 Right now, probably right now there, hard-working folk up on Russell Hill, they're beavering away on the third white paper in six years. One in 2009, one in 2013, one due out next year in 2015. Given that in the last 40 years or so, white papers have come out, I think, on average every eight or nine years or something like that, the fact that we're heading up for our third in six years suggests that something is wrong given that the purpose of a white paper is to provide a long-term set of decisions, to provide the framework in which the decisions are made and in the public side, a long-term set of decisions about the kinds of capabilities we should be building, the kinds of money we should be spending and the purposes for which we're doing it. And because of the time frames in which defence policy works, the fact that you need to stop and start three times in six years suggests that something's gone wrong with the process. And indeed, I think it has. And I want to try and explain to you what I think that is and how I think we can fix it. To do that, I'm going to dig a little bit deeper than one might perhaps at first think, because at first glance, the most obvious problem with defence policy today is the disconnect between the present plans for developing out-of-fence forces, the things the government now plans to buy and maintain on the one hand and the sums of money they plan to spend on the other. And that's, of course, that's only one part of defence policy, making sure you've got enough money to buy the capabilities you've said you're going to buy is a very important part of it, but it's only one part of it. And one could argue, in fact, that the Abbott government's commitment to spend, to raise defence spending to 2% of GDP over the next eight years or so, has at least started to look like an answer to that problem. If they do get to 2% of GDP by 2024, as they promised, and I'm not completely sure they will, but if they do get to that, then I think they've got a fair chance of solving that particular problem, or at least the most obvious parts of it. But I don't think that's the really important problem we face. I think underlying, underneath the disconnect between capability and dollars that we're seeing at the moment, which has arisen really since, especially since the 2009 White Paper, there's a much bigger, much deeper, much more fundamental problem, which rolls through into a lot of different parts of the portfolio and a lot of the different issues that we deal with. And that is the more basic questions about what kind of forces we need, what sort of money we should be spending on them, and of course what's related to both of those, what we want it to do. And I don't think we've got good answers to those questions at the moment, and I don't think we'll get defence policy right until we do. And I want to explore that set of questions over the next 40 minutes, 35 minutes now. First, just to put one thing to one side, in a concise and perhaps some will feel peremptory kind of way, I want to just put on the table a proposition that when we talk about the purposes for which we build armed force and the kinds of armed forces we're building, I'm going to say that our principal intention there is and should remain to manage the kinds of strategic risks that arise to Australia from the use of armed force by other nation states. It's a pretty narrow definition. It's not to say that a country like Australia doesn't face a lot of other kind of risks. It is to say that the only thing for which armed force is reliably cost-effective as the kind of risks I just defined, that is risks that arise from the use of armed force by other nation states. You can use the armed forces you've built for that purpose uncost effectively, but maybe still justifiably for other kinds of roles, disaster relief and so on, but the only purposes for which it makes sense to design and build armed forces is the ones for which they're most cost-effective and the only purpose of that are response to armed force by other states. In other words, we should have built our armed forces to fight wars and if we don't think we're going to fight any wars, we shouldn't build armed forces. It's just about as simple as that. Now I'm happy to address that further in discussion if people want to, but let me just put that on the table to start with. If that's true, then a simple way to frame the question at the Heart of Australian Defence Policy Day is simply this, that the answers to those questions that I talked about before, what kind of forces do we need, how much should we spend, what do we want them to be able to do, is going to depend on our international setting, that is the way in which the framework of nation states in which Australia exists functions. And the simple question I would say right at the Heart of Australian Defence Policy today is will the defence policy that developed in the very specific international circumstances that we enjoyed in Asia over roughly speaking the last 40 years, I would say since 1972, will that defence policy work in what I'll call for the sake of conciseness the Asian century and by Asian century, I mean a century in which the distribution of wealth and power is very radically different from the way it was when that order, when the previous order, the post Vietnam 1972 order was established. And because of that shift in the distribution of wealth and power, the strategic objectives of a number of key players are I think radically different. Now the very strong assumption that underpins the last two white papers in 2009 and 2013 was that the basic policy that we established in the