 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the 2022 Order of Australia lecture. I'm Professor Brian Schmidt, the Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University. And I'd like to start this evening by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we're meeting tonight, the none-of-all-Nambri people who've been here for literally thousands of generation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present. We're joined this evening by retired General Michael Crane, AM, Director of the Order of Australia Association Branch here in Canberra. And it is great to welcome you all back to our campus. And this building, especially, is something that we have been working hard at, our physics building, a great physics building, honestly probably the best physics facility for a quantum world in the world. And I'm looking forward to having money to actually put physicists in it. That's a work in progress. But General, it's great to have you here to continue our 12-year working relationship between ANU and the Order of Australia Association. After last year's virtual lecture, I am pleased that we're able to come together in person. And of course, we skipped the one before that altogether. And as I said, showcase this building. I'm somewhat disappointed you can't look out onto Gloria's view, which is probably the best view in the university. But it'll mean you'll stay very focused on our speaker tonight rather than being distracted by the outside. Tonight's lecture is an important part of our university annual calendar, where we come together to hear from a distinguished individual who has been recognized for their contribution to Australia through the Order of Australia program. The Order of Australia lecture was established in 2010. And since then, we've had the privilege of hearing from a range of speakers, including First Nations Vice President of ANU and Advocate Professor Peter Yu, Public Policy Expert Professor Andrew Ponger, Indigenous History Professor Anne McGraw, the late honorable Susan Ryan, who is an honorary doctor of the university and an alumnus. And I myself delivered this lecture back in 2013 when I laid unwittingly my vision for the future of ANU, even though I hadn't really thought about ever leading the university at that time. Indeed, it was the furthest thought from my mind. But if I go through and look at what I talked about in 2013, it's very much aligned to why I became Vice Chancellor. And hopefully, we can see the university embracing much of the things that I talked about. Tonight's speaker is an esteemed ANU academic who is one of our highest profile, especially over the last several years. Professor Rory Medcaf AM is an intellectual powerhouse in diplomacy, intelligence analysis, journalism. And in some ways, he is not just a think tank. He's more than that. He is a person who gets beyond think tanks and thinks about the issues very broadly. He's been a senior strategic analyst from the Office of National Assessments, which is Australia's peak intelligence agency, as well as serving as a diplomat in India, Japan, and Pappa Nugini. He is the head of our National Security College here on campus, which is a joint partnership with the Commonwealth of Australia. Through Rory's leadership, he has ensured the college is entrusted by the Commonwealth government as a strategic partner. And between the Commonwealth and ANU, we support the NSC to help the entire country lift its capability, as well as contest ideas across the national security and policy workforce. From my perspective, and again what I set out in 2013, ANU has a responsibility as the only national university in the country to enhance Australia's public policy debate across all range of issues, including security. And this is very much at the core of the work that the college does every day. In June this year, Rory was appointed member of the Order of Australia for significant service to international relations and tertiary education. And tonight, he is going to address how can we make sense of national security. Rory will develop the framework of a national interest strategy to prepare and mobilize Australia for what is, unfortunately, a confronting and unsettled future, including insights on what the university sector and ANU can contribute. And I think the keynote aligns well with our university's core values as we deeply are committed to developing better outcomes for our nation and the world. We're also committed to the service of our nation through original thinking and through courage in advancing ideas. And that's something that stands that the Order of Australia Association, I know, also embodies. So I think tonight promises to be an insightful and engaging discussion. And given the importance on the calendar, and I have been literally to every one of these, it is very sad to me that I am bounding off to a meeting of the secretaries, which has unwittingly been scheduled at the same time. And so Rory understands that I will watch the video being made here intently and ask him questions because I am on the board of the National Security College. So without further ado, I would like to ask Rory to come up, deliver the 2022 Order of Australia lecture, and I will put you with the general to run proceedings thereafter. So Rory, let's give Rory a round of applause for being awarded this lecture and look forward to all that he has to say. Thank you, Bron. That's a very generous introduction and it is indeed a great honour to be here. I too would begin by acknowledging the first Australians, the custodians of the land where we're meeting today and paying respects to the Elders of the Ngunnawal and Nambri people. One of the many unresolved questions in this country is how we reconcile our national security narrative with an honest telling of our own history. In a contemporary world where interests, where values, where national identities are threatened and defended, where resilience and resistance have become watch words, and where atrocity, coercion, and empire-building renewed threats, it really is unsustainable that here in Australia we would exclude our own terrible frontier wars from the national security story. For many years, I have been proud to ensure that distinguished visitors to Australia hosted by my organisation, whether it's the National Security College now or the Lowe Institute in the past. Coming from nations as far afield as India, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, America, have an opportunity to reflect at the Australian War Memorial when our full history of conflict and resistance is reflected there, I'll be prouder still. While I'm beginning also on a note of remembrance, I'm also going to ask us all just to pause for a moment and reflect on the memory of three great Australians who've been lost to us this year too soon. They were three leaders, three mentors, cherished colleagues and friends who made invaluable contributions to our national interest. They were Brendan Sargent, Margot McCarthy, and David Irvine, so I ask you please to join me just for a moment to reflect on their memory. Now also, with gratitude, I'd like to acknowledge our hosts for this lecture. And that's, of course, the Order of Australia Association and the Australian National University. National security involves protecting and progressing our sovereignty, our shared endeavours and our identity. And so that accords