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Australia’s national resilience inquiry overlooks a critical weakness: decades of deindustrialisation have left the nation dangerously dependent on imports, unprepared for compounding threats and strategic disruption.

While the Federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence inquiry into national resilience and civil preparedness is greatly welcomed, its terms of reference are lacking in several respects.

The inquiry does not define “national resilience”.

“National resilience” means a society with a cohesive view of the threats to its sovereignty; a country with serious strategic industries and a military that toge­ther are capable of withstanding, defeating/deterring and recovering from wars, protracted crises or disruptions, while keeping essential services, the economy, governance and the military functional at a high level.

Somewhat lacking a sense of urgency as to the threats facing Austra­lia, the committee says its purpose is to inquire into “whole-of-nation support to National Defence”, collaborating and coordinating with state, territory and local governments, the private sector, and the broader Australian community to ensure “continuity of government and the availability of essential services, including fuel, in (a) crisis or conflict”.

This begs further questions.

Questions

Collaborating and coordinating among what industries? Australia has de-industrialised. Does anybody see the elephant in the room?

Under radical free-trade policies, critical manufacturing and heavy industries have been either destroyed, diminished or shifted offshore. Australia barely has the critical mass of industries capable of keeping the nation running should trade routes be cut. The nation is utterly dependent on imported liquid fuels, motor vehicles, fertilisers, computers, computer chips, smartphones, water-processing chemical, and consu­mer goods.

Australia’s manufacturing is just 5 per cent of the economy, one of the lowest in the developed world. The sector is half the GDP size of the U.S. and a quarter that of China. And as News Weekly has revealed, Australia is set to become a net importer of food and fibre within 11 years.

As well, Australia has allowed China to become its major trading partner, when Beijing stands out as our most likely adversary.

Further, where is the proposal for national resilience exercises — like those run by Singapore, Israel, Sweden and Finland, to name but a few — that are necessary to bring the nation together to define the threats, rebuild strategic industries and to build skills, collaboration and coordination between all sectors of society?

Moreover, where is the sense of urgency? Since the 1970s, Australia has lost its focus on societal preparation for war, focusing instead on national disaster planning for single events like cyclones, floods, fires and droughts.

But as pointed out by Mike Burgess, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General of Security, we are now in an environment of concurrent, cascading and compounding threats. The emphasis is “compounding”. We are organised to manage events, but we are not nearly as well organised to manage accumulating threats.

What Is to Be Done?

First, double manufacturing: It must double in size in the next decade, focused on the strategic industries needed to keep the economy functioning in a crisis. Australia is blessed with every resource, a high-functioning scientific community and an educated workforce. All of which are necessary for rebuilding the nation’s industrial base.

What we can’t produce, we must stockpile; and we must prioritise trade with trusted and reliable allies.

Second, a national development bank to provide the investment funding for this major undertaking.

Third, national resilience exercises are needed. They involve all institutions: federal, state and local government departments and agencies; public utilities, major manufacturing, agricultural and service agencies, major service industries, major utilities, and all industrial sectors. They are the means to:

• achieve a wide national consensus as to the urgent need to finance and build the strategic industries Australia needs;
• double our defence forces;
• build collaboration and cohesion through the structures of society.

RSL Australia national president Peter Tinley recently addressed the National Press Club. He said that the RSL was running a campaign leading up to the next federal election for “a national preparedness framework, made up of three measures: An act that makes preparing this country a continuing legal duty; an independent commission to advise which resilience measures are worth the money, and an adviser at the centre of government who answers for whether this country is ready.”

Tinley argued that there is community support for much stronger government action. He pointed to the National Security College, which surveyed over 20,000 Australians, asking them about 15 different threats. Fewer than one in five believed Australia was very or fully prepared for any of them.

“That is not a complacent public. It is one that has reached the conclusion ahead of its institutions,” Tinley said.

Whatever the committee’s final recommendations, the critical thing that the inquiry cannot do is produce the statesman to lead Australia through the treacherous seas ahead.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly.