unity through levelling with the public and explaining the challenges. As a nation, we need a capacity constantly to be refreshing and improving our thinking on how global trends are intersecting with our interests. Those trends, and I don't have time to go into them all today, but those trends include such diverse yet interacting phenomena as disruptive technology, social media, demographic change, resurgent nationalism, religious identity, energy demand, resource pressures, environmental degradation and climate change. And yes, the effects of climate change are a national security issue. The most innovative thinking on these issues will not come from government or intelligence agencies alone. The shape of the future is very much a mystery. It's not a secret that can be crafted or stolen or protected. So an institution like the National Security College, which is at the crossroads of academia, the public debate and policy, is I think very well placed to convene the creative and inclusive conversations about strategic foresight that Australia needs. I'm delighted you're here to join part of that conversation today. The challenge for us will be to identify emerging risks and the new patterns of cooperation we will need to address them. So now is the time for a new and inclusive approach to thinking about Australia's security and the future of climate change. Thank you very much. Well, thanks very much, Rory. And as Rory mentioned, I'd like to pick up a little bit on what he was saying in relation to geopolitics. I agree completely that geopolitics is back, but I'd also add that I'm not sure it ever went away. I think perhaps we've deluded ourselves, both in the Northern Hemisphere and also in Australia's own area of interest was somehow yesterday's big issue. I'd make two observations in terms of the return of geopolitics. They're fairly simple ones, but bear with me. The first one is that geopolitical contests are becoming more intense, whether it's in Crimea, Ukraine, or closer to home, which would be my second point, that those geopolitical contests we witness are starting to happen relatively close to Australia's region, particularly thinking about the maritime environment in the South China Sea here. And this is happening in a way that Australia previously hasn't really been used to having to countenance such threats. Previously, in the majority of Australia's history of engagement with the world, its history of international politics all the way since Federation, those types of contests have been far away over their European. Increasingly, since Asia and India, general region of the Pacific, is becoming the engine room of globalization, that's going to be in Australia's backyard. The types of contests that are emerging are going to be about specific things, but broader things as well. Those contests will be about access to and potential disruption of trading routes and even trading relationships. They'll be about access to energy and potential disruption of energy transit. And also things like access to and potential disruption of information and ideas. We have also, in addition to responding to traditional geopolitical threats, have to realize that these are starting to occur in a sort of trans-border space, in sort of exchanges between countries without distance. But that doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a geopolitical focus, I'm thinking particularly of China. And I'm thinking also to an extent of Russia and even India as well. So what does that mean for Australia? It does mean, as Rory says, that Australia's security environment is going to become much more fluid and uncertain. In fact, it already is. It underscores, I think, the need for a more agile, more flexible type of Australian security concept. And part of that reason is that Australia won't any more be able to rely on the types of things it's been able to do historically. Historically, we've thought of ourselves as a very lucky country. It's been one of the major slogans to describe Australia. We can't rely on luck anymore. We also can't rely on being a sort of geostrategic backwater removed from the rest of the world. So we can't rely on being lonely. I think to hedge effectively, and Rory mentioned hedging quite strongly, to hedge effectively rather than hiding, Australia's going to have to navigate a security terrain where it cannot be assured anymore that the values it espouses, and those values might include democratic individualism, a fair go, a makeshift, whatever you like, rule of law, even the market, can't necessarily be assured that those things are going to automatically be endorsed or that they're going to be part of the default normative order forever. Those ideas now are also in contestation as a result of this new geopolitics. And to tie this in, I'd like to raise something that our new Prime Minister, I said a few days ago, he said that sloganeering is insufficient in politics. And that's certainly something I'd endorse in terms of Australia's politicians who will need to sell their messages to the Australian people much more effectively than in the past. But I think it's also true for Australia, the nation, which will have to lay out its argument to lay out its case for a certain type of response to an issue much better than and much more convincingly than it has sometimes in the past. And I think that's going to be the case whether it's issues like human rights, just as much as cybersecurity, countering violent extremism, or even great power competition. And under those circumstances, in this emerging 21st century geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific, our responses to the types of challenges we face has to be flexible, has to be adaptable, ultimately has to seek to persuade others. And at the same time, it has to be resilient and it has to be robust. That's a challenging job, a very challenging job for national security specialists. And this is what we try and do at the NSC. But it's not something I think we can do alone. We do need help on this. And to an extent, we need your help. We