CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
I am pleased to be here today, speaking to a joint audience - the opening conference of the National Security College, and the second meeting of the National Security Senior Leadership Forum.
I spoke to the first National Security Leadership Forum in September last year, and I opened the National Security College just last month. Both are initiatives I thoroughly support. Both are essential to building a cooperative and cohesive national security community and culture in Australia.
In December 2008, I delivered the first ever National Security Statement by an Australian Prime Minister to the Australian Parliament.In that statement, I outlined the increasingly complex, fast moving, and inter-connected nature of our national security environment.And I outlined the need for a new, more agile and better integrated and coordinated approach to national security, to face up to the reality of a new global security environment and emerging threats.
Looking back over the past decade, some of the most serious threats to nation states, and to the functioning and integrity of the international system at large, have been from what practitioners would call 'non-traditional' threats.
- The global financial crisis, which posed the most significant threat to the world economy and the institutions that underpin it since the Great Depression.
- The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States and the global violent jihadist movement that went on to carry out or inspire attacks elsewhere, including on Australians.
Furthermore, there are emerging 'non-traditional' threats to our national security which are not yet fully understood.
- Climate change, which has the real potential to exacerbate, or perhaps in time cause, security challenges.
- Serious organised crime, where the enormous costs to society and economic impacts are becoming more apparent.
The common thread linking all these threats is the challenge they pose to traditional boundaries - between foreign and domestic, between policy and operational and between government and the private sector. The conclusion we have to draw is that any sort of meaningful response must be multi-faceted and highly coordinated. It simply cannot be the preserve of a sole government department or agency.
Today's highly inter-connected, mobile and technology-dependent world has blurred the sorts of classical distinctions that used to exist. It has also increased our vulnerability to disruption because the modern world is made up of many highly complex systems within systems. Each of these systems must operate smoothly to guarantee the life we expect. This has broadened the definition of potential national security threats.
I don't believe for a moment that the traditional challenges of statecraft - managing relations between states, shaping complex geo-strategic systems, or issues of war and peace - will go away. These are enduring features of our national security.
Indeed, the management of Australia's relationships with the major powers, the prosecution of our global interests, our active shaping of the unfolding strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific, and the readiness and capabilities of our defence force are more important to our national security and national prosperity than ever.
But these new, non-traditional challenges have taught us that we cannot afford to sit still when it comes to protecting Australia and Australian interests.
So I am particularly supportive of the theme of today's conference. Amidst these changes and uncertainties, some things must endure. Foremost of these are our national strategic interests:
- our continued territorial integrity and border security;
- our political sovereignty;
- our cohesion and prosperity;
- the interests of Australians at home and abroad; and
- regional stability and a rules-based global order.
Since the first National Security Statement, we've made progress towards achieving a more integrated, whole-of-government approach to national security. An approach that moves seamlessly from domestic to international perspectives, from traditional to non-traditional threats, and that is agile and responsive to today's dynamic and fast-moving security environment. We have created the position of a National Security Adviser - Duncan Lewis - supported by a dedicated Group within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
This position has developed and supported whole-of-government national security policy development and crisis response. It is helping to break down silos and stovepipes between departments and agencies and build a genuinely integrated national security community. In addition to bringing together different threads of the federal government, Duncan's job is also to work with state counterparts and the private sector.
So, as I reminded you all last year, if he calls it will be important and you need to be ready to respond in support.
For the first time ever this year, as part of the 2010-11 Budget, we brought together all of the national security-related proposals from relevant agencies under a single umbrella - the Coordinated National Security Budget.
The Budget commits us to an investment of $4.3 billion to strengthen our national security, including measures on border security, aviation security, counter-terrorism, identity security, and military stabilisation operations. A coordinated approach to national security funding allows us to weigh options and shift resources across portfolios to best achieve our national security priorities. And it provides a more accurate picture of our overall national security effort in the context of government spending.
Perhaps most importantly, it forces agencies to see their own work in the broader national security context.
This is helping to drive a change in the culture in agencies towards true whole-of-government thinking - because nothing drives cultural change in government like budgets!
We have also taken a number of steps to build the national security community.
Here at ANU we have established the National Security College, which will quickly become a central institution in our emerging approach towards national security policy. The College will equip the next generation of leaders with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate our more complex national security environment. Over time it will build up expertise across government, foster collaborative leadership, and replace any remaining silos with trusted networks of interaction within the national security community.
