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In this article, Richard Hill addresses the topic of China supposedly undermining Australia's national security and way of life, and causing ructions on university campuses. He writes that Chinese infiltration, or so it seems, is everywhere, from excessive housing investments and land buy-ups to dodgy dinner dates with ALP officials; and from Confucian Institutes (as fronts for espionage activities) to the take-over of student unions by Chinese students. Concern has even arisen over the spread of Chinese takeaways and the growing demand for Mandarin courses, both clearly promoting Chinese influence across the nation. Hill goes on to say that three journalists from the "Sydney Morning Herald/The Age" (Baker, Hunter & Bonyhady, 2019) took the brave step of striding into the murky world of Chinese students to expose the shadowy goings on. Hill opines that following some general observations on 'the Chinese issue', their report morphs into a more general discussion of how Australian universities deal with international students -- no trivial matter, given their contribution to university coffers. Apparently, to no surprise, not all of these student visitors are happy campers. Hill asserts that after all, Australian journalists inform the public, that these students have to fork out up to three times more for their education than domestic students, often live in dilapidated and over-crowded accommodation, and feel estranged, lonely and depressed. Many of them struggle with the most basic English, which makes reading turgid academic texts and assignment completion tough going. Worried by such questionable investigative reportage, Hill shares a slightly amended version of a letter he wrote directly to the journalists. He concludes that 'corruption risks' notwithstanding, it has become glaringly obvious that Australian universities are massively over-reliant on overseas students for their income and face an epic implosion when this revenue stream dries up, which it will once China and India build up their own sectors.

Australia's new government is committed to delivering the next defence white paper in 2015. The two previous white papers took a predominantly risk-management approach to Southeast Asia, generally ignored the strategic opportunities in the region, treated it as a stand-alone region largely unrelated to developments in East Asia and failed to link Australia's policies in Southeast Asia with the broader goal of helping to ensure greater strategic stability in Asia by putting constraints on Chinese assertiveness and encouraging its peaceful rise. After offering a summary of recent Australian defence thinking on Southeast Asia, this paper outlines why managing China is the key variable when it comes to strategic stability in the region. It then examines how China's strategy and behaviour can be shaped and influenced by events and relationships in Southeast Asia, and offers some suggestions as to the role Australia can seek to play in Southeast Asia that relates to Canberra's China-focused objectives and strategic stability in Asia more broadly If that can be achieved in the 2015 defence white paper, Australia - which is often criticized for being preoccupied primarily with managing the relationship with its superpower ally the United States - will demonstrate to itself and Asia that its heavy reliance on the ANZUS treaty is no barrier to strategic creativity in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 Defence White Paper places greater emphasis than its predecessors on defence engagement, and begins to link regional security to the defence of Australia itself. It does not explain, however, what Australia has to do to achieve its objectives, or what commitments it would have to enter to do so. Overall, the White Paper moves towards a reinterpretation of 'self-reliance' that focuses more on the way in which Australia would operate in a coalition conflict, but developing a new defence strategy that links force structure, posture and employment to the achievement of Australia's strategic objectives is left to future White Papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 White Paper reaffirms the centrality of the US Alliance for Australia. It identifies a number of concrete areas for future cooperation and provides the foundation for developing greater strategic ties with China while remaining firmly anchored in the US camp. It is less clear, however, when it comes to Australia's future contribution to burden-sharing within the Alliance. Putting actions behind the goal to play a greater role in Southeast Asia will be an important litmus test for the alliance relationship. In many ways, the White Paper reflects a phase of re-orientation in the Alliance: away from operations further afield towards the increasing security dynamics in Australia's own region. As the future of China's trajectory-and US-Sino strategic relations—is still very much uncertain, the 'hedging' approach taken White Paper's approach makes sense. What happens if US-Sino strategic relations become more competitive is left to another day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last eight years have created radical realignments in Australia's political landscape. The Prime Minister's bitterest enemies are precisely the same people who would once have been Australian Liberalism's stalwarts. The author writes on the legacy of Australia's culture wars. For responses, see EJ848173: "Aussie Battler, or Worldly Opportunist?" ( James Walter); EJ848174: "Mr Howard Goes to Washington--and Brings Home Victory" (Dennis Glover); and EJ848175: "Something to Chew on" (David Burchell).

The article focuses on the need for innovation for strengthening the national security of Australia.

Last year's Australian sedition laws were the latest and most controversial installment in a raft of legislation since the war on terror was announced five years ago. In this article, the author argues that, while some security measures were necessary, the recent laws have far exceeded the modest scale of the threats that confront Australians. He explores some of the strategies that might be employed to protect academic freedom.