need not just to engage with the community, to hear the community's views, but we also need to bring those members of the community who want to come on the journey with us in terms of being able to train the next generation of thoughtful, the next generation of people with highly refreshing ideas in national security policy. And hopefully some of you will consider taking that journey with us. Thanks very much. Thanks Matt, and thanks Rory, and thanks everyone for being here. My name's Adam Henshke and as Rory had mentioned, I'm the resident ethicist at the National Security College. Some of you might find that maybe a little bit confusing. First of all, to even ask what is an ethicist? Before I started studying ethics, I didn't know that such things existed. The way I like to describe ethics is, ethics is about giving a systemised and well-reasoned set of justifications, why something is good or bad, why it's permissible, impermissible, or possibly obligatory. So if we think of this idea of ethics as spelling out reasons, we can see that it has some application and I think some very important applications to security. What I'm going to talk about very quickly is going to start off with some specific areas in which ethics and philosophy that one of the other disciplines that I work in, how that can be applied to issues of cyber security and cyber warfare, then I'm going to expand out to a few more general comments on security at large. So if you think of cyber war and ethics, one of the main questions that people have looking at this area of cyber war and ethics is, is a cyber attack violent? So if something occurs in cyberspace and it makes some destruction in cyberspace, is that actually a violent act? For some people, it seems to be, if you've lost some information, that could be problematic. For other people, they say no violence is something that can only occur in the physical realm. If you restrict things to the cyber realm, this is not actually a violent act. So we treat it quite differently. The importance of this is if we're looking at something to do with say the laws of un-conflict or the morality of war, for someone to be able to use a military response to an attack, the initial attack has to be raising above a certain level of violence. If a cyber attack is by definition not violent, then we can't use a military in response to cyber attacks. Some people then, this seems to be quite challenging because we can imagine many scenarios where a cyber attack could be really, really devastating to a critical infrastructure and could actually have a long-term impact on people's lives and quality of life. So these are some of the questions that we look at in ethics to do with cyber war. The second issue to think of is the role of government in cyber security, so the responsibility of the government to protect its people. If we think again of protecting its people from a cyber attack, what we need to do, as Rory mentioned, is start developing things along the lines of cyber resilience, in particular technological resilience to cyber attack, and also a based set of investment in basic community cyber literacy. So literacy in about security and particularly literacy in cyber security. So we know if we're being attacked as individuals, we know what the impacts are, and we have no idea of how to respond to that. One of the tensions now, if we think of the responsibility of a country to protect its own citizens from attack, is when we think of the cyber realm, there's a danger of certain rights being, or certain values being in tension. So if we think of privacy, privacy is obviously a big value that a country like Australia and the community takes very seriously. If Australia, if the government is going to be protecting its cyber attack, it might have to override individuals' privacy. And again, this is where ethics can come in to say, okay, in this situation, we might think that national security interests trump individual privacy. In this situation, individual privacy is far more important than national security. But to work that out, we need sustained reasoned justified argument. To lift it beyond mere rhetoric, to try and give some substance to why we think in this situation, national security trumps privacy. In this situation, privacy retains its moral importance. As Rory mentioned a few times, one of the first roles of the government, or the first role of the government, is to ensure the security of its people. This goes to one of the important things about national security and security more generally, that it's something of key moral importance. Again, first duty of the state. However, again, as Rory mentioned, terms like security and particularly national security can be subject to both misuse and misunderstanding. And so what we need to do, and some of the work that I'm involved in is trying to get clarity on these terms. What do we say when, or what do we mean when we say security? And importantly, what do we mean when we say national security? If there is this special importance and special moral importance of national security, are we using this term properly in a given context? So to give a bit of an example, if you think of, well, how is national security different from, say, national interest? How is national security different from the public interest? And how is national security different from personal interest? And there's gonna be a series of discussions and probably different viewpoints on how we balance these things out. But hopefully it should be clear that national security is something both special and especially distinct from these other things such as national interest, public interest, and personal interest. One of the practically important things about clarity of language is if people misuse a term like national security, we actually lose our trust in when that term is used appropriately. So if we're actually faced with a proper severe challenge to our national security, if we as a community are used to politicians and others misusing the term, then we're gonna be far less inclined to