with the founding vision of both of those institutions. One, a place of knowledge for an Australia finding its way in the world, established for the national interest in the aftermath of the Second World War. And the other, of course, a distinctly democratic honour system to recognise Australians for service to their fellow citizens. Now, you've signed me up today or you've signed up yourselves to attend a lecture that is titled Making Sense of National Security. That's much easier said than done, but let's see how far we get. I'll begin with the National Security College. I've led an institution called the National Security College for eight years now. And helping Australians make sense of security is, I guess, it's our permanent work in progress. So it's time, I think, to demystify a little bit about what we do, if you will bear with me. The NSC, as we're called, works to develop people, ideas and networks for a secure Australian future. What does that mean? It means that we generate national capability through education, through research, through futures analysis, through engagement with policy. Our charter reconciles academic freedom with the need to understand the priorities of government. It's, as I think Brian pointed out a moment ago, it's a singular joint initiative between the Commonwealth government and the ANU, which involves a lot of coordination, a lot of creativity, and sheer hard work. And that's why my inclusion in this year's Order of Australia was also a recognition of the dedicated team at the National Security College and all who've built our success over the past 12 years. So thank you, and I think many of you are here today. The college has been entrusted by no fewer than 17 sponsoring agencies from the intelligence community through the major security, international, and economic policy departments, I guess the leaders of which Brian's dining with tonight, all the way through to the Australian Electoral Commission. It's a very broad church. It's the broadest of churches, and it's certainly not dismissible, for example, as a conclave of hawks and nutters to borrow a term from a former prime minister. We're working at the college with parliament, with states and territories, with the private sector, with international partners, and we engage with many of the ANU institutions which house expertise on security issues broadly defined. For example, we're part of the very strong cross-campus network, including nuclear physics, and incidentally welcome to their marvellous building, which are offering support to government on building the skilled workforce that the nation will need for orcas. In other words, we're busy, and we have a rather energizing time when it comes to stakeholder management, which I guess is a clue to the daunting task of coordinating national security during this time of great complexity. Since the college was established by the Rudd government, in 2010, we've had the privilege of teaching and developing more than 10,000 officials and security practitioners through our executive and professional development courses, and that's, in my view, a major contribution, a major impact we've made to national capability and the national interest. Our academic program at the NSC, which is integrated with the renowned Crawford School, has turned out hundreds of graduates to strengthen the next generation of policymaking and policy thinkers. Our degrees foster the diversity, the breadth of experience, the skills, the backgrounds that the nation needs. Our students are empowered by guidance from security professionals in partnership with our academic experts. Our eight annual Women in National Security Scholarships are making a real difference, and that's just one example, I think, of how the special character of the National Security College in partnership with the security community can make a difference for the country. And so I would thank here, the intelligence community, and especially the Director General of the Office of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer, for this particular initiative, which is having long-term impact. We've redesigned our degrees to accentuate knowledge and sensibilities that the agencies want from the graduates that they seek. Policy and political nows, critical thinking, literacy in leadership, in crisis management, ethics, technology, geoeconomics, geopolitics, history, and law. Our research, our policy options papers, our parliamentary submissions, our private briefings inform debates and initiatives on topics like countering foreign interference, economic resilience, Indo-Pacific strategy, alliances, alignments, technology policy, and workforce planning. And our unique Futures Hub, offering contestable analysis and scenarios, has become the core of the nationwide community of practice in preparing for the shops and the opportunities to come. Like much of our work at the college, this is usually done under the Chatham House rule or in a secure environment. You probably won't find it on our website. On the other hand, our policy work involves contributing responsibly to open debate, translating academic expertise through reports, public events and media, notably a very popular national security podcast and initiative which one of my staff put to me a number of years ago, I was very skeptical about, but it's become a mainstay of Australia's security debate here and internationally. We also convene a quiet network of what we might call para-diplomacy with Australia's international partners. What does that mean? It means in recent years, we've convened something like 19 so-called 1.5-track dialogues, bringing together experts and government officials in person, often virtually, to share assessments and policy ideas, to push the boundaries of key relationships and frankly to help counter disinformation and mistrust at times as well. And all these moving parts of the National Security College cohere around a mandate that we would call national capability uplift. It does make us, as Brian said, more than a think tank. It's a mission involving learning, teaching, shaping and doing. It's also about building a distinctly Australian security culture, one that respects foresight, evidence, consultation and contestability, while ready to make and implement hard choices in preparing the nation for testing times ahead. Which means that in everything we do in all our programs, we constantly think and think anew about national security. So what is this thing? What is security? Well, security is no absolute. If you think you know what it means, you're probably not quite there yet. It's dynamic. It's in constant tension with other good things that people seek in life. Prosperity, justice, opportunity, community, autonomy, I could go on, curiosity, certainty, freedom, fulfillment, fairness, respect and risk, risk taking. So the problem in making security policy is not how to achieve absolute security, the strongest cage, the highest wall, the deepest moat, the most fearsome weapons, all of which ultimately are something of an illusion, but rather in determining how much security is enough. How do we adjust it to an ever-changing horizon of risk? How to reconcile the tensions, mediate the trade-offs with other vital goals of policy, vital goals of life. And in a democracy, that measure, that balance, that mediation is the proper preserve of politics. That's why the National Security