post Vietnam era will continue to function. Will still work for us for the next 30 or 40 years as it has for the last 40 years. And that to me is a profoundly counter-intuitive conclusion because I would argue, this is a separate debate, but I would argue that the shifts that we encapsulate by that race Asian century do constitute the biggest shift in the foundations of Australia's international situation since European settlement in 1788, that's a big claim. I'll have a debate about maybe it's just the biggest shift since the beginning of the decline of the British empire in the late 18th, 19th century. It's certainly the biggest shift since then because for the first time we have in Asia an Asian state which is in the not too distant future going to be richer and our great and powerful friends. And therefore, and this is a complex argument for another time, but it fundamentally more powerful and certainly very able, better able than any Asian state has been before to compete with our Anglo-Saxon, great and powerful friends for a primary role in the Asian order. So this is my starting point is that it's counter-intuitive to assume that in Asia, which is going to work profoundly differently, the defense policy which served us for the last 40 years will keep serving us as well for the next 40 years. And that assumption is the assumption that underlies our existing defense policy. Now that counter-intuitive judgment that I want to try and dismantle for you seems to be based on five subordinate judgments and I'll just spell them out for you. The first is that notwithstanding what I think most people now accept and that is that the shift in wealth and power is for real and even if it slows down it's already gone far enough to make a fundamental difference. But even people who accept that hope that nonetheless the escalating strategic rivalry that one might fear would arise from that will be constrained that the Asian order won't change that much because notwithstanding the massive change in the distribution of wealth and power states and particularly the most powerful states and particularly China will continue to accept the old order pretty much as they used to in the decades after 1972. In other words the China will accept US primacy as the foundation for the Asian order even as its economy approaches and overtakes America's. Well maybe I'll come back to that. The second assumption or judgment at least is that even if there is escalating strategic rivalry even if we do see that kind of fundamental shift in the nature of the Asian order that won't necessarily undermine Australia's security that much because the United States will stay engaged in Asia arguably and it will continue to play the same kind of role and it will continue to protect Australia and shield Australia from any very significant shifts in our basic strategic setting and if that was true of course that would be a good reason to think that the old defence policy would keep working for us. The third judgment is that following from the first two is that we won't need our aid out of our armed forces to do anything fundamentally different in coming decades from what was done for us in previous decades. In other words in particular we won't need it to do more to support our allies and particularly the United States than it's been required to do over the last few decades and which it has done quite well of course we have quite a good record it has worked well and nor is it going to be required to do things independently of the United States beyond the kinds of things that we've anyway been prepared to do independently in what we might call the post-Vietnam defence era. That is the kind of stabilisation operations in the immediate neighbourhood or the low level contingencies from the and the mythical Khmeria which have loomed so large at different times in Australia's defence planning. And if that was true then the fourth judgment is that the forces we're now planning which look a lot like the forces we've used in the past will deliver those the kinds of operations we'll need in future because the operations will need in future will look a lot like the operations we've done in the past and the fifth judgment is anyway even if that wasn't true there's not much we can do about it because no government in Australia will ever spend more than two percent of GDP on defence so we're stuck with it. Now what I want to do is just work through those judgments one by one see if they're right and see what it means if they're not right and see what we can offer in their state. The first one point about that notwithstanding the shift in power that escalating strategic rivalry will be constrained this is a big subject and I've spent a lot of the last couple of years arguing about it and so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it right here and now but I just want to say that it's very important to say that like many other people they don't regard escalating strategic rivalry as inevitable but unlike some of the people who use that phrase including a number of our prime ministers over the last decade or so I don't think saying it's not inevitable is very reassuring it's not inevitable but it's very probable and you know like wishfires aren't inevitable but near enough for it not to matter I think there's a very high likelihood that strategic rivalry in Asia is going to escalate and it's worth bearing in mind that if it doesn't it would only be because one side or the other is given way and that would itself produce a new set of strategic risks so I think it is a very serious risk and I think it's in particular the one that our