actually treat the term with respect that it needs. And this is one of the real dangers of misuse of these terms. Again, whether it's politicians or other people in the community, is we lose this special moral importance of the term or the importance that it signifies. Again, security is the first duty of government. I think many of us at least would agree to that. However, one of the important things to recall or to keep in mind is that it's not the only duty of government. This is a really important thing. Maybe the first duty of government, it's not the only one and it may not even be the primary duty of government. So we think that this is quite important, but maybe in certain situations, other interests, other values might actually override national security. To give an example, I might be willing to sacrifice my individual rights for national security. So if I'm going to an airport or something like that, I'm happy to be prisked or have someone scan my bags. In this sense, I'm happy to trade away my individual privacy for some national security interests. But often when I talk about sacrificing my personal rights for national security, I'm often overlooking the fact that it's not me who bears the cost of those trading away those rights. And with regard to current debates in the community, often it's vulnerable members of the community or minority groups who actually bear the costs of me saying, ah, the national security is important, I'm willing to sacrifice my interests for national security, but it's often someone else who bears that cost. And the burden of security here is actually borne by others. So one of the things that ethics can do is a sustained and reasoned conversation around issues of national security intentions with other values is to try and look at, okay, if in this instance, am I the one who's actually trading away my rights or am I actually causing someone else to lose their rights? And if so, is it justified for me to make decisions on their behalf? One of the dangers to close off, one of the dangers of misuse of these terms is that it can actually undermine the values of our community and can tear in the fabric of our society. So again, if we misuse these terms, it can actually cause a whole bunch of problems for people within the community. So we need to be really careful about how we use these terms, when we use these terms and particularly why we're using them. Thanks. What I might ask Rory to do now folks is to step back up to the lectern and see if these will handle it. Sure will. Again, we don't have three chairs here. We're going to do a three tenants type of routine in answers to Q&A, but Rory. I'll take it from there. Yeah. Look, thanks Matt. And yeah, we had got three tenants here. We also have altos and sopranos at the college, so they couldn't be here today, but I'm in a very, very keen on building diversity in the academic community on this space, it's a work in progress. But look, let's take some questions and some discussion. Very happy to take questions and comments from the group. We are on the record. We're recording this event. So please don't ask a question if you don't want to be on the record. But if you do ask a question, we also would like to identify yourself. So, and questions to any or all of us or indeed none of us who will start to discuss or a comment, please. First you, Marks here in the fence. So I know you just choked out the parallel of the monologues. Talk about monologues in particular. So, success in the fence of wallpapers, it seems to be the reiteration of the status quo. Land force, three brigades, three brigades. There's changes within those brigades. A squadron of F-18s with a squadron of F-35s. When you're talking about a change of our security environment, what are the options that we probably no longer need in the corollary days? What do we need in the future? Potentially in a defence wallpaper. Perhaps not this year, but in future wallpapers. Thanks, very fair question. I probably will disappoint you a little in my answer and I don't know if colleagues will add to this, but because I'm involved in the advisory panel for the wallpaper, I probably can't say as much on this as I'd like at this present. I will say more further on. Just a general principle. I think, I do think we have to be very careful against these principles of replacing life with life. Whether it's with our land, I mean with any of the services, and indeed the, I guess the arrangements among the services, there is a positive movement towards jointness, towards joint capabilities, and I think that's a step in the right direction. We do have to think hard about cyber security in particular and whether in fact this is potentially almost a separate command. In the United States, they've moved in that direction. There's no particular reason why cyber should belong more to one service than another and really encompasses all of our defence posture and civilian capabilities as well. And I think the main point I'd make is that we need to create a kind of a buffer or build a bit of flexibility into the system, because one thing we know for sure is that there will be rapid technological change in the next few decades. We don't want to be investing in a 21st century machina line in one capability that we're putting all our hopes in, only to find that some disruptive technological change or political change makes that a bit of a waste. So we need to build, we actually need to prepare more for investment in future capabilities, which I've mentioned, like the space, cyber and unmanned systems as well. I know there's a, and we have a time, I'm sure Adam would engage with me and others in a detailed debate about the ethics of drones, but for example, Australia is in many ways very well suited to unmanned technologies. We've got the geography, we've got the education base, we've got the technological base, we probably have to have a bigger debate as a country, how far we want to go down that down the path. So there's just a few sort of inadequate answers to your question, but ask it again when