College next year will begin courses for parliamentarians. The so-called NS23 program announced recently by the foreign minister, Senator Penny Wong, and endorsed by her opposition counterpart, Simon Birmingham. So we have bipartisanship on that, at least. In crafting policy, security is sometimes too easy to lazy a label. It's very utility, does make it prone to politicization and abuse. And we saw that in the low points of the federal election campaign this year. Security is too easily invoked to justify action, generate division or suspend debate. So we need to rethink security for the wider national interest and put it in its place, put it in perspective. You heard that from the head of the National Security College. It's hard to define security, as I've said, but we all recognize when it's not there. We all know its absence. Now, I guess for me, and this is perhaps a slightly cultful aside, but it's actually the artists of the Renaissance, a time of basically vertiginous uncertainty in world affairs who told it probably the most vividly. And that's why when I'm trying to find slides to help my students visualize a world without security, I turn to the likes of Brugal and Dura, images of death, famine, war, conquest, pestilence, fire, flood and storm. The common thread to all that extraordinary art is fear. And the sad thing is we don't need to look into the past because in recent years, from Kyiv to Kerson to Kabul, Yangon from Hong Kong to the Galwan Valley in the Malyus, from Wuhan to 1,000 corridors of COVID-19, to bushfires right here. And if we had the view, I guess we could look out now on the wonderful Brindabellas and remember this city just three years ago, to bushfires right here, to rising waters everywhere. The fact is that our world in 2022 has seen a pretty chilling measure of insecurity, much more so than some of us would have imagined maybe 10 or 20 years ago when cornucopia and projections of free market globalization, limitless peace and plenty, and endless holiday from history were the group think of our political and intellectual elites. Now all that said, there is still less suffering in the world today than in many ages past. For the past few decades, more people have lived in more places, longer lives of opportunity and dignity. That's fantastic, but the better angels of our nature have not decisively won, far from it. What has changed utterly in our globalized world is that risk is now viral. The special virtues of 21st century civilization, connectivity, concentration and complexity have brought a shared vice, contagion, in every sense. What does that mean? Concentration of capability means individuals can do massive harm. A terrorist or a hacker, the ego of an aging dictator or a tech billionaire. Connectivity means that no island is an island, no nation is an island, no person is an island. Literally everything's connected, risk is viral. And for Australia, the gap that matters now is not so much the so-called air sea gap that we hear defense capability planners talk about, the moat around our continent. The gap is between our limited national capabilities and the vast scope and complexity of our national interests, not just sovereignty, but economic lifelines to the world, social cohesion at home. Complexity confounds the old human aptitude for foresight and preparedness, what we think or thought we were good at. How do you protect yourself if you don't know what from? Hence the value, I guess, of our small effort at the College in the Future's Hub. One profound difference between now and other times of global strife is the immediate and global awareness of trouble. Bad news instantaneously spreads, distorts, amplifies and goes around again. No matter how bad things are, we're prone to think that they're worse and that can provoke paralysis and a council of despair, the very last response that we need. So, if a key element of security is freedom from fear, then we're actually failing, we're failing miserably by that measure at least, we're already well into an exceptionally insecure age. Even the UNDP's human development report now calls the new normal a world of worry. So in this world, how do we make sense of security? And yes, I will end, I hope, on a slightly confident note. But first, let's go back to those four poor syllables, security. More than 2,000 years ago, Cicero gave Latin a brand new word. Securitas, meaning literally without care. He meant it as a state of mind rather than the first priority of the state. Thankfully, there's a handy translation in modern Australian, which we'll all recognise. No worries. Surprised, perhaps, but of course, security is in one way a state of mind. Now, physical danger naturally is front of mind when we think about security. The citizen soldiers of Ukraine, men and women alike, can hardly imagine a way of bombardment and barbarity. They're fighting for their lives, but they're also fighting for something larger. The dictionary definition of security is freedom from threat. It's neat, but not especially helpful to policy makers because total freedom from all threats is impossible. And the academic literature on security is useful up to a point. Learned writings, the kinds that I set for my students, speak of security as an ambiguous symbol, an essentially contested concept, an unacknowledged consensus, and that's all true. Security is the first duty of government and yet security need not, cannot only be about the state. In recent decades, definitions of what is being protected when we speak of security have expanded to include what the academics would say is just about every so-called referent object from the individual human being to the world order and the global ecosystem, but only the state has the combined capability and consent as a forceful security actor. In other words, if we want practical outcomes, we must prioritize national security, even if it's as the essential building block to international security in all its dimensions. And in making sense of security, and this is where the physics comes in because we are in the physics building, we need to get beyond the billiard ball caricature that it's all about predictable reactions, strategic power relativities between nations that size and weight are all that matter because the heart of security is about understanding the relationship between the citizen and the state. It's a very human thing and how a democratic state can most effectively use its power to protect interests, values, and in the end, the identity of our nation and our community. So in Australia, our security is inseparable from our national values and identity as a democracy and a multicultural society with the rights and freedoms and equal opportunities of all are or should be advanced and respected at every turn. When we fail to give all our citizens a fair go, our nation is less secure. When some parts of our community are accused of not being fully Australian and nation becomes less secure. One satisfyingly Australian definition of security is from Alan Beam, who says the consequence of an effective response to a threat is security, not the absolute absence of a threat. And this resonates with a British scholar practitioner, David Oman, whose extensive work on counterterrorism helped him define security as a state of trust on the part of the citizen where risks are being managed to the extent that there is confidence that normal life