defence policy has to focus on most defence policy shouldn't focus on worst cases solely but nor should it focus on best cases and to base our thinking about our defence policy on the assumption that the biggest shift in the distribution of wealth and power produces no fundamental shift in the way the order works seems to me like a very best case kind of approach so I think instead of assuming that escalating strategic rivalry won't happen I think we should recognise as a very high probability that a more contested Asia and in particular in Asia in which strategic relations between the region's major powers are more contested will have higher strategic risks for the region as a whole and higher strategic risks for Australia specifically different points our strategic risks aren't identical to everybody else's but as the strategic risks in the region of the whole increase Australia strategic risks increase and by strategic risk I mean very roughly the probability and the seriousness of conflicts of us getting involved in substantial conflicts it is less unlikely that Australia will find itself going to war in a major war in our region over the next few decades and has been over the last few decades because the unconsisted US primacy which has been such a robust foundation for stable Asian order is passing away and we should absolutely not assume that in our defense policy we should not assume that away completely separate point a very high priority for our diplomatic policy for our foreign policy should be to do whatever we can to prevent that happening and I think it's terribly important that we not confuse that diplomatic imperative on the one hand with the defense policy imperative to do what we can to put to manage our situation should the diplomats not succeed and I just make the point in passing I don't think the diplomats are succeeding so that's the first judgment the second judgment is that okay not to worry the US will stay engaged even if strategic rivalry escalates and there's a kind of a view here there's a kind of a self-regulating mechanism that the more assertive the region's major powers and particularly China becomes the more actively the United States remains engaged to counter it and the more we can rely on the United States to protect us so even if our strategic risks go up our strategic insurance policy improves at the same time and so it all ends up balancing up and there's nothing much more we need to do this is this does not seem at all clear to me the situation that America will face in Asia the costs and risks to the United States are preserving its leadership position in the region over coming decades if strategic rivalry escalates will be very different and much higher than the cost and risk the United States has faced in the post-Vietnam era one of the many distinctive things about the era that we've I believe moving out of the era in which US primacy has been uncontested is that that has made US leadership in Asia very cheap for America and that's been of course to our immense everyone's immense good benefit but I think it's very unwise for us to assume that if and as strategic rivalry escalates and as I think inevitably happens that raises the cost and risk of the United States of attempting to preserve leadership in Asia and to maintain the kind of alliance responsibilities it has it becomes less and less clear the United States will decide that those growing costs and risks are justified by the scale of US interests because it's not clear that US interests in Asia have actually increased unless you regard the maintenance of leadership itself as an interest so I think there's a very unclear it's very doubtful that that US leadership is as robust in Asia in a more contested Asia it has been hitherto now of course that's a hard argument to make because people have predicted a decline in US leadership in Asia so reliably in the past and one does feel a little bit like crying wolf but it's always worth remembering a point about the crying wolf story is that the wolf came eventually you know just because people have predicted it wrongly in the past doesn't mean it won't happen in future and I think this one's different because I think China is a different kind of rival for America stronger scarier and America's interests are lower America's interests in Asia are not I think as strong as they were for example in Europe or for that matter in Asia during the Cold War now if that's true then in order for Australia to remain as confident as we have been in the past of US support in the face of escorting strategic rivalry we would have to be willing to do more to support the United States in the region and so I might add with other countries we'd have to be able to do more to support it to keep it here to encourage it to stay and we'd also have to do more I think slightly different point to shape its policies to make sure that what it was doing in Asia was congenial to us work for us the more contested the region the more the US finds itself engaged in really serious strategic competition the more risk there is that what the United States does is not going to work for us and the more risk there is it'll stop doing it and work away so I think what that means is that we cannot be as confident that the US will stay engaged and we cannot and if in response to that lower confidence there's a likelihood that we'll need to do more to shape the way the United States operates and to contribute to what the US does and of course more for ourselves against the possibility that does in fact leave so that brings us to the third judgment that is that our defense policy can no