the white paper's out, not long, I'll do my best. Thanks for that. Must be something. Yeah, fine. Well, good to go. Well, yeah, fine. Yeah. Peter Power, the Economist Intelligence Unit. The LBA governor said today he had real difficulties getting skilled IT workers for doing bank transformation and speeding up transactions. You know, is that a real limit on our cyber security that we don't have the people? And if so, how do we accommodate that within national security policy? Yeah, that's an important point. And I think Australia, with any economy in Australia, the United States of Australia, we're all coming out for real talent and expertise in cyber security. There are job vacancies there. There are hundreds in this country. There are 1,000 in the United States. These numbers will keep growing. We're not going to solve that overnight. It does require pretty radical investment in education in this space. Universities, including our own university, are looking much more seriously at this space of building multidisciplinary degrees, for example. But it's partly about attracting the people. And for example, it's partly about attracting more women to this sector as well. So there have to be ways down to do that. At the same time, if we're thinking long term, we have to be investing in school education inside the security. So even things like challenges and competitions and quizzes and anything to enthuse children from, frankly, primary school age onwards. But it will require, I think, major government and private sector investment. And it's probably a bigger priority than a lot of the other issues that I'm going to talk about today. Yeah, you've got Ben Gallow from Defence. One of the questions I'd like to get, an understanding of some of the contemporary thinking surrounding global warming. We talk about the rise of the mega cities and how most populations now are more fringing in the littoral. What are some of the challenges you think we might face in the future of a potential rise in global warming and also scarcity of resource as a result? Okay, and I'll invite colleagues to jump in on this. And the other questions we'll add up, I don't know if you want to add anything on cyber skills earlier. We'll come to you in just a second. So just with the cyber skills thing, one of the things that shocked and surprised me when looking at cyber security was the fact that you can't protect against every single attack. There's always going to be some weakness, there's always going to be some way of getting in. And so I think to me it's long term main that any, whether it's a company or whether it's a community or a nation, needs to focus on is resilience. We need type of security that resilience isn't called part of that. And I think one of the key points to that is cyber literacy and especially focusing on elements of cyber security. And as Rory said, starting at the Bronx College because something similar to road safety or something like that, we understand I shouldn't cross this road when a car comes, I shouldn't cross that road, et cetera. I think we need similar evidence to get people from a very young age to be familiar with these things. I'm not that old, but I'm totally new to the new generation now who are cyber natives. And I think really focusing on that is going to be very, very important for any of us. Oh, just briefly on that, in addition to education and investment, I'd say it would also be fairly rapid cultural change in order to respond to the next generation of threats, start and respond to the next generation of threats now. Now some of our agencies are well equipped to start dealing with those challenges. Some of them are poorly equipped. And in some cases, I probably highlight domestic law enforcement as an area, not so much the AFP, but state level law enforcement is one area that has been relatively slow to catch on to these types of changes, particularly when it comes to things like global fraud, financial action and task forces and so forth, found it difficult to make the shift and that shift is going to be necessary soon. So we need to reach out to those types of agencies as well. Okay, on climate change, and I guess wider than that, I mean, or as a subset of that environmental shocks and the disasters in the region, if you look at the big global trends, if you look at population growth, if you look at youth, the fact that urbanisation, all of this is pretty concentrated in the Indian Ocean Latoral in particular and the Indo-Pacific Latorals, coastal areas of Asian countries, also South Asia, also Africa. So there is going to be a disproportionate expectation in our region of support in disaster relief, whether it's from what are seen as purely natural disasters or whether they're disasters that increase in intensity and tempo due to climate change. The expectation on Australia is going to grow. It's partly again to do with this trend I've mentioned in our interventions for stabilisation in our region because we've done it before and because we're good at it. East Timor, the tsunami relief in Arche, 2004, Typhoon relief in the Philippines a couple of years ago, various operations in P&G in the South Pacific. We're going to be expected to do more. We have to make a decision as a nation, how do we manage those expectations? Do we continue to increase our capabilities and deliver? And I think from a humanitarian point of view, we can and we should, but from an expectation management point of view, we can't do everything. So how do we manage that? But I do think that the burden and the expectation will happen increasingly in our region and it will have an impact on migration flows and population movements. Two other factors in that picture. One is we're going to have to work much harder at building partnerships with a much more diverse range of countries than we've been used to. So for example, despite the things I've said about, I think our rightful mistrust of China as a strategic, China as a country that could be a potential partner in issues like disaster relief and stabilisation, fine, let's hold them