can continue. So in this sense, security really is about freedom from fear. It turns out that Franklin Roosevelt had it right way back in the 1930s and he was talking about social security, which is fair enough, because social security, freedom from want and deprivation and economic uncertainty actually prefigured the modern concept of national security that we think we know. In the United States, in Australia and other democracies, national security was a conscious adaptation of social security, the mobilization of the resources of the state. But in that case, it's not about resisting the totalitarian torrent of that era from the 1930s to the 1950s, whether Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union. So in other words, the idea that national security is an inclusive concept, one that embraces economics, society, and the resilience of institutions, it's not new at all. It can be owned by any moderate government of left, right, or center, and especially one that's serious about cross partisanship and national unity. And that, I would like to think, should be a familiar message in Australia at this time. Now the Albanese government entered the election campaign at the start of this year with a small target policy on national security. In my view, that was futile and unnecessary. Because on the one hand, the conservative governments of the previous nine years, notwithstanding some missteps and certainly some over politicization, had actually laid many substantial security foundations for Australia to begin preparing for a dangerous future. For instance, laws criminalizing foreign political interference, laws compelling transparency around foreign influence, stronger protections for critical infrastructure, a national security test for foreign investment, the establishment of the Office of National Intelligence and the Department of Home Affairs, Commonwealth laws to ensure that states, territories, and even universities were making international connections for and not inadvertently against the national interest. These were all difficult and necessary things to do. The Quad, and much closer ties with Asia's two strongest democracies, India and Japan. The audacious Orcus Technology Sharing Arrangement, the Pacific Step Up and Indo-Pacific Strategy, embodied in the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, the 2016 Defense White Paper, and the 2020 Defense Strategic Update. And initial moves, initial but not sufficient, to strengthen defense capability, posture, and enablers. It's a long list. And to the credit of both sides of the parliamentary aisle, all of it has by and large become part of a new security consensus. For example, universities have become to internalize the need to take responsibility for security risks from cyber breaches to foreign interference and vulnerability to espionage. And I commend my Vice-Chancellor, Brian Schmidt, on the leading role ANU is playing here, and I'm sure Brian will hear that on the recording. Now Labor ended up supporting the new normal of Australia's security agenda while in opposition. And it actually led in some areas, such as opposing an extradition treaty with China. And the Greens, for their part, took an early stand on opposing foreign political donations and calling for climate policy to be integrated with wider national security. So no one party owns this narrative. In any case, national security did end up featuring prominently in the election this year. The major parties contended in furious convergence on the need to resist China's intimidation and prevent the potentially hostile presence of Chinese forces in our Pacific Island neighborhood. Coming to power, Labor hit the ground running, demonstrating that respectful diplomacy in our immediate region is not only consistent with protecting our interests, it's actually essential to durable strategic policy. Well, we're back on speaking terms with Beijing, but it would be a colossal misjudgment to assume that this constitutes some kind of reset or that it provides a solid foundation for ongoing dependence on China. At best, this is a fragile stabilisation. Fairly much anyone I know of in the public, well, I'm sorry, I'll say that again, fairly much anyone I know of in the private sector who's thinking beyond day-to-day revenue is already wargaming the reality that China is now at least as much a source of risk as of opportunity. The courage, the creativity of the protesters on Chinese streets in recent weeks is a reminder that whatever the future holds, it will surprise. Highly plausible China-centric crises in our region, and don't forget that an assault on Taiwan is just one scenario, would shatter any businesses model of reliance on China. That goes for German car makers, it goes for the Australian iron ore miners, and it goes for Australian universities too, for that matter. But now, all eyes are on the Albanese government's next steps in defence. There's the Smith Houston Defence Strategic Review expected to accelerate deterrent military power suited to Australia's vast geography, like missile capabilities, for example. And we all await the so-called capability pathway for nuclear-powered submarines. These are announcements due within months. Presumably, the Osmin talks in Washington are previewing some of this thinking with our ally. Our new government is trying hard to speak softly, but we will soon see if it's genuine about carrying a big stick too. Yet observers make a mistake if they assume that all of the security settings of this government are final or preordained. Yes, as I've said, there's continuity informed by recognition that the strategic environment is now intensely contested. China's military modernisation, its full spectrum assertiveness, its ambitions for regional dominance are all part of that picture. Vladimir Putin's grievous demonstration that war is real, that nightmares can come true, is another. But we are also seeing hints of a much broader sense of what constitutes security and the national interest. And the reality is that when sorrows come, they come not only in battalions. The present global poly crisis, as analysed recently by my NSC colleague and the incoming head of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Professor Heather Smith, it has deep economic dimensions. These include inflation, the cost of supply, the cost and supply of energy and food, and worsening inequality within and between nations. And while some of the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic may be easing, except when it comes to China's own suppressed reckoning, the same cannot be said of the cascading consequences of the climate emergency. They are just beginning for Australians and for all. Meanwhile, other threats to social cohesion, democratic institutions, the multicultural identity of modern Australia, those threats may be down, but they're not out. Terrorism, racism and conspiracism, if I can use that word, keep our security agencies very worried indeed. And so a challenge for the Australian government now is to demonstrate its seriousness about a truly integrated approach to national preparedness and security. Whether our American ally proves fully reliable or not, our resilience must begin at home. One measure of this new approach would be to develop and articulate a national strategy. The statement to parliament by the Prime Minister would be a good start, but not enough. The