longer assume that the sorts of things that we needed our armed forces to be able to do over the last 40 years and that we're still designing our defense forces to do in the future that might not be enough if those two judgments I've just explored turn out not to be right then we have to at least consider and I'll come back later just talk a bit more about the nature of that consideration we need to at least consider what how we might be able to do more perhaps much more to support the United States in Asia and by that I don't mean anything soft and cuddly I mean to support the United States in a major war with a major power in Asia and we might have to think more equally about how we do more to defend ourselves independently without US support if the US turns out to go so I think it'd be very unwise for us to assume as I think the present policy does that we won't have to do substantially more in future with our armed forces than we have in our past now once we see that we might need the ADF to do more the big questions the really deep questions become well what more and how much more these are very big subjects and I won't dig into them as deeply as I might but let me just give you the sketch what more could we do now it's tempting in the Australian defence debate and it often happens in the Australian defence debate that this that that question is foreclosed at the outset by an assumption that there's sort of nothing more we could do you know this is a view that Australia's strategic posture is fixed that has been that way forever actually hasn't been that way forever it's been that way since the early 1970s but that's before anybody else all of our memories roughly speaking most of us probably and before mine anyway still and that it's almost unimaginable we could have a significantly different kind of defence posture a significantly different kind of defence force than the one we've got at the moment that is of course terribly serious and dangerous assumption and it's wrong of course Australia has in fact changed its defence posture in quite significant ways several times in its history it's not something you do every week it's not something to do without a great deal of thought you only do it when your strategic circumstances fundamentally change but we did it in the late 19th century and early 20th century we did it after the First World War and again briefly and ineffectively in the lead up to the Second World War we did it very fundamentally in the decade after the Second World War as we came to terms with the Cold War in Asia and independence in our region and all of that and we did it again at the end of the Vietnam era in the early 1970s we can do this but only if we recognise the need and what's striking is that in each of those decision points the need was recognised and and responded to a bit late in the case of the 1930s now it requires us to do that though to think what different things might we do requires us to explore in some detail how Australia could most cost effectively use armed force to support our allies and to defend ourselves in more demanding circumstances and that requires us to recognise explore the strengths the inherent strengths and weaknesses in our strategic situation we are the weaknesses are pretty clear we are small and in relative terms and I mean primarily economically we're small and shrinking and that's a very significant factor relative to the region but we do have the immense advantage of living in a maritime environment it's not just that we're in Ireland it's that all our neighbours are islands and that a lot of the power in Asia is in Schiller and usually compared to any of the other great continents much more maritime focus in in Asia than there is in in other continents the third advantage is that although our demographics are small our technology is relatively deep and we have for our size a reasonable sized economy though dwindling as I said in relation to the rest of the region and those sets of opportunities strengths and weaknesses do give us something to work on to abbreviate quite a complicated argument the first thing it tells us is that whatever we do we'll do at sea and the key question is at sea and in the air over the sea of course and the key question is what should that be and again to abbreviate a very long argument the minimum we can do to achieve strategic effects at sea is to deny the use of the sea to others in a range of circumstances both in relation to the security of our own air and maritime approaches and in relation to the security of the air and maritime approaches of all those other islands in the western Pacific and the really critical point is that would probably achieve a high proportion of our strategic objectives we and the other side to that point is we don't need to be able to control the sea and use it ourselves in order to achieve most of our strategic objectives we can achieve most of our strategic objectives by denying the use of the sea to others now let me just try and discipline myself to about three minutes explanation as to why I say that because a very critical issue the difference between sea denial and sea control is pretty straightforward sea denial is the capacity to stop somebody else using the sea to project power or for that matter to send cargo or whatever and sea control is the capacity to do the opposite that is to stop somebody else from stopping them using the sea it's not just the capacity to use the sea it's the capacity to use the sea in the face of others efforts to stop you and for a long time I mean for centuries sea denial and sea control are really two sides of the same