at their word, let's work with them on those issues. It depends on our defence force, it needs to get used to working with the Chinese under conditions of partial mistrust. We need to get used to working with the Indians. In particular, these are the two countries that are going to have massive increases in their capabilities to deliver to that disaster relief, even though their strategic interests could be conflicting and even though we'll have to manage and watch these people could also be covered for spreading strategic influence. So that's sort of an extra consideration there. I'll just do that also. We're going to need, I think, particular humility in how diplomacy on these issues. The last seat. First of all, thank you. I think most of us will accept that the US relative to China and the region is obviously a problem issue. Relative? We'll see. I just wonder if you can comment. This has been very digital sort of mention of the Japanese here. We know they're going through the normalisation process. There's a lot happening in Japan. I just wonder if you can comment on this concept of cross-bracing and obviously normalised institutions and all the things you've mentioned. Cross-bracing, yeah. I know what you mean, but I might explain it. Yeah. All right. Matt, you may have a view on this as well. I'll just have a few words and then sort of great power relations as your thing. Firstly, I would... Yeah, I'd be pretty careful about the way we look at American decline. I mean, I think if you... We tend to underestimate a lot of the internal fragilities in China. We see Chinese military spending grow 10% or more a year faster than their economy is growing, probably a lot faster than their economy is growing. We see grand parades with missiles being sort of shown on the streets now. We see that extraordinary confidence. If you have a military that is that vast and that modern and that capable, you have to maintain that kind of spending in order to sustain that or it could be hollowed out very quickly. I think a lot of the risks around Chinese power are going to be worse in the next 10 to 20 years than beyond the next 10 to 20 years. We have to get through the next 10 to 20 years without miscalculation and that's one reason why I think as a nation we shouldn't be showing any more respect for the Chinese system than the Chinese people show themselves. So I think this is a long game. I think the United States, despite its recent humbling in many ways and probably its proper sort of naval gazing if you like, its reflection on whether in fact it should be as engaged in the world as it has been has every potential to have a resurgence to bounce back as a major strategic force in the region. Its demographics, its economic structure, its energy, potential energy independence make it all much more resilient potentially than China. So the question of America's role in our region will become very much one of political will and yes, part of perhaps the biggest problem there is going to be dysfunction in the American political system but it won't be about capability, it will be about political will. So I do think these are all good reasons for countries in this region that want a rules-based order that see the positive side of the overwhelming positive side in my view of American engagement in the region and that want to keep that the more we do for ourselves and the more we do to help one another the more we're going to help tilt the balance of the debate within the United States to be engaged in this region which is why cross-bracing or joining the spokes or whatever term you want to use meaning U.S. allies and partners basically cooperating with one another if I'm assuming that's your meaning why that's a good thing, why we should be building the closest security relationship with Japan, with Singapore, with South Korea, with the Philippines, with India, with Vietnam, with a whole range of countries and with China where we can do that as fundamentally as diplomats would like to tell us. On Japan's normalisation and the cross-bracing I don't share a lot of the concerns that Japan's normalisation as a military power is a bad thing or a threatening thing or a destabilising thing. It's in fact Japan in many ways stepping up to have capabilities in line with its interests. Real right-wing militarism and ultra-nationalism in Japan have a broad sense of the word I think of the past but we need to manage this carefully and I do think clearly the former PM's comments on a few of these issues didn't have the popular appeal but they perhaps could have if they put more sensitively. Just to add on Japan I suppose the counterpoint to this is that Japan should not normalise given the amount of animus between Japan and China and it would just feed nautically the amount of animic. Like Rory I don't think Japanese normalisation is a bad thing at all but I'd speak in defence of the making of Japanese foreign and security policy. It's been very hard to be a Japanese security policymaker since the 1970s damned if you do and damned if you don't. You have a Pacific constitution and you invest in the region you go for economic diplomacy in which case you're called an economic imperialist through ODA. This has been begging you to do so for a very long time and shift away from Chetville diplomacy and that again prompts more criticism. So I tend to think that we need to step away a little bit from the rhetorical dimension in which some of these arguments are played out and look far more at the fundamental question of well does Japanese normalisation really change the balance? Does it change the order in the Asia Pacific broadly? I suggest it doesn't and under those circumstances some degree of cross-bracing is a very good thing for Australia to do. We had the trilateral security dialogue a while ago, we then sort of talked about ANZIS and JANZIS a little bit but obviously we don't want to do too much. One of the easiest ways to play into Chinese noises about encirclements and about containment is to do something like a club of democracies which would