last formal national security strategy in this country was developed in 2013. Under Prime Minister Gillard, in fact, the late Margot McCarthy was its principal author. It's high time now for a national security strategy again or more precisely what we might call a national interest strategy. Several respected voices are making a similar call. This is an idea that we've been testing and refining through our senior executive courses inside the National Security College since I had the opportunity to first air it at the National Press Club two years ago. A national interest strategy could look at how to integrate security with other vital dimensions of the national interest, prosperity, cohesion, sustainability, and with principles of Australian identity, equity, inclusion, dignity, democracy. It should take a long view focused on how these goals can reinforce one another. For instance, and you may think I would say this being at a university, but world-class educational opportunities for Australians should be an overwhelming national priority, whether the fundamentals of STEM or the newest technologies, critical thinking or civics or understanding our Asia-centric region of the Indo-Pacific in a changing world. Education is actually the most profound intergenerational investment that we can make in national security. There are fair arguments though against a formal strategy of course. It ties the hands of the leadership that makes it harder to change courses events occur as politics shift or as resources diminish. And of course, external voices like mine would be wrong to assume that an enormous amount of interagency coordination doesn't occur within government already. On China, on COVID, on supply chains, on critical technology, the security and economic portfolios of government are already in constant coordination. The Australian policy architecture is already more connected than in many other democracies. The Secretary's Committee on National Security, the National Security Committee of Cabinet, even Cabinet itself with its renewed emphasis on process. And we're better at federal, state and government industry coordination on security than in the innocent times of not long past. It's all true. But the Canberra security cast, if I can use that term, should not assume that the broader Australian community sees much or any of this and times demand that we do better. So a national interest strategy should be about preparedness for what we know will be a disruptive and confronting future. We don't know what tribulations will come, but we know that they will. The true value of a strategy would be a narrative for leadership to ready the whole nation across political lines, across federal borders, across the private sector and into our diverse civil society to prepare the whole nation for the tough decisions that they will need to share. It's about preparing people for testing times. Because the Australian people are witnessing a world of disruption, COVID, climate, great power tension and now military aggression. And they deserve an honest national conversation about what this means for their security. And that means more open communication about this new world of risk and national choices. We need a national narrative that reflects the rights and responsibilities of all parts of this country, business, states and territories and everyday Australians in working together to make the country secure now and for generations ahead. For instance, in the years ahead, the real risk of strategic confrontation or even war in our region is plausible. And that means that the concept of national mobilisation needs to become an accepted part of community thinking and not some quiet bureaucratic plan that our political elite would probably rather not frighten the voters with. The extraordinary speech last week in Sydney that I had the privilege to attend by the Prime Minister, I'm sorry, of Finland was a reminder that some progressive democracies are far ahead of Australia when it comes to thinking about how to share security responsibility across the community. Finland, population 5.5 million has a trained military reserve many times the size of our own, a private sector deeply integrated in crisis preparedness, executives and parliamentarians educated in security as a matter of course, stockpiles of medicines and other essentials, a pathway to energy self-reliance and net zero by 2035 built into its societal security strategy. And yet it does this with a lively pluralistic and civilian led public sphere proving that for a nation to look after itself it doesn't have to become Sparta. Still it's a recipe for resilience that our political and policy class may be a little nervous to read. I would suggest for instance that within the next decade Australia will not credibly be able to provide for its security without radical change to our thinking about whose job it is. I'm not the first annual academic to suggest that it's only a matter of time before some form of national service needs to be considered. This would be nothing like the rightly rejected conscription of 50 years ago but rather an opportunity to build a national reserve trained and available in the wide range of skills needed for crisis response or national resilience whether during climate disaster or indeed wartime. In the private sector and the public service we should also think about national interest responsibilities as more shared and less siloed. We need a new model favouring career mobility between government and the wider world so that security clearances are transferable building an expanding reservoir of trusted personnel in business, in civil society indeed in academia. Commonwealth public service careers should become open to Australian permanent residents in those many jobs not requiring security clearances which would enable a larger pool of Australian citizens to pursue cleared roles and Commonwealth public service should be a fast track to citizenship. As for the clearance model itself it needs to be comprehensively revisited with a fresh look at risk management and wider acceptance of the life choices and diverse backgrounds of young Australians. The flip side is that the security community owes it to them to provide guidance and pathways to security clearances from an early stage including while at university. Now these are some personal observations of course and politically they may stand little chance of being considered in that initial national security strategy that I hope we pursue. But a prepared Australia will need to make the most of our most valued resource, our people. The good news is that the words of our national anthem these days talk about Australia being one and free. In other words there's already a kind of implicit recognition that national unity has to go hand in hand with national sovereignty. But the hard fact is that we're a middle sized power and that means we need to be efficient and effective. We can't waste time or resources but not attempting a strategy or making the best use of our extraordinary people. The minds that we need to engage for a secure Australian future and that brings me almost to a conclusion but to my own work in progress at making sense of national security because for me security is a state of mind that reduces our anxiety by engaging confidently with risk. To have a chance of being secure in the long run we actually have to