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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.

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

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]

There are two different understandings of security in the Pacific region. While Pacific Island countries (PIC) are concerned with nontraditional security threats such as climate change, their traditional security partner, Australia, appears to be more concerned about the influence on the region of powers external to the Pacific. These two distinct narratives underpin various ways of analyzing the security challenges facing the region and understanding the interests at stake. This article demonstrates that under the "new Pacific diplomacy," PICs intend to enhance their autonomy and influence in the Pacific region, as Australia appears to be out of sync with its island neighbors. Using frame analysis, this article seeks to challenge narratives that present PICs as spectators of their future and demonstrate that they instead use their climate-change activism as a strategy not only to appear as a unified "sea of islands" but also to question and change existing power relations between PICs and the rest of the world. To demonstrate how PICs use the new Pacific diplomacy to promote their autonomy, influence, and conceptualization of security in the Pacific region, three interrelated cases will be analyzed: the promotion of a new narrative on the conceptualization of security in the Pacific through the new Pacific diplomacy; the use of the Blue Pacific narrative as a strategic tool to challenge the global narrative on the islands and to manifest their agency; and the influence of the new Pacific diplomacy on the relationship between PICs and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 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]

Background: In 2018, the Australian Government, through a Senate-led Parliamentary Inquiry, sought the views of diverse stakeholders on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation both domestically and as part of Australia's Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) program. One hundred and sixty-four written submissions were received. The submissions offered perspective and guidance from a rich cross-section of those involved, and with keen interest in, Australia's ODA-SDG commitment. This article identifies and explores the submissions to that Inquiry which placed impetus on Australia's ODA-SDG and health and development nexus. It then compares how the synthesized views, concerns and priorities of selected Inquiry stakeholders align with and reflect the Australian Government's treatment of SDG 3 in its SDG Voluntary National Review (VNR), as well as with the final Inquiry report summarizing submission content.Results: Four key themes were synthesized and drawn from the thirty-one stakeholder submissions included in our analysis. Disconnect was then found to exist between the selected stakeholder views and the Australian Government's SDG-VNR's treatment of SDG 3, as well as with the content of the Parliamentary Inquiry's final report with respect to the ODA-SDG and health and development nexus.Conclusions: We situate the findings of our analysis within the wider strategic context of the Australian Government's policy commitment to "step up" in the Pacific region. This research provides an insight into both multi-stakeholder and Federal Government views on ODA in the Indo-Pacific region, especially at a time when Australia's Pacific engagement has come to the forefront of both foreign and security policy. We conclude that the SDG agenda, including the SDG health and development agenda, could offer a unique vehicle for enabling a paradigm shift in the Australian Government's development approach toward the Pacific region and its diverse peoples. This potential is strongly reflected in stakeholder perspectives included in our analysis. However, study findings remind that the political determinants of health, and overlapping political determinants of SDG achievement, will be instrumental in the coming decade, and that stakeholders from different sectors need to be genuinely engaged in SDG-ODA policy-related decision-making and planning by governments in both developed and developing countries alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]