We have established a National Intelligence Coordination Committee, chaired by the National Security Adviser, to ensure our national intelligence effort is effectively integrated and aligned with our national security priorities.
We have taken steps to improve information sharing within the community.
The National Security Information Environment Roadmap: 2020 has now been publicly released. The Roadmap provides - for the first time - a single strategy to address the barriers to information sharing, articulates a clear end-point, and dismantles some outdated notions of information 'stovepipes' and 'need to know'.
Last year, we released the first National Security Science and Innovation Strategy. The strategy embraces the full breadth of national security threats arising from rapid changes to the technological capabilities of potential adversaries, and sets out ways to improve the application of science and innovation to strengthen our national security.
We released the Counter-Terrorism White Paper which, for the first time, brought together the international and domestic elements of our counter-terrorism policy into one document.
We are building the AFP's overseas network and using the AFP's expertise more in stabilisation operations throughout the region.
We are creating a civilian response corps to enable the rapid deployment of Australian civilians into overseas disaster or conflict zones.
We have created the Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence to improve our civil-military capabilities and our ability to respond effectively to overseas conflicts and disasters.
Finally, we are doing more to actively consult and engage stakeholders outside the traditional Federal Government national security community, such as state and territory governments, business, industry and academia.
I would like to speak today about how these changes impact on you - the practitioners of national security.
Today, this audience is broader than the one at the National Security Executive Leadership course last year. This year we have all the key commonwealth agencies here - Defence, Attorney-Generals, DFAT, the AFP, and others. Like last year, we have representatives from state government agencies. But this year there are also leaders of the business community, academics and commentators present. This is an important evolution.
As domestic and international events, impacts and influences become increasingly blurred in the complex modern world, we need to look beyond the confines of government when considering national security and how we respond to national security challenges.
Perhaps this is most clearly seen in the need to protect critical infrastructure from terrorism, and ensure the continuity of essential services in the face of all hazards. For our economic and social well-being in the modern world, we rely on key infrastructure. Telecommunications networks. The electricity grid. Financial systems. Traffic systems - in the air, on the ground and at sea.
A disruption to any one of these systems would have a devastating impact on our lives and livelihoods. Just look at the effect of one volcano in Iceland. The cost of air travel being grounded by that cloud of volcanic ash over Europe is estimated to be a loss of 1.5 billion Euros for the airline industry and a further 1 billion Euros for the tourism sector in Europe. The follow-on impacts would have been even greater.
Over the past year, there have been some significant shifts in our thinking around critical infrastructure.
For a number of years, the focus of governments around the country has been very much on protecting critical infrastructure from terrorist attack.
But as I said in the National Security Statement, national security is much broader than that. It is about protecting Australia and Australians from all hazards, be they man-made or natural. In line with this change in thinking, we are broadening the way we secure Australia's critical infrastructure. If we are to bolster our infrastructure against a hazard or disaster of any kind, we can no longer write policies or promote risk assessments aimed at protecting it against a specific hazard. Instead, we must enhance the 'resilience' of our critical infrastructure - that is, the capacity for it to withstand and recover from all emergencies and disasters. This resilience must involve all sectors of society - including all levels of government, business, the non-government sector and individuals.
As you would know, all of the systems in Australia - all of our infrastructure - cross a number of boundaries. They may cross international boundaries and call up questions of sovereignty. They almost certainly cross state boundaries in Australia and raise questions of jurisdiction. But they also cross boundaries between the public and the private. Ownership and operation of the assets that lie at the base of these systems is neither wholly private nor wholly government. The continued operation of infrastructure may rely partly on government control, and partly on industry-led standards. But it is also dependent on an effective business-government partnership.
Because of our reliance on critical infrastructure, its preservation, protection and resilience to all hazards becomes a matter of national security.The questions for all of us here today therefore are:
- how do we provide security for our infrastructure;
- what is our role in providing security; and
- how do we work together - with all stakeholders - to achieve that security?
Answers to these questions are complex. But let me give you some concrete examples of what I am talking about.
There are a couple of organisations that most of you in Canberra would know of, but some in the business community might not know much about.
They are the Cyber Security Operations Centre in the Defence Signals Directorate, and the Computer Emergency Response Team Australia, or CERT Australia as it is known, in the Attorney General's Department.