coin because everything you did at sea beyond the range of land based artillery was done from a ship to carry stuff carry forces or cargoes or whatever you had to put it in a ship and the more you wanted to carry the bigger ship you have to be and to stop a ship you needed to stop you needed to hit it with a gun and guns are big and the bigger the gun the bigger the ship and so you ended up with big ships with big guns fronting up against other big ships with other big guns and you've got a scene very much like you know think of a painting of the battle of Trafalgar a totally symmetrical operation you can't tell by looking who was doing sea control and who was doing sea denial in that picture actually was Nelson was doing sea denial he was trying to prevent the Spanish and the French using the sea to deploy forces against Britain classic sea denial operation but you can't tell by looking then in the late 19th century some clever person thought of ways of sinking ships that didn't involve using big guns just a different way of delivering the high explosive against the hull torpedoes mines a few decades later bombs and you no longer needed to put a big ship to sea to sink a ship and from that point the asymmetry between sea control and sea denial what you need to do to have a ship at sea and what you need to do to stop somebody else having a ship at sea started growing and it's kept growing ever since and it's one of the ways in which recent technologies one of the few ways I would say in which recent technologies have actually significantly changed the operational balance further that is if ships become easier to find and easier to sink and it becomes harder to stop somebody else finding you and sinking you this is absurdly crude and impressionistic quantification but in broad terms I reckon it takes 10 times as much effort to achieve sea controllers it does to achieve sea denial and to put it very bluntly I don't believe that Australia or for that matter the United States or for that matter anybody else can reliably achieve strategically significant amounts of sea of sea control in the face of the sea denial efforts of major Asian powers like China and vice versa I think we're heading into an era in which many countries are going to have the capacity to deny the sea and very few are going to have the capacity to control it and therefore use it themselves this is good news overall bad news for the US Navy because US Navy is a very much a sea control navy US strategic posture in Asia is fundamentally based on this capacity to project power by sea but good news for the rest of us you know the bad news is the United States can no longer project power by sea against China the good news is China can't project power by sea against anybody not just not against the United States not against Japan either that's what all those submarines are for they don't sell them all to us and you can the implications of that are very clear in the way in which US strategy in Asia has evolved that's why they're looking that's why they're so fast about what they call anti-access and area denial capabilities that's just their word for sea denial and and that's why they're pushed to operational options like the air sea battle which is got a long story short not going to work for them because it's too escalatory there's a broad proposition then I think that focus on the idea of sea denial as an operational option which would deliver Australia opportunities to do more to support the United States and do more to work by ourselves is a terribly important thing for us to focus on second question is how much another very big question and we have to split it up here how much how much more do we need to do to support the United States in an environment in which the United States does actually stick around well just to put it very impressionistically much more than anything we've done in the last 30 years much more than anything we've done since in the going off to the Gulf for example but much more than we're doing we're offering to do right now in again in Iraq and Syria more like more comparable to the scale of of effort that we had in Korea and Vietnam more like the scale of effort Britain had in supporting the United States in NATO or in the Gulf in the end it depends on how much influence we want to have in keeping the US engaged and in shaping what it does in Asia and it's you can't do precise qualifications on this but it's not a token which is what we've really been into it's a substantial operationally significant contribution to the key operational priorities and as for the defence of Australia how much do we need to do the big question as to whether it even makes sense for Australia to contemplate in trying to defend the continent independently in conflicts that might involve major Asian powers most of us most of the time just presume that's impossible I don't think that's necessarily true I'm much I'm not sure that it's that it's true but I think I think there's a chance that it isn't it depends a lot on how you define success if you define success by not just preventing the other guy attacking you but you attacking him rolling into his capital and marching down his main street with flags flying and we're not going to do it but if you define success as raising the costs and risks to an adversary to the point where it's not worth their effort in view of the forces that they can deploy and sustain in your part of the world and when you're someone like Australia which is a long way from the major powers that's not a very big proportion of their forces then I think there's a chance that might not be as impossible