accept risk now and pay it for the price of preparedness. If as Australians we want to live that ethos of no worries then our worries are precisely what we have to brace for whether our leaders are willing to show the way or not. I'll stop there, thank you. Well good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michael Crane and as you've heard I'm the chair of the ACT branch of the Order of Australia Association. The aim of the association is to celebrate and promote outstanding Australian citizenship and I'd like to thank you all by way of beginning for turning out in such great numbers to help us in pursuit of that goal and while I'm on that I'd like to add my own congratulations to you Rory on your appointment in the order in June. Very well deserved indeed. Now the Vice Chancellor has left me in charge and I guess part of me is tend to skip straight to the party but this has been such a rich presentation, such a rich lecture that we'll be missing out one and all if we did that. So I think what we'll do now is we'll go to questions. We've got about 15 minutes or so to do that. I think we're going to ask you to come down if you have a question to come down to the microphone. Is that right? Oh there's one over there. So we've got a microphone attendant that can pass around. Could I ask you to just show with your hand if you've got a question that you'd like to ask? And while people are thinking Rory, let me begin if I may exercise the chairs right there. You touched on this briefly in the lecture and I just wanted to explore a little more the role of the media in shaping the national security agenda. You touched on the bad news and I guess the capacity to inflame it or in other areas to place certain issues down. What is the role of the media in Australia in the 21st century now in the national security debate in Framingham? Great, I'll have a go and thank you Michael and thank you very much everyone. So I didn't emphasize too much how media can play its part. I think one of the great qualities of Australia as a liberal democracy is precisely that we have a free media. We may criticise it, we may get pretty unhappy when we're on the receiving end, et cetera, but it's an extraordinary set of democratic antibodies that we have and I'll just give you an interesting example. We went through economic coercion in this country over the past few years. It's an interesting counterfactual to wonder would we have endured and weathered that economic coercion without making concessions to China if we had not had laws criminalising foreign political interference? In other words, if the Australian Parliament had not unanimously recognised a need to do things like banning foreign political donations, having a register of transparency and having laws against interference, we would not have had any of those laws if we had not had a rigorous investigative media that was willing to make an issue out of something that our political parties did not want an issue to be made out of. So I think that's a fascinating example where you can draw direct causation from the work of a very small number of quite courageous journalists through to a very deep national interest impact that's actually had global repercussions because now many countries looking to Australia saying, how does one deal with economic coercion and having that kind of system of transparency and resistance to foreign political interference is a measure of that. You cannot have that media. Having said all of that, I do think that media culture in Australia can and should continue to evolve to the kinds of realities that I'm speaking about and that is really about building a kind of mature education and awareness within the media of how the idea of the national interest overlaps and sometimes is in tension with their guiding principle of the public interest and that's actually where institutions like the college have a role to play. I'm an ex-journalist so you can see I'm not going to be too tough on me. I guess you would say that. Okay, for the floor. Hello, good afternoon. My name is Manuel Alejandro from the Embassy of Mexico in Australia. First of all, I would like to thank Professor Medecal for such insight and lecture. And my question is, given the recent events in the Asia-Pacific region, what do you think should be the top priorities for Australia for the next years? Thank you. Thank you. And I'll answer that, but I'm wondering if, why don't I take several questions in sequence and then I can... Sure, that'll force me to give shorter answers. At the front here, you've got one at the back. My name is Liam Brunigan and I'll have a question for Rory. To what extent should Australia trade its sovereignty for security? And at the front here, Peter, is three to many Rory? Three is good. Three is good and then we can see what happens next. So, Peter, and then we'll come to you Winston. Good evening, Professor Peter. You mentioned the Gellar National Security Strategy, which is the last time any government has attempted to put something forward. Even that didn't go to Parliament and it's 13 years ago and significant changes have been made. You've outlined lots of things that need to be done from a national perspective to come up with a national security policy. But do you see, with other things that seem to be on the front of voters' minds, any real... Does your work show that there's any real groundswell for taking these things seriously and doing the things that Finland has to do who perhaps have a 900 kilometre border with someone who's invaded in the past? Thank you. Great. Three questions and I'll actually work... I'll work backwards, if you like. So, the groundswell or not of opinion in favour of a national security or interest strategy, the very tricky question from someone who, as a national security college student, would naturally ask very tricky questions on security and sovereignty and what's our priority in the region. So, look, I don't claim to speak for anyone other than myself. So, of course, our political leaders are going to make judgements based on a few things. One of those things is... I'd like to think very much the national interest, but there's also a question of political priority and indeed willingness to take political risk in perhaps prioritise something like national security or a national interest strategy, when we've got all these other things to worry about and that's completely reasonable. That's why I think there does need to be, I think, much more creative work at understanding the connections between security as traditionally and narrowly defined and the essential wellbeing of the Australian population. The impact of the pandemic, the impact of bushfires and floods, the impact of China's economic coercion, supply chain shocks, the war in Ukraine, all of that, I think it is beginning to change public opinion to realise that there is a broad sense of national interest and national security that is a pretty fundamental priority for government. So, I don't think, you know, while that may not be a mass publicly articulated groundswell, I think the territory is probably more fertile for political leadership on this issue than in living memory, for most of us at least. And on Finland, I think, you know, I use Finland as an example, but there are others and I think there are other countries, particularly in Northern Europe, interestingly, where you've seen that much