Australia's Defence Doctrine

Australia said the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, long-range strike capabilities and its northern bases will be among the country’s six priority areas after a major review of its defence strategy found the armed forces were not “fully fit for purpose”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese initiated the Defence Strategic Review shortly after he was elected in May 2022. A redacted version of the classified Defence Strategic Review – led by former Australian Defence Forces chief Angus Houston and former Defence Minister Stephen Smith – and the government’s response was released publicly on 24 April 2023.

Noting that the US was “no longer the unipolar leader of the Indo-Pacific”, the review noted “major strategic power competition” had returned the region and its intensity “should be seen as the defining feature of our region and time”. Albanese said the government would adopt three other priorities recommended in the review for immediate action: Initiatives to improve the growth and retention of a highly skilled defence workforce, improving Australia’s capacity to rapidly translate new technologies into defence, and a deepening of defence and diplomatic partnerships with “key partners” in the Indo-Pacific.

Australia's defence policies have rested, in recent times, not only on the obvious notion of the defence of Australia and direct interests against a potential aggressor, but also on the benefits through trade and investment of a stable and increasingly prosperous region. Australia, being a substantial developed democracy, anchors the south of the region and, with the right structure of its forces, can help to discourage instability and its escalation, without being seen as having either expansionist capabilities or intentions of its own. The key in all instances is to maintain a technological edge in certain military capabilities. From past history and common sense, such a position by Australia will not be seen as a threat or as encouraging a regional arms race.

Since World War II, Australia's strategic outlook and defence planning have been shaped most fundamentally by the global distribution of power, and in particular the strategic primacy of the United States. The United States has played a stabilising role across the world and especially so in the Asia-Pacific region. This has not, of course, meant that Australia has been able to avoid attending to its own basic defence needs, something successive Australian governments have recognised since the 1970s.

The debate about Australian defence policy is often framed as being a choice between a 'continental' or 'defence of Australia' approach, and a 'global' or 'expeditionary' approach. In terms of strategic posture, an Australian government might take the view that armed neutrality was the best approach in terms of securing its territory and people. That posture would require Australia to disengage from alliances, such as that with the United States, and probably to increase defence expenditure significantly. Between 1945 and 1949, the Chifley Government developed a foreign policy whose main feature was one of idealism based on a notion of liberal internationalism. The main architect of this vision was Dr HV Evatt, the Minister for External Affairs. In Evatt's world view, Australia's security was to be found not through bilateral alliances, but through internationalist liberal principles and collective security. The Chifley Government established what has been referred to elsewhere as 'the Labor tradition in Australian foreign policy'-a tradition that can be traced from Evatt in the 1940s to Gareth Evans in the 1990s. The basic principles behind this approach were, and in many ways remain, a preference for a broad foreign policy combined with a narrow defence policy - or put more simply international diplomacy but continental defence.

A government might alternatively take the view that its strategic interests would best be secured by focusing primarily on military operations with like-minded partners against common threats, across the globe - on the implicit assumption that these partners would render assistance if Australian security was threatened. But the security link with the British or the Americans always risked drawing Australia away from the Asia-Pacific into the Middle East, so threatening a repetition of the Singapore catastrophe in 1942.

The Liberal and Country parties challenged the Evatt vision of internationalism. Leading figures such as Percy Spender and Paul Hasluck possessed little faith in multilateral diplomacy, and believed that Australia had to rely for its security on bilateral relationships and that in shaping a usable foreign policy questions of defence and military force remained fundamental. The Liberal Party's scepticism towards the role of idealism in international affairs can be traced from Robert Menzies to John Howard. In 1949 the Menzies Government believed that an independent defence policy would be too expensive, would blunt economic development and ultimately only encourage Australian isolationism.

The Defence Minister announced in the 1976 White Paper that security policy would no longer be based on the expectation that forces would serve overseas in support of another nation's military effort. But for more than a decade there was a lack of coordination between the government's policy of self reliance and the organization of the army. The Government's expectation of a two-tier approach comprising ready response troops (logically, a task primarily for the regular force) and the ability to expand the force (logically, a task primarily for the part time force) was not met. Instead, the Army seemed to place emphasis on using the regular force as the expansion base (against its long-favoured invasion scenario, which would justify forces suited for higher intensity warfare) while allowing the ready response function to decline for a time, until the announcement of the Operational Deployment Force in 1981.

The view espoused by the Labor Government under the leadership of Kevin Rudd in 2009 was that the most effective strategic posture continues to be a policy of self-reliance in the direct defence of Australia, as well as an ability to do more when required, consistent with our strategic interests and within the limits of Australian resources.

Defence Policy Documents

• White Paper - 20 year timescale: This is the longest term and most broadly baseddocument, looking out a generation to predict our strategic environment and our responseto it. It identifies capabilities in generic terms, with little detail of value or timescales, andtalks of defence industry in terms of policy, not detailed practice. In future, it will bepublished every 5 years. This is the document we will discuss today.
• Defence Capability Plan -10 year timescale: Published every two years, the DCP providesa relatively detailed overview of every new major project (or new phases of existingprojects) being considered within Defence to enhance ADF capability, but as yetunapproved. Produced by the Capability Development Executive with assistance from theDefence Materiel Organisations, it gives an informative overview of the type of capability,timescale, ROM value, phasing, and potential Australian industry involvement categories.Few other nations or industries get this depth of customer visibility on forthcoming needs.The 2009-2019 DCP is due out in August, and will answer many of industry's questions aboutthe timing of new requirements included in the White Paper.
• Defence Budget -1 to 3 year timescale: Part of the overall commonwealth Budget process,this provides detailed expenditure expectations for the next financial year on currentprojects, projects expected to be approved in the forthcoming year, infrastructure, industrydevelopment, etc. It also provides general guidance out three years. This was published on12 May. The Budget takes the probabilities of the DCP and turns them into near certainties(subject to approval).
• Defence Industry Policy: This is an intermittent document, last published in 2007, andbefore that in 1998. It spells out in detail the Government's approach to Defence Industry.Some of the interface issues with DMO are covered in the Mortimer Report, but it isunderstood that Minister Fitzgibbon believes an update of the 2007 document isappropriate and is targeting a September release for the new DIP

• 1976 - Defence of Australia: This was arguably the first true defence policy statement to place Australia's self-reliant defence of the nation and its interests as the central theme. It post-dated Vietnam, and with no dominos falling in SE Asia, so Australia looked to its own backyard. However, industry policy was in a difficult transition - the simplistic past approach of licensed production of aircraft, ships and military vehicles in Australia was no longer feasible economically or technologically, and no coherently stated alternative had been developed.
• 1987 - Nation Building: Arguably the most strategic past White Paper of all, building on the self-reliance views espoused in the Dibb Report of 1986, and from an industry perspective putting in place a whole series of projects producing a re-invigorated local defence industry capable of "smart", targeted support for the ADF, enhancing the nation in terms of industrycapability, technology, employment and economy. This is the period of Collins Submarine, Anzac Frigate, JÖRN, and many other initiatives.
• 2009 - Grand Plan: Probably the strategic tour-de-force of all the White Papers, with a twenty year horizon and a cogently argued assessment of future environment leading through our strategic response to a defence policy, force structure and capability priorities. From an industry perspective, the same level of detail is not evident, but there is more to come