include Australia Japan, the United States and guess what India you've dot those together on a map something that I used to enjoy doing as a child enjoying the dots and you would have an encirclement type of scenario. When we talk about cross-bracing we don't necessarily mean that these are new formal alliance structures or need to be formal alliance structures just closer ties between existing US folks under the old San Francisco system. I think just to add my last point the easiest way to turn Japan into the country we don't want Japan to be is to I guess isolate it and I think if we want to moderate any signs of the wrong kind of nationalism in Japan or the wrong kind of anxiety and insecurity in Japan then the exact thing to do is to clearly privilege China over Japan and our security relationships and have it very little to do with them I think in fact the more we have to do with Japan the more we will be able to ensure that Japan is socialised as the kind of power we would like it to be. One in the middle here as well. Good evening my name is Patrick Batch my question refers to the National Cyber Security Review and the interaction with the private sector given that there's quite a push for offshoring resources to fill the skills gap in technology and use of cloud infrastructure offshore how far do you think the government should go or could go to influence the private sector to maintain national security? The simple answer is that I suspect the private sector is, there are parts of the private sector that are willing to very seriously invest in Australia as a cyber security hub and if you look around the world some of the countries have done very well in this regard often smaller countries Israel, Singapore, Finland as well as the UK and the US but the private sector will want to see government putting money there at the same time and of course I suspect that's the kind of conversation we'll see play out during the cyber security review but I think government would be well advised to invest pretty seriously in that space and in fact I'd have to say that developing cyber infrastructure in this country is a hell of a lot more important to national security than building submarines in this country so please here and we'll develop skills that we can export Sarah, I work for a refugee settlement organisation here in Queensland called MDA so I'm very interested about I guess the ethical kind of comments that you were speaking about earlier and I guess an observation that the national rhetoric around national security and terrorism in particular and the impact that has on perhaps feelings of individual security and community security for some of the communities that we work with in that space and some of our multicultural communities and newly arrived communities in particular in Australia and in Queensland Well as a comment I completely endorse that in response to it do you want to say something there Adam and I'll jump in What you think we can be doing to improve that situation At the risk of sounding overly academic and overly philosophical the way in which but I am so that's my job description I think one of the at least one element of this is this clarity in language to make sure that when we're using things or using terms like national security that we use them really sparsely and very very carefully as I said when I was talking before there's this easy or it's an easy mistake to make to think okay well we're willing to sacrifice on the level of personal or individual privacy or individual security even in pursuit of the national security but it's very easy for me to say that what I want to actually be is the cost of that and I think part of the way to avoid that is to be really careful and understanding about the ways in which we use these things and I guess the core values I'll pin that and then how those core values are actually going to be strained if we use these things in terms uncafuly yeah that's a bad word but to get the point more yeah look I think we do have a problem on this and I think the concern I have and this partly arose from work I did last year conducting public consultations on defence policy on the defence white paper and it's very hard to get a self-selecting group of retired colonels in any Australian town or city to come together and not give their views on national security and defence policy it's very hard to get a representative group of the community together to have that conversation and you know people will self-select on this and there is a barrier of mistrust and distance but I guess my view is that as a society we're only going to succeed if we start widening widening that conversation and that's going to take give on both sides you know it's also going to take migrant communities and many of these communities do take this view that in fact Australia that they do identify with the sense of Australian security is about their interests but it's not going to work if the political rhetoric marginalises any part of the community completely agreed and I think the I think one of the beginning of the answer is that my friends and colleagues in the security cast with an E on the end as I call them in Canberra people who make the careers out of this who are generally people of great integrity put a lot of sincerity in effect to what they do they need to get out more and they need to get out of Canberra more into communities like Western Sydney or to conduct these dialogues on the ground to convey these conversations the problem is they've got to be welcomed into that setting to have that conversation and that can be a bit harder than you perhaps imagine partly because of the attitude of mistrust that a lot of people would bring if they're coming from war zones they're coming from parts of the world where the last thing they want to do is engage with security forces or security community to talk about their future behind this is going to be the work of generations but we we certainly do have to put more effort into it than we have been and I should add that this isn't just about the