Both of these organisations are full of computer boffins. And one of their key tasks is to assist in the protection of Australia's computer networks.
Earlier this year we opened the Cyber Security Operations Centre in DSD, which was the first time we let the media into DSD. The Centre brings together representatives from the relevant government agencies, including ASIO, the AFP, Attorney-General's and, of course, Defence, to sit in one location and monitor and support our government networks to keep them safe, secure and operating. When fully operational, the Centre will maintain a 24/7 watch on cyber activities that might threaten Australia's national security. It will provide the Australian Government with a better understanding of the cyber threat. It will coordinate responses to cyber security events of national importance.
But Government networks do not operate in a purely government environment. They all work closely with commercial telecommunications systems. So an important part of the Centre's job is to engage with the telecommunications providers and open lines of communication about the challenges we collectively face. In the event of a threat or sophisticated attack against the non-government sector, the Centre collaborates with industry through CERT Australia.
CERT Australia provides cyber security information and advice for the Australian public and business community. Particularly, owners and operators of systems of national importance and critical infrastructure. To date, CERT Australia and its predecessor GovCERT have briefed around 500 companies on sophisticated cyber threats. This reflects the fact that protecting national security means getting out there to industry and having frank conversations about the cyber threats we face. It means talking to telecommunications companies and finance companies about data and how it is protected. It means working out where the shared vulnerabilities are and how we can work to overcome them.
Cyber-security illustrates the point that government and industry need to work with each other to provide the security and stability we need for our infrastructure.You are all stakeholders in that security. You are all critical to providing it. There are, however, some areas of national security where the government will always be the main player.
National defence is the responsibility of the Federal Government.We published the first Defence White Paper in nearly a decade last year. It was the result of a rigorous process of assessing the military threats we might we face, and how we would have to deal with them.
The result was a plan - Force 2030 - to build by 2030 a defence force with more capabilities to meet the changing environment in our region. And it entailed a commitment to stable and predictable funding for the Department of Defence for the next 20 years. We are committed to ensuring that Australia has the ability to defend its territory. Of course, preparing defence forces is only part of the equation for securing the nation. The other side is to shape the regional and global environment so that it develops in ways favourable to us and our interests.
It is for that reason that this government has been unashamedly active in global and international affairs. Making sure that our voice is heard as the world's major economies shape the response to the global financial crisis is as much a matter of national security as is buying the right tanks. Being active in the G20 over the past two years has helped to protect our core national economic interests.
For a nation like Australia that lies at the Western edge of the Pacific and the South Eastern edge of Asia, the decades ahead will bring a lot of change. China is rising. India is emerging. The United States continues to predominate. Other major powers in the region are seeking to secure their futures.
In this environment, the government's view is that, in addition to strong relationships with key partners, we also need to help develop the right institutions that will help us manage any friction as power relativities change. That is why I have spoken about an Asia Pacific community.
This is a straightforward concept of ensuring that the leaders of all of the key nations in the region can get together periodically with a mandate to discuss all the challenges our nations face - political, economic, environmental, or strategic. We have no such body at the moment. Our view is that having one would be in our national interest. And we welcome recent statements from around the region that reflect a recognition of the need for our regional institutions to embrace the wider mandate and membership that our regional institutions need to meet further challenges.
Just as we need at home to build new partnerships to help us manage the complexities of the modern security environment, we need to do the same things in the evolving, complex international security space as well.
Taking stock almost a year and a half on from the National Security Statement, I think we have gone some significant way towards creating a single and unified national security community. We are on the way to building a national security community that is better equipped, coordinated and integrated, and that is able to respond more effectively to the full spectrum of national security threats. But there is much more to be done.
If there is one lesson to take from today, it is the need for continual evaluation and improvement in the way we approach national security. We not only need to be mindful of emerging security threats, but also mindful of new ways to respond to them. And in particular, we need to be mindful that significant assets exist outside government which can make an important contribution to our national security.
Businesses own or operate a significant portion of our critical infrastructure, and have a great deal of knowledge and expertise of the domestic and international environment. Academics and think tanks can offer valuable insights and perspectives, from outside the bubble of government, that can inform better policy. Opinion and community leaders can do much to build social resilience and cohesion, important national assets. It is important that, as leaders of the national security community, you all work together to secure the nation. And I congratulate you all on your participation in these courses as building the national security community.
I thank you.