as people imagine it's certainly worth exploring so there are some options some answers to the to the what and how much question as to what more we'd need to be able to do if the forces we're planning at the moment the assumption that the force we're planning at the moment are going to do enough for us and just to be clear I think it's very plain this is the fourth assumption that the forces we are now planning won't do enough for us I'm not going to dig into this in much detail partly because I think it's important to look at the other issues rather than get into an enjoyable discussion about whether the JSF is a better aircraft than the F-22 and all of that but to put it very briefly the forces that will be required to to achieve something like the strategic objective the operational objectives I've talked about and something like the quantity I've suggested would have a lot more submarines and a lot more air air power John strike fighter air to air refueling AW and C all of that then we are now planning twice as much maybe and it would have much less a high emphasis on amphibious forces for higher for high level operations the sorts of things that are the focus of so much of our force development at the moment I don't believe amphibious land forces are going to be a cost effective operational option for Australia in the environment I'm trying to describe to you and the fifth point of course is that that would cost a lot more that kind of force would cost a lot more so if the assumption is that just no way forget it no Australian government is ever going to spend more than two percent of GDP on defense if that assumption is right then forget it well I'm not sure it is right certainly think it's an assumption we have to explore very carefully in the 1950s and 1960s which is the last time Australia built a defense posture to respond to an Asia that was contested between major powers Australia spent between three and four percent average of I think about 3.6 percent over the two decades countries like Britain and the United States have been spending that kind of level since the end of the Cold War so although it's higher than we've been spending for the last 30 years on it's not unthinkably high we it's a choice we could make as a country I don't think we can call it unthinkable and we shouldn't be surprised that in a very different set of strategic circumstances in which we face new risks and new demands we end up with a different and larger defense budget it would be a perfectly natural thing to conclude so I don't think it's unthinkable but I don't think it's easy either it's not a decision a decision to make a sustained increase in defense spending is not something you'd take at all likely if I have a very strong argument as to why precisely it was necessary and you'd need some real leadership to deliver it and that brings me to the what you might call a core public policy point of what is after all a public policy lecture Australia has the choice to make a classic public policy choice to make as strategic as our strategic circumstances shift in the Asian century and it's not that unlike the kinds of choices that we make facing other areas of public policy and in some ways for example that's a probably contentious one to mention in some ways a little bit like the choice in relation to climate change that is you have a big and complex long-term set of shifts a bit of uncertainty about how real they are and what can be done to ameliorate them some potentially very big costs to do anything about them very high level consequences if it doesn't pay off and it takes it's a very demanding public policy challenge to try and present the issues and options and ideas in the public policy space in the political space in the space of public debate in a way that really gets the questions on the table and it's a challenge in particular for political systems to do that effectively in the end the choices that we face like many public policy choices not just climate change but we must say in some ways well a very large number of public policy choices anyways a balance between cost and risk it's a balance between our tolerance of higher strategic risk in an inherently more risky strategic environment on the one hand and our willingness to spend money to take the steps necessary to ameliorate those risks that is precisely the kind of choice we face in this circumstance we have a more risky strategic environment and we have a choice as to how much more if any we spend to manage that risk and that just depends how we feel about the risk and how much we feel about the costs and opportunity costs of spending that money on it of spending an extra one or two percent of GDP on defense rather than spending it on something else or giving it back as tax cuts now it's easy to say in other words that the risks are higher I'm pretty sure they are I don't think that's a very difficult argument to make but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're high enough that they're sufficiently that the increase is big enough to warrant spending enough money the sums of money that would be needed to effectively reduce them and it's just worth making the points no sense here in spending more money or even spending as much money as we're spending at the moment unless we spend enough and spend it wisely enough to actually reduce the risks it's perfectly possible to spend more money and not actually make a material difference because you don't buy yourself enough to do to to build more options and I think that's in fact one of our risks and you could perfectly validly make the judgment I'm not sure myself I don't