armed forces or the intelligence community police it's also about politicians in fact it's probably more about our political class than anyone else officials can only work within the parameters that their political leaders set Hi Rory my name is Ian Garrett Benson I just earlier you alluded to the interlinkages between economic banking financial systems and some of the effects also around cyber issues around cyber security and you know the opportunity is very easy financial flows and the opportunities for networks to do bad things obviously like money laundering crime networks terrorism networks being supported overseas I'm just thinking about the possibility of using those similar tactics around corporate multinational tax evasion or minimization and those sorts of issues and I suppose the question is whether you know we're looking at just policy issues or government issues and when that might go into the realm of national security for example the effect on our revenue systems if we don't have the revenue coming into government to pay for all our national security initiatives and so forth I was just wondering if there was any thoughts or ideas about those sorts of issues especially as they are becoming more discussed in the last year or two you seem to have some very good ideas there yourself and I think we're sort of running out of time so I'll just say generally that it's very clear that this is one area where I mean the private sector general citizenry we all benefit enormously from all the benefits of the cyber domain I mean we've become accustomed to the ease and the simplicity and the speed that you know even 20 years ago, 10 years ago we couldn't imagine and there are generations growing up who just take this for granted and don't realize that it is actually quite vulnerable quite fragile and would not you know you can read some pretty disturbing fiction about this already you know tomorrow waking up with no GPS no satellite navigation of any sort you know we'd have to rediscover a whole new set of traditional skills but quite seriously this is because we all benefit we're all going to have to contribute to preserving this and I think the private sector has benefited so much or parts of the private sector have benefited so much from this technology they're going to have to be expected to pay they know that to contribute very significantly to preserving those interests so it's really about developing a cost sharing model, a burden sharing model but certainly government won't be able to avoid putting in a significant part of those costs at least to begin with the idea is welcome I mean I think this is the hot debate within the policy community and there are no right answers at the moment and just to add something to that, a lot of the discussion in and around cyber security is focusing on the ethics discussions around it focus on this tension between privacy and the national security of these things and one of the areas that's often overlooked if not just totally people totally ignorant of is the value of efficiency and the value of cost so often we will say look I don't want to sacrifice my privacy and I don't want to sacrifice my security but I'm willing to take things on for free I'm willing to have a free email account from this group or that group I'm willing to have all these free services so I'm not willing to sacrifice any of my own costs if we think of how annoying it is to change your password every month or three months or whatever your job might require that's an annoyance but it's a security measure so as a little piece of evidence of we might be looking to look only at these security issues as a tension between say privacy and security but overlooking some of the other key values and I think efficiency is one of them and the cost that we must be willing to bear ourselves is actually something that we should be taking into account and often that might be economic cost or time but we can't have all of these in for once because it just doesn't work we can take probably one more question and then we'll have a bite to it or I will take this one here I think you've got one at the back there haven't you yeah we'll go there first do you want to say two at the same time? yeah it's on my name is Willit and I'm a student I'm studying government and international relations and you talked about the privacy I'm just wondering we are giving away our privacy and there's so many issues and how productive it is does it really work is there any successful story from just stopping anyone going to join ISIS or doing anything wrong to our society? look I think the very simple answer is and Adam I know you you're sort of you're at the bit there why don't you go first and get the answer from what I've seen a lot of studies internationally have said that say like the metadata attention that's been attempted in various European countries in the US if I understand it correctly the assessments have been that hasn't been actually that effective and useful but there's one of the strange things about the security realm is you can be defeated by your own success in terms of if we stop stuff and prevent things from happening it could happen because we've actually stopped it from happening so this is one of the really essential tensions of the security space of stopping things from happening then it doesn't happen so people say yeah but nothing's happening but if you do do things or if you allow things to happen people say why did you allow that to happen we need evidence to prove that it was going to happen so it can be really hard to get measures on effectiveness in this realm a few of the researchers at the National Security College are working on this particular issue how we can actually measure effectiveness of counter-terrorism policies counter-radicalization policies so it's a very hard area but really important because if there's no effective outcome from this stuff then it might be an absolute waste of money or it might be an unjustified violation of people's freedoms but it's going to be really hard to know because by its