The 2013 Defence White Paper includes security against major cyber attacks on Australia as an element of our 'defence of Australia' national strategic interest. It devotes a separate section to cyber in its strategic outlook. While the White Paper makes heartening comment about the need to integrate cyber power into national strategy, it provides no insights into how this might be achieved, nor does it set any real strategic direction for an improved whole-of-nation effort. It does not attempt to identify any cyber objectives that should underpin Australia's national security strategy. Australia needs to develop a current baseline cyber posture, derive a consolidated view of all requirements and gaps, and develop future remediation and implementation plans in an integrated fashion. Without this, cyber capability gaps across the Australian Government will continue to hinder the agencies' ability to plan for and conduct effective operations. Accordingly, this article calls for a comprehensive capabilities-based assessment, a national cyber capability plan, and an implementation plan (with specific actions and implementation responsibilities, timeframes, and performance measures) and a funding strategy for addressing any gaps resulting from the assessment. It also calls for a clearer articulation of operational planning considerations, including dealing with the conflation of electronic warfare and cyber warfare, and the use of uninhabited aerial vehicles for improved intelligence collection and network penetration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 White Paper provides a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of Australia's maritime environment and security imperatives than its predecessors. While the resourcing of Defence capability remains of concern and there are issues to be resolved with particular force elements, the total force structure will provide government with a wide range of future options. This includes not only the emerging amphibious capability, but the range of force packages which can be provided by the Australian Defence Force as a whole. Further Defence reform will need to be undertaken with great care as to the support systems and material and human resources that the maritime front line units require if they are to be sustained. Another important aspect will be closer attention to the effective alignment of civil and military maritime capabilities through the adoption of a 'national fleet' approach for both ships and aircraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securitization of the critical infrastructure as an important factor of national security has been among the aspects of wider changes in the security discourse since the end of the Cold War. The concept of critical infrastructure protection, initially focused on countering the terrorism threat, has been changing and expanding, from adopting the ‘all-hazard approach’, until the recent prevalence of the strategy of resilience in managing strategic security and operational risks. The sources of those risks are found mainly in climate-change induced natural hazards, as well as in global challenges of interconnection and interdependencies of critical infrastructure. The paper discusses the concepts of resilience and critical infrastructure, and then analyses the approaches to critical infrastructure protection and resilience in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Analyzed are the official documents – strategies, laws and by-laws, reviews and guidelines produced by the governmental bodies of the mentioned countries, with the aim of clarification of the concept, as well as the countryspecific variations in its operationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Over the past decade, numerous countries around the world have developed and implemented national cybersecurity strategies. Yet very few of these strategies have been subject to evaluations. As a result, it is difficult to judge the performance of strategies, the programs that comprise them, and the cost-effectiveness of funds spent. Natural and quasi-natural experiments are a promising set of research methods for the evaluation of cybersecurity programs. This paper provides an overview of the methods usedfor natural or quasi-natural experiments, recounts past studies in other domains where the methods have been used effectively, and then identifies cybersecurity activities or programs for which these methods might be appliedfor future evaluations (e.g., computer emergency response teams in the EU, cybersecurity health checks in Australia, and data breach notification laws in the United States). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pacific Arc of islands and archipelagos to the north and east of Australia has been characterised both as an 'arc of instability' and as an 'arc of opportunity'. It is the region from or through which a threat to Australia could most easily be posed, as well as an area providing opportunities for Australia to work on common interests with the ultimate objective of a more secure and stable region. Maritime issues are prominent among these common interests. This article identifies these issues and their relevance to Australia's maritime strategy. It suggests measures Australia might take to exploit the opportunities these interests provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government has stated an intention to develop a comprehensive Strategic Policy Framework (SPF) that coordinates and guides efforts and resource allocations across Australia's national security community. This article suggests that the Australian Government should add horizon scanning to its emerging SPF in order to provide decision makers with integrated information and analysis concerning trends that will affect the external environment and generate new internal organisational needs. Morphological analysis is used to present two options for the proposed horizon planning system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the changing nature of Australian-American relations in the aftermath of the Iraq imbroglio and China's rise. While many observers see differences in Australian and US approaches toward China as a reflection of different interests, it is the contention of this paper that these different Australian-US perspectives on China are, in fact, premised more on some highly skewed assumptions and fallacious beliefs, misconceptions and myths that have lately come to underlie Australia's China policy than on divergent Australian-US interests. This article looks at the proposition that China's rise has the potential to divide Australia and America but concludes that Beijing is unlikely to succeed in driving a wedge between Washington and Canberra. The shared values and shared strategic interests ensure broad support for the Australia-US alliance in Australia which has now expanded into a global partnership encompassing the transnational security issues as well as the traditional geopolitical issues of managing the rise of new powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a critical perspective on the Bush Doctrine's impact on the Asian, especially Southeast Asian, security order. It proceeds in four parts. The first examines the problematic nature of the Bush Doctrine, such as its deliberate conflation of preemptive and preventive war and its expansive scope as a "grand strategy of transformation." This is followed by an analysis of the responses of Southeast Asian states to the doctrine. The third part looks at the "imitation" effects of the Bush Doctrine in Asia-Pacific, where it may be reshaping, national security strategies of some states such as Australia and Japan. The last part of the paper evaluates how the Bush Doctrine, with its underlying, basis in U.S. power dominance in a unipolar global setting, affects the Asian security architecture, particularly the balance between bilateral and multilateral security approaches to regional order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the Hawke and Keating Labor governments (1983-96) gave some attention to the development of Asia-Pacific "security regionalism" as a means of strengthening the regional focus in Australia's security policies. While the rhetoric has changed, in terms of substance the Howard coalition government has continued many of the policies of its predecessor. At the same time, this government has had to adjust to the changed circumstances in Indonesia, and particularly the crisis in East Timor. Papua New Guinea, especially Bougainville, has been a concern for both governments; new problems have also arisen in Fiji and the Solomon Islands. The emphasis on security regionalism complements the continuing importance of Australia's security relationships with both the United States and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ethical intelligence is sometimes cited as an oxymoron. However, as the ultimate responsibility for intelligence agencies work lies with the government of the day, it is posited that intelligence-related decisions are ethically sound. This is because ethical standards provide the confidence that decisions can be judged fairly, giving governments legitimacy to carrying out what may otherwise be considered questionable activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of modern camouflage on Australian military practices and on the public imagination intensified during the Second World War. A new organisation was created to support national security through concealment and deception. Its core members were civilians and included a zoologist who specialised in animal camouflage as well as a group of Australia's leading artists who specialised in optical tricks and visual illusions. While concealment and deception remain central to contemporary approaches to national security (i.e. part of a counterintelligence strategy), the history outlined here draws attention to ethical conflicts and conceptual struggles in relation to camouflage and warfare that were important in WWII, but may seem quaint today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coming years, India is likely to become one of Australia's most important partners in the region. This article explores how the security and defence relationship has developed in recent times. It discusses challenges in the relationship before exploring potential areas for enhanced security and defence cooperation. It argues that if Australia wishes to be successful in its objectives of promoting greater cooperation with India, it will need to move in a consistent and sustained manner with a time horizon considerably longer than it is generally used to. In some cases, Australia may also need to move past any immediate expectations of the reciprocity that would be expected in developing security partnerships with most countries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With revolutionary changes in communications technology and the growing complexity of national security, Australia's intelligence community faces a relentless growth of the information it collects and analyses. This article explores the impact of this challenge on the foreign intelligence assessment process. In particular, three risks-the threat to information security, the pressure of coordinating assessment, and the potentially harmful influence of policymakers-are examined in detail. Among other changes, a proposed Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, modelled on the US equivalent, but with distinctive powers suited to Australia, should help minimise problems likely to arise in the years ahead [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compelling reasons for developing and maintaining a robust amphibious force as part of the ADF's suite of military capabilities are not hard to find. They are based on sound liberal and realist imperatives for Australian leadership in the Pacific and beyond to foster and maintain regional security and stability. Experience after the Indian Ocean Tsunami and repeated deployments off the coast of Fiji is instructive, but so is Australia's experience dating back for a century, considered briefly in this article. That experience suggests a robust amphibious capability could make a significant difference to Australia's regional diplomatic leverage, providing relatively significant hard power to complement the government's diplomatic soft power in support of the nation's humanitarian, liberal-democratic and realist instincts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concepts of national interest and national security, and addresses the concerns relating to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Australia and China. It informs that both countries rely heavily on concepts of the national interest and security in their FDI policies. It provides information that the national interest test in Australia is wider than national security, and reflects the application of the national security concept in foreign investment policy of China.

