Wake Up Australia: A Straightforward Account of the Warnings

The past few months have produced two significant warnings about Australia’s strategic position. One came from Major General Greg Melick on Remembrance Day. The other came from Greg Sheridan’s analysis of the new United States National Security Strategy published in ‘The Australian’ earlier today. Taken together, they describe a shift in the regional environment and a decline in the assurances Australia has relied on for decades. They also highlight the widening gap between the strategic reality and the way Australia behaves at home.

The new US strategy represents a major change. It abandons the long-standing view that America has an interest in resisting authoritarian expansion in Europe and Asia. It removes explicit criticism of Russia and says very little about China. Instead, it states that the affairs of other nations matter to Washington only when those activities directly threaten American interests. Sheridan notes that the document was welcomed by the Russian government and that it reduces the role the United States is willing to play in global security. Australia is mentioned only in the context of defence spending, with the US urging us to spend more than we do now. Former senior officials such as Paul Dibb and Peter Varghese interpret the strategy as a sign that Australia must become more self-reliant because the US is narrowing its commitments. This is the environment in which Australia finds itself.

Melick’s Remembrance Day speech described the regional situation in similar terms. He said the Indo-Pacific had not been so dangerous since 1941 and that the Australian Defence Force was not resourced for the circumstances it would face if a major crisis developed. He pointed out that this was not new information. The government’s own Defence Strategic Review, published two years earlier, had already concluded the ADF was not fit for purpose. Melick’s contribution was to restate the message plainly. His remarks received no response from the Prime Minister or the Minister for Defence. Paul Keating criticised Mellick for frightening the horses in the patronising way Australians have been treated by both parties for decades. The silence from elected leaders and the criticism from outside government were consistent with the reluctance of Australian politics to treat defence as a priority.

The warnings in these speeches and reviews are not isolated. For fifteen years, Australia’s defence documents have described a progressively harder environment. The 2009 White Paper noted the rapid modernisation of regional militaries, especially China’s. The 2013 White Paper said change in the region was accelerating. The 2016 White Paper referred to an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific and the fragility of the rules-based order. The 2020 Strategic Update stated that Australia could no longer rely on the long-standing assumption of ten years of warning time before any major conflict. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review went further by concluding that current capabilities were not sufficient for the emerging circumstances. These findings were public, consistent across governments and expressed in formal language that avoided alarmism.

Events in the region have reinforced these assessments. Chinese naval activity has expanded well beyond its immediate region. A recent example was a Chinese naval group conducting live-firing exercises in the Tasman Sea.  Australia only became aware of this when the Chinese ships issued radio warnings to aircraft in the area, later reported by airline pilots. Chinese vessels have also entered disputed waters near the Natuna Islands, prompting Indonesia to respond with naval and air deployments. These developments show a region in which military movements are more routine, more assertive and less predictable.

Another factor shaping Australia’s strategic position is the way public spending has evolved. Over the past two decades, government expenditure has grown steadily in areas such as health, aged care, childcare subsidies, family payments, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and other welfare and social programs. These programs now account for a large share of the federal budget and continue to expand because they are politically difficult to restrain. Each has strong constituencies and meets real needs, but the combined effect is that discretionary fiscal space has narrowed.

Defence has not kept pace with this expansion. Even when governments announce increases, the scale is small relative to growth in other outlays. The NDIS alone now costs more than the entire Defence budget. Health and aged care rise each year because of demographic pressures. Childcare subsidies are now a permanent feature of the system. None of these programs are temporary, and none are likely to shrink. They reflect a national preference for services that deliver immediate and visible benefits.

There is also a practical question about whether the current strategic environment gives the government room to reconsider the growth of major social programs. For years, reducing or slowing welfare spending has been politically difficult because each program has strong support and addresses real needs. But the combination of rising strategic risk, repeated warnings from defence reviews and the clear message from the United States may provide the political cover for a more balanced approach. If Australia is serious about improving its ability to deter or withstand external pressure, then the budget will need to reflect that priority. This does not require abandoning essential social services, but it does mean examining where growth can be moderated so that long-term national security is not crowded out. Mellick called for a grand strategy which would help frame these decisions by setting out what the country needs to be able to do and what resources must be directed toward those goals.

It is also worth noting that much smaller economies manage to maintain sharper defence postures than Australia’s. Israel is a clear example. Its population is a fraction of ours, and its economy is significantly smaller, yet it fields large, ready forces, sustains substantial domestic defence industry and maintains high levels of preparedness as a matter of routine policy rather than crisis response. The comparison is not exact – Israel faces different circumstances and relies on national service – but it shows what a country can do when defence is treated as a central obligation. The gap between Australia’s economic capacity and its defence output suggests that the issue is not resources alone but the priority assigned to them.

Domestic attitudes contribute to the problem. Defence plays little role in everyday Australian life. Most Australians have no connection to the ADF, and defence issues rarely feature in public discussion unless a major conflict occurs overseas. The long period of peace since the Second World War has shaped expectations. Australians assume danger will develop slowly and that there will be time to respond. Younger Australians, in particular, have grown up in stable conditions with limited exposure to hardship. Surveys showing low willingness to fight for the country reflect the environment in which they were raised.

Australia’s defence capabilities also lag regional developments. Industrial capacity has declined as manufacturing sectors have contracted. This affects the ability to scale production, repair equipment or maintain supply chains in a crisis. Fuel security remains weak, with limited domestic refining and reliance on long maritime supply routes. Infrastructure in northern Australia – ports, airfields, logistics hubs – is underdeveloped relative to the region’s strategic importance. These factors limit the options available in any contingency.

The most significant external factor is the shifting role of the United States. Sheridan’s account of the new US security strategy shows that Washington is redefining its interests more narrowly. The US is focusing more on domestic priorities and Latin America and less on Europe and the Indo-Pacific. For Australia, this means that the alliance still matters but cannot be treated as a guarantee. The US expects Australia to carry more weight and invest more seriously in its own capabilities.

Taken together, these developments describe a situation in which Australia faces rising strategic risk while its assumptions of external protection are weakening. The region is more contested. The US is adjusting its posture. China is more active. Australia’s defence preparedness has not matched the pace of change. The warnings have been delivered in official reviews, public speeches and international policy documents. What has been missing is a coherent national response.