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Back in 2019, in my Sydney Morning Herald piece, I wrote that we must be clear-eyed about our position in the world. I was talking about what we were doing as a government at the time: we were resetting the terms of engagement with China to preserve our sovereignty, our security and our democratic convictions as we also reaped the benefits of the prosperity that came with our mutually beneficial trade relationship.

In 2018, the then Coalition government secured bipartisan passage of laws to counter espionage, foreign interference and influence. We made tough decisions on our future 5G network to safeguard our digital sovereignty for generations to come. And we were also monitoring critical assets such as ports and gas pipelines to preserve them.

But I also said there was more to be done and our greatest vulnerability lay, not in our infrastructure, but in our thinking. I went on to say that we have got to actually understand what the strategic objectives of the CCP are, and only then can we appreciate the challenge that it will pose to security in our region.

A great concern over the last two or three years has been some of the commentary that is coming from top defence experts. Admiral Phil Davidson, a former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told the Armed Services Committee in the United States (equivalent to our Senate committees) that he expected China to try to take Taiwan by force within five to six years. He said that two and a bit years ago. Kevin Rudd said something similar late last year in a speech. And in January, U.S. Air Force General Mike Minihan wrote in a memo that he anticipated that the U.S. could be at war with China in 2025.

So, what are we doing to protect Australian sovereignty and security? That is the question that the Defence Strategic Review must answer. But to my mind, I think we need to invest in hard power. It is absolutely critical.

What we have seen in the war in Ukraine is that you absolutely need to be able to back up what you do diplomatically with hard power. Otherwise, it is just empty talk. And you need to have supply lines that are secure and resilient.

So, we need stocks of ammunition and pharmaceuticals. We need energy security, both liquid fuels like diesel, but also gas and other forms of electricity generation. And we need people who are trying to do these things.

The Defence Strategic Review must deal with some of these problems because Australia’s economy is very integrated, which leaves us quite vulnerable. Our fuel stocks are low. We depend on the imports of pharmaceuticals and liquid fuels. And we run a just-in-time economy, which has implications for ammunition stocks as well. All these areas need to be looked at holistically.

We also need to grow our defence force significantly. The former Coalition government committed to growing the Australian Defence Force by about 20,000 personnel over the next two decades.

Something I have been thinking about is, where do we find the young Australians who are going to crew our future submarines, and are going to do many other jobs that don’t yet exist? We are going to need young people to run our cyber operations and do some very, very demanding things.

The labour market in Australia is very tight and Defence has to think about how to compete with all the other enterprises out there that are looking to recruit young Australians.

So, there are a number of areas that we really need to focus on. But the main thing is that we need to be engaged with the challenge intellectually. If we fail to recognise the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, its aims and objectives, we will fail to protect and defend ourselves.

Now, I mentioned earlier that we need to secure peace in the region. As a former soldier who has seen some ugly things overseas, the last thing we need is a war. So, we need to be striving every single day and working on our relationships in the region.

We always need to be talking with our strategic competitors, and that includes China. But we also need to work on the assumption that things can get ugly, and that is why we need to be able to defend ourselves and we need to be able to defend ourselves for a period of time.

Now, the last government struck the most historic defence deal in a generation, probably since ANZUS, back in the 1950s. A long, long time it took, but we finally got there. And we are now pursuing nuclear submarines, which is very, very significant.

My view – which coincides with [Opposition leader] Peter Dutton’s view – is that we should be seeking submarines from the United States, straight off the production line out of Connecticut, and getting boats in the water as soon as possible. That will be our best hedge against any sort of conflict in the next six to eight years in our region.