nature the evidence isn't going to be there if it's successful two things one is and I was going to pick up Adam's point as well the problem with a lot of the national security realm and the work particularly ASIO and the AFP do to prevent terrorism is that it's very easy to measure failure but it's very hard to measure success one figure that again was used early in this year in I think justifying some of the counter-terrorism measures that were taken was a figure that was information provided by ASIO to the government to change this from political rhetoric this was an operational figure that ASIO decided to release publicly that there were 400 active investigations counter-terrorism investigations in Australia now if there are 400 investigations and they're only the ones that we know about or that the intelligence community knows about how many of those does it take to fail in order to have a major terrorist attack that would do the kind of damage to social harmony that none of us wants to see but I do from a number of court cases over the past decade there have been several seriously plotted mass casualty attacks in Australia that haven't come to pass because of intervention and because ultimately of prosecution it's harder when it comes to so-called lone actors or I think lone wolves is not a term particularly liked anymore because in fact even people who self-radicalise usually have some kind of external stimulus to that but I do think that the model that seems to be developing to try to minimise the risks from individuals who are radicalising is there will be a role for security agencies there will be a role for monitoring online activity looking for warning signals if you like and then based on those warning signals attempts at community based intervention perhaps talking to family or relatives of the community to try to engage with that person and not to punish them but to persuade them of the dangerous stupidity of going down going down that path the problem is it takes just one or two spectacular failures to throw the whole thing into question so it's a serious business thank you we'll take your question last and then we're done I think Thank you Rory my name is Dan Mitchell I'm an English language teacher I have just a comment and a question Powerful countries have researched research spaces on our Australian Antarctic territory and there is an end date to that treaty do we need to increase the security of the claim that we have to the territory and even the strength of that claim I just believe that Dan that's a big question a big issue and something we didn't touch on now Matt apart from being specialist on Russia which is I think one of the countries also I think has a pretty close handle on the Antarctic issue not least from being based in Hobart over to you thank you for your question this is something that begs us the Antarctic policy division down in Hobart which is of course the capital of Australia the Antarctic do we need to take a more robust role in terms of our territorial claims I think that the consensus view is not yet and it would securitize the Antarctic in a way that Australia probably doesn't want to have to devote large amounts of resources committing resources now and then ultimately have to commit more and more and more as other countries react and this is not just Russia I'm thinking about I'm just thinking about France which has a size of the state in Antarctica as well so the preference is to try and make the European Antarctic system as much as a scientific based regime and it's one of the few regimes I think that works extremely well and has a variety of other interlink regimes flowing off that one of the things we really don't want to do I think is play geopolitics in the Antarctic space I just wonder if some other country did want to maybe not openly sort of start militarizing in what we do actually would be very difficult the only reason you would militarize the Antarctic is for resource extraction you can't run a fleet out of there you can't run you can't have size of land forces there well it's very much a hardship post so the only reason would be for resource extraction and at the moment it's just not cost effective so let's say you are Russia it's much easier to stick a tricolor somewhere on the seabed in the Arctic and say this is ours and contest some of the frozen resources I'd be looking there just to add to that Dan before we wrap up I think it does go to a more fundamental question however that Australia is a country that you could argue has bitten off a bit more than can chew over the years we do have the world's largest claim in the Antarctic a lot of Australians don't know that or conveniently have forgotten that I agree with Matt it's not a question of wanting to militarize or securitize I mean one of the beauties of the Antarctic Treaty regime is that it has successfully demilitarized the continent but in order to look at a worst case scenario a few decades from now when there is competition over resources when there is a willingness by major powers like China, India, perhaps Japan, perhaps Russia to at least take the chances at resource enterprises there for a country like Australia to preserve its claim we will need to demonstrate a high level of scientific engagement to be the preferred search and rescue partner or search and rescue provider in our claim territory and frankly to do more than we have been doing so I do think this is in a recipe for complacency we'll have to stop there and thank you very much again for your time today in joining our conversation we invite you to stick around for lunch with us as well perhaps to meet my colleagues and others Chris and Farnas who helped put this event together today please also take the propaganda that we left on your seats we are interested in raising the profile of the college and attracting more students to be I think the trainers that we need to really create the deep thinking security community that Australia needs I want to ask you to thank my colleagues Adam and Matt and we'll see you again, thank you