greater effort to build a concerted national resilience approach, but even countries that don't necessarily have recent experience of comprehensive national security strategy, and I'm thinking about Germany, for example, are seeking to develop now a national security strategy. There's something in the water globally that is making countries think comprehensively about risk. Going to, Lee, a very difficult question about security and sovereignty, and of course, I think I know what you mean, but there are many ways of interpreting that question. I'm going to interpret that question as meaning, for example, AUKUS, as meaning the interoperability, and I think it's the term is used now to change ability of our military with that of the United States, the deep reliance on the United States as our ally militarily in intelligence, in industry in so many ways, and is that us buying security at the expense of sovereignty? I don't think there's a simple yes, no answer to that question, because, of course, alliance is a sovereign choice. We don't have to have an alliance. In fact, if you look at the history, we've essentially pushed the Americans into the alliance we have today, and both sides of politics in this country still claim somewhat, I think, unhelpfully still argue over who owns and loves it the most. I think instead we've got to look very closely at every step at those gradations of trade off between. Sovereignty, if you define that, sovereignty as being some sort of complete military independence or the strategic autonomy that the French like to talk about, and the security umbrella that we feel the United States provides for us, and we're only going to be able to prosecute that conversation more maturely as we build our ability to be a more self-reliant security actor, and that's not just in military force, it's very much in all of the elements of what I spoke about tonight, a country that is actually able to punch to its weight to use that horrible term and be the sum of its parts on national resilience, which at the moment, I think we're not. Going finally to what's our priority in the region, so, look, I would start by saying that the government at the moment is doing, and that's where I'd probably also even push back on your question a bit, Peter, I think the government is doing some very good work on national security broadly defined, and I think a lot of the diplomacy in the region is actually part of that, the fact that we're trying to engage in that respectful way with the Pacific and Southeast Asia, while also strengthening the Quad, strengthening AUKUS, strengthening the Alliance, strengthening our own military capabilities, that's a very difficult balancing act and so far in terms of the different moving parts they seem to be getting that right, but if they don't begin to join it up in a very integrated narrative to the public and in a very forward-looking and not only responsive set of policy measures over the next year or two, then I think we'll be in a bit of trouble. So I think good marks early on, but the proof very much will be what the strategic framework looks like in the next year ahead, and so what's the priority in the region? I think there's so much to do, but I think part of it is to be much more effective in countering misinformation, much more effective in projecting a contemporary image of Australia, that kind of soft power while not doing that alone, while actually helping small countries in the South Pacific build their capability to be sovereign, while helping persuade countries in Southeast Asia that in Australia that's militarily capable and has, for example, the kinds of submarines that China's already sailing through their waters is not a threat to their interests, it's actually a net security provider for all of us. So that goes to a much more robust kind of diplomacy. We have elements of that happening already, but I would treat reinforcing that as a very high priority for government. Sure, I've got a couple more minutes. So perhaps another round of three if we've got them. Winston at the front here perhaps to start. Oh, I've got one over here on the next. So we'll go there first. Yeah? Yeah. Thank you for your talk, Rory Gray-Evenvill here from ANU. I was really interested in your comments about education and the importance of education for national security, and I do note that Finland's education system is without doubt one of the best in the world. But could you elaborate please a little bit on how, well, we're one of the most educated countries and also the globe is probably better educated than it has ever been previously, but we still find ourselves in a situation of global risk. And so what more do we need to do? What can we do to improve education and contribute to global peace? Thank you. Education, thank you. We'll take it anyway. Yep, you've got, Winston? Yes, Rory, Winston Phillips. You quite rightly said that our population, our people, is a great asset, and you've also hinted that perhaps some form of national service might be appropriate, but in my short lifetime, I've seen Australia's health and fitness deteriorated to the stage where 80% of people couldn't complete, young people couldn't complete a recruit training course without being hospitalised, because we've just become, basically become a sedentary, lazy nation, and we're seen as that by people overseas. I've travelled all over the season, I've seen the populations there in many poorer countries where they're so hard and fit and healthy, and just to get people to the stage where they need to be fit enough to do a basic recruit training, you're looking at two, three, four years to get a lot of people to that stage, so perhaps that emphasis should be starting at the start rather than later on, if you know what I mean. Thank you. Education, thank you, Winston Phillips. And there's one, yeah, please. Hello. Yeah, question from Rory. I want to sort of focus a bit more on the national interest strategy that you're proposing. In particular, your views on what the sort of the practical utility of such a strategy might be, and I'm thinking in terms of the recently released US national security strategy, one of the critiques is that it tries to be everything for everyone. It's a big laundry list of things that are really important critical threats, and we live in the world of what's now been called the Polly Crisis. So as a middle power with limited resources, one of the things that I learned from you in our master's course, of course, is how do we devote those resources in all those different challenges and the threats that we face now? So a practical utility of a strategy, is it to prioritise what is it exactly? Thank you. Well, thank you for, again, a great, and I didn't plant that question, a great door at the Dixie about the quality of our master's programme, but, but, seriously, I do think we need to think very critically about this idea of national strategy, whether it's national interest strategy or national security strategy, it's very easy for someone like me to say we need one. I know an enormous number of incredibly hardworking bureaucrats and officials who, on whose shoulders a lot of this work would fall, and who see how things work on the inside and again, you know, from our courses on policymaking, how messy the process of making policy actually is and how political it actually can be as well and how a handful of the right