make the judgment that although our risks are higher in the Asian century they're not so much higher than they were than to warrant that additional spending it's interesting to recognize just how much benefit we get from our strategic geography including our remoteness if we were Japan or the Philippines right now thinking about what they've gone through in the last couple of years thinking about the predicament they're in thinking about how they see China in particular and you ask how would Australia's policy debate be responding to their situation I think be responding very differently to the way they are and very differently the way we're responding to our situation it's interesting so there's all sorts of interesting things you could draw from that but it does just remind us what a big difference geography does make so we could take a bet we could take a bet either the strategic rivalry won't escalate or that if it does escalate the US will stick around and won't require much more support from us to stick around and look after us or that if that doesn't happen we have escalating strategic rivalry and less support from the United States nonetheless Australia could just rely on its remote remoteness to keep out of trouble to keep our head down and we could we can influence how easy it is we're prepared to keep our head down and we're prepared to be a kind of a well let's sort of a small power when it doesn't go around throwing its weight around telling what the Russians should do in the in the Ukraine etc I could give quite a long list but you know what I mean we want to be a meek and mild power that doesn't get into trouble by keeping its head down with that's an option for it it really is an option for us and we don't want to dismiss it because the alternative could be pretty expensive it's it's that that's what you have to balance against the cost if the cost of forces to manage the risks more assertively in other words to not make those assumptions to not take that bet but to say no let's recognize that there's a serious risk there what would we need to do to take the kinds of steps I've talked about to manage it if that was going to cost 10% of GDP I think it'd be pretty easy to get a consensus that it wasn't worth it you'd rather live with a risk if it was going to cost two and a bit percent of GDP just a bit more than we're spending at the moment it'd be pretty easy to take to make the judgment well that's not much and the risk is reasonably serious let's pay that three or four percent which is where I think it ends up being is kind of in the middle so it's a lot more so it's worth taking seriously it's not so much more that you would regard it as out of the question I think that is in fact the kind of choice that we have to make and we have to recognize that when we make that kind of choice we're not just deciding about our defense posture we're deciding to a significant degree what kind of country we are I don't want to go wall Anzac Day on you here I don't think Australia is defined by its military past or its military present but it is true that the kind of to an extent that more than perhaps most many of us realize the kind of military power you are does influence the kind of player you are internationally and that would say something about the kind of country we were it would make us a small power that's not necessarily a bad thing to do lots of small powers in the world some of them are very nice countries but that's the choice we'd make now that is a decision we do have to make and it's a decision we should make very carefully it's one thing that to decide that the risks are acceptable and to keep going with what we're doing rather than to make some significant changes it's another to pretend that the risks aren't there and to pretend that we're not actually making a choice and I think that's what we're doing at present so just to be clear I'm not offering you here an argument for bigger defense forces and a bigger defense budget I'm an offering an argument that says that we need to have that we face very significant decisions about that question in the face of our changing strategic environment and that those decisions need to be made very carefully and very rigorously the assumptions that underline them has to be tested the judgments have to be open to scrutiny and the costs and risks on both sides of the argument have to be weighed very carefully and that of course having done that that would provide the basis on which governments could go to the public and argue for a higher defense budget or go to the public and say we've looked at this and we think on balance we're better off staying where we are and accepting those higher risks and any government who thinks that they couldn't make that argument and also thinks they couldn't make an argument for higher defense spending really has got a problem because I think the choice is just about that stark now that of course would require a completely different kind of defense debate at the approach to defense policy not just by my friends and colleagues and competitors in the media or by academics or by public servants but also of course by politicians on both sides of politics I don't think there's any guarantee that we'll get that but I think it is certain that if we don't get it we don't get a different kind of defense debate and a different kind of analysis of the issues I've been talking about we will find ourselves drifting into the asian century without offense policy out of control and doing the other thing getting a handle on these issues is I think the only way to really fix defense policy thank you very much