This article reviews the history of military reserves in Australia with particular reference to the Army Reserve. It shows how the importance of reserves in Australia has waxed and waned across the past two centuries, from an early situation of primacy in the colonial period. The importance of reserves has reemerged in the post–Cold War era, with new forms of reserve organization evolving alongside ‘‘conventional’’ reserve forces. The authors discuss the extent to which these developments need to be accompanied by attention to cultural and personnel management issues and to enhanced reserves–regular integration. Despite the challenge of juggling civilian employment with reserve commitments, most reservists appear to welcome a greater, rather than a token, obligation to serve. There is a viable and meaningful role for the reserves provided that the Australian Defence Force and the government are prepared to devote sufficient effort to them and to assign them appropriate tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia occupies a uniquely strong position in Japan's evolving security partnerships. The two countries' bilateral alliances with the United States, their common desire for U.S. commitment to and presence in the Asia-Pacific region, their common desire to foster regional multilateral security institutions for the purpose of disciplining China through inclusion, and their limited but significant capabilities to respond to security problems beyond the region have caused the two countries to nurture enhanced ties. Although this bilateral partnership has been more closely associated with trilateral cooperation including the United States between 2005 and 2008 (rather than with regional multilateralism), the expanding scope of Australia-Japan cooperation mostly encompasses nontraditional security areas, such as law enforcement, counterterrorism, and humanitarian relief operations. This approach seeks a middle ground between exclusive U.S.-Japan-Australia trilateralism and all-inclusive regional multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]