people in the right place can make a difference right or right or wrong. So I know there are limitations to, and fallibilities to having some sort of strategy. And there's also an enormous amount of work that goes on already, you know, I'm sure, and all this stuff is sort of below the radar, but I'm sure if every cabinet submission that went up, the Hill was, you know, sort of publicly available. Some of us would be impressed and others would be horrified at actually how much work is going on already to prepare the nation, and it's fantastic. But I do think the missing link is in the public narrative. I do think that if you look at what a, in every sense diverse country this is, if you look at, for example, you know, the daily priorities that people will look on if they're in the suburbs of Sydney or in, you know, rural Queensland or wherever they may be, of course what matters to us here in the bureaucratic sort of circles of Canberra is not going to be front of mind. And unless there's a sustained public narrative by not only the Prime Minister, but by parliamentarians generally, and a degree of consensus among them about priorities for the country, they're likely to, people are likely to wake up one day with a really rude shock when we are in a major, a truly major national crisis and say, and either assume that we're ready to roll or wonder why the hell weren't we prepared. And at that point you will have a lot of parliamentarians suddenly, you know, adopting much more of the kind of mantle of crisis responsibility. My argument is that we can start doing that in a non alarming way already. And that's actually the number one kind of value of the strategy. It's basically saying, we're getting ready for testing times. We don't even know what the test will be, but we know it will come and we want the nation to be prepared for that. In parallel, of course, a lot of classified work to support that much of which actually goes on already, but joining it together in a way where you have, where you really tighten the lattice work between the economic and security agencies, where they've got a shared vocabulary, and we frankly, the security community isn't necessarily dominating the conversation. Maybe the security community's learning from the economic community too. So I'd say, you know, the rudiments of that are already happening, but we could do better. Fitness, not gonna, I'm certainly not going to preach to anybody about fitness myself, but I just would say that thinking about national service in the way that I've defined it, doesn't necessarily equate with the kind of national service we might have imagined 50 years ago. This is not, I'm not necessarily talking about, sort of reserve battalions of infantry or that kind of thing. So many of the critical roles in national security don't require enormous levels of physical fitness. In fact, don't fit the mould of what we think a service woman or service man should look like. And there are plenty of young Australians with extraordinary fitness in their thumbs, which could probably be put to good use in the national interest. So I think this is very much a kind of horses for courses thing. I think, I don't have a blueprint, there are others like Chris Barry or John Blacksland have done huge thinking deep thinking about this and probably have off the shelf examples of what a national service scheme would look like. But I would argue that it's about giving probably a predominance of civilian options to young people to do the kinds of service that at the moment, the Australian Defence Force is being, I think, wastefully reverse engineered for. Age care, COVID response, bushfires, floods, very expensive, they're a very expensive hammer for that thing that isn't actually a nail. So I think there are much more creative things we can do and I'd like to think that the aptitude question could be dealt with as we go, there'd be an enormous amount of self-selection along the way. Finally on education, Grady. So, yeah, look, I would say education is important I'm at the Australian National University, but I do believe it. And I would say this is not only about university education, I think, don't get me wrong to think that this is just a plea for more money for what we do, although it would always be nice. Especially when you look at where Australia stands in global rankings for relative, you know, public support of research, for example. But school education, so, you know, not just in STEM or language, but in civics, for example, you know, a very consistent national curriculum in civics and the value of public participation and frankly, why democratic institutions are worth supporting, I think would be enormously valuable. Skills to counter misinformation and disinformation, developing at every stage Australian skills to know bullshit when they see it in social media or elsewhere and I'm sure they'll stay on the recording because it's a genuinely piece of Australian vocabulary. And finally, in the tertiary sector, I think while we pride ourselves, we certainly cannot stand still. And I think one thing we probably haven't come to terms with as a nation is how to make meaningful use in a democratic way of the brilliance we have in our tertiary sector for the national interest. And I think some of the culture wars that we saw, particularly under the previous government, were helpful in that regard because they helped reinforce the view of many academics that what the government wants them to do is precisely what they shouldn't be doing. Whereas I think we're going to need to develop a model where the national security community and the academic community work in much closer partnership, what we're doing at the national security college and I think, incidentally, among the AUKUS network at this university as well, is a small example of a model that can work where academic freedom is protected and respected. But we're in many ways, the questions that we ask as researchers and as teachers are also the questions that the national interest needs answered. So I'll stop there. Thanks for reading. Look, I know there's so much more and there are other questions out there, but I'm conscious that we are a little over time. So I think I might draw things to a close there. Rory, I think you're going to be available outside during the reception, so please do feel free to buttonhole, Rory, and ask him your own question. Can I just begin by, or begin the end, at least by saying thank you, Rory, for a terrific OAA or Australia Association, ANU lecture for 2022? I don't propose to summarise in detail because the lecture will be available for people to look at. But I will say, you know, it's been, well, first of all, thank you for, on behalf of those who are not part of the National Security College, for updating us on the stroke of its work, filling us in there. Thanks for challenging us to rethink the idea of national security, and thanks also for some of your policy prescriptions. Some of those are not unfamiliar, mobilisation, national security, those are ideas that many of us have heard before, but you've updated them and made them fit, made us think about them through a different lens and made them fit for our contemporary environment. So thanks for all of that. In all, I think a terrific and very worthy addition to the annals of the ANU lecture. So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Rory. Thank you.