21 May 2025
(DSEI – Defence and Security Equipment International)
I'm very pleased to have this invitation. I'm going to put one slide on the screen, and it is a map that shows the Indo-Pacific strategic perspective of Australia and underscores the importance of the maritime domain. It's just background to my talk. I'm not actually going to be speaking to it, but it's an impressive and illustrative map.
We've had in the introduction a sense that there are series of stresses and crises that appear to be compounding and accelerating, which has big implications, obviously, for defence policy and for our respected national interests in the Indo-Pacific. It's a pretty tough environment for policy making.
I just want to talk about some of the background of Australia's national defence strategy and the way that strategy sits within a wider approach, very much focused on the stability of the Indo Pacific region.
It's a tough environment, we heard some of that in the introduction. It's a time to focus again on fundamentals, including requirements for national defence.
Australia is responding to this environment on the basis of some key judgments that I will run through quickly.
Strategic competition between the United States and China is entrenched because it's structural.
China's military build-up is happening at pace and scale, and it is taking place without strategic reassurance or transparency.
There's a growing risk of military escalation and miscalculation in many parts of the world, including parts of the Indo-Pacific.
Norms and rules that guard against conflict, proliferation and protectionism are being eroded, undermined, or ignored.
Warning time for conflict has shrunk.
Australia's geography, displayed up on the screen, no longer affords the same protection as in the past.
The balance of power has shifted.
The way power is constrained by rules is changing.
There is hard thinking required about how our states connect, trade, invest, co-develop, cooperate, solve disputes, and deter conflict.
In other words, there is a big strategic shift happening, and one of Australia's responses is a new national defence strategy.
It's quite a long document but if you've got time, I commend it to you but I'm going to summarize one of its most important points here.
It's a Strategy of Denial.
It's very explicitly stated in the document.
The aim is to deter conflict before it begins.
The aim is to prevent any potential adversary coercing Australia through force.
The aim of the strategy in this way is to support regional security, and uphold strategic balance favouring Australia's interests.
It has many individual elements.
Among them: a focus on developing long range strike capabilities; our nuclear powered submarine program and other elements of the AUKUS defence cooperation and partnership; we also want to focus on the manufacture of munitions in Australia; and the development and deployment of enhanced space and cyber capabilities.
There's lots of other things, but they're just some of the flavour.
It’s a defence – it’s not just an increase in the defence budget, it’s a transformation of our defence posture, as I see it.
It's all embedded in a wider approach to what the Australian Government calls integrated statecraft.
So we're also focusing on how we deploy our diplomatic, economic and other aspects of national power to advance our interest.
The contest we're in is about technology, it's about supply chains, it's about a lot of things as well as distribution and deployment of military power.
Just to be clear, even at this defence conference, for Australia, the power of persuasion remains vitally important.
We need accesses and influence and the development of capability with our partners in the Indo-Pacific.
We know we need economic dynamism and growth to pay for our overseas investments, and better protect our security.
Japan, I may say, is an impressive example of this, by not just increasing its defence budget, and shifting its defence posture, but making big investments in things like semiconductors, and pursuing a free and open Indo-Pacific agenda, even as it's backed by stronger defence capabilities.
For Australia, given our size, pretty big in geographic terms, but I mean, economic scale, partnerships are critical, we have to leverage them to protect shared interests.
The question for us is how can our partnerships deter conflict, enable the joint defence production and capability development, reinforce rules, and then create options and protections for smaller countries to protect their own sovereignty.
Now, in all of this, we know the United States is very, very important, for the balance of power in Asia.
We need US power.
And we are all looking for new ways of working with America.
In Australia, we also know that a strong and secure Japan is essential across our national priorities.
Not just for stability, but for the way that the world works, the rules by which we operate.
So, from Australia's point of view, we have a fundamental interest in the success of Japan's defence and cyber security transformation.
I’m going to sum up with four points.
Number one, Australia's security has fundamentally changed, and it requires a much more capable and the need of lethal military. It requires the defence industry that can integrate with other partners. It's about deterrence, ensuring the cost of aggression outweigh the perceived benefits. That's one set of points.
Second, a key theme. Defence policy is not enough of its own. We need a wider national approach, and that's what work with Japan, and with my fellow Ambassadors on the stage, that's why we work with Germany and the United Kingdom.
Number three. We care not just about protecting our territory, but about protecting the underpinning of our sovereignty, an open order based on rules, where states can be free from coercion. It is not just about power for us, we're not powerful enough on our own, but also about the rule of law.
My second and last slide, simply makes the point that maritime trade is essential for my country. You can see the main shipping lines. We trade over great distances and Japan's energy and food security for one, rely on maritime connectivity, so we care about how that works.
Many things matter to Australia in this environment. One of them obviously is a strong, successful and secure Japan, without which, in our view, stability in Asia is not possible and the security of Australia is also not possible. So, my fourth point: Japan moves very large in our future.
I’m going to leave it there, and I very much look forward to the discussion. Chair, thank you.