Defence, Security, and Parliamentary Accountability

Parliament Should Vote Before We Go to War

The E-7A Wedgetail is not a passive observer. It coordinates air operations and provides the targeting picture that makes strikes possible. When Australia positions that aircraft in a conflict zone, it is a participant in that conflict — not a bystander. The Australian public should know that. The Australian parliament should have authorised it.

The current legal framework allows the executive government to commit military forces without parliamentary approval. A press release is sufficient. No debate. No authorisation. No vote.

In every conflict since Vietnam, Australia has deployed military forces on executive authority alone. This is not how a mature democracy should work. The people who carry the risk of retaliation — Australian citizens — deserve a say through their elected representatives.

Pine Gap

Pine Gap processes intelligence that feeds directly into US and Israeli military targeting operations. Australians carry the geopolitical risk of that relationship — including the risk of being identified as a co-belligerent by adversaries — without parliament ever having assessed that risk openly.

I filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Defence on 6 March 2026 seeking risk assessments on Australian territory and assets arising from joint facility operations, and documents relating to Full Knowledge and Concurrence protocols. The public response — whatever it is — will be published here.

Australia’s Optimal Defence Strategy

Australia is a medium-sized country with a vast geography, a small population relative to potential threats, and an alliance structure that creates obligations as well as protections. The optimal strategy is not a question of left versus right — it is a question of what actually works.

Geographic Defence Priority

Australia’s core defence priority should be the denial of access to Australian territory and approaches — not power projection into the Indo-Pacific at the direction of larger alliance partners. A defence force optimised to fight alongside the US in the South China Sea is not the same force optimised to defend Darwin, the Kimberley, or Torres Strait.

The Ukraine-Russia war demonstrated that motivated territorial defenders with access to modern asymmetric capabilities — drones, anti-ship missiles, electronic warfare — can impose enormous costs on a conventionally superior adversary. Australia’s geography offers similar asymmetric advantages if the force structure is designed to exploit them, rather than to integrate into US carrier strike group operations.

The Asymmetric Lesson from Ukraine

Ukraine’s naval campaign is instructive. Without a conventional navy, Ukraine used surface drones to degrade and deny Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — forcing the fleet to relocate and ceding operational control of significant maritime space. The cost ratio was extraordinary: a $200,000 drone disabling a $750 million warship.

Iran’s counter-model is also instructive: underground hardened naval infrastructure, fast attack craft, and missile batteries dispersed across a large coastline. Attrition strategies that work against surface fleets do not work against buried assets. Australia’s own geography — 35,877 km of coastline, extensive reef systems, shallow approaches — offers equivalent asymmetric defence opportunities if the investment is made.

AUKUS and Submarines

The AUKUS submarine program commits Australia to a capability that will not be operational for decades, at a cost that may exceed $368 billion, under technology-sharing arrangements that remain contingent on US congressional approval in every successive administration. This is a high-risk, long-horizon investment that leaves the near-term capability gap unfilled.

I support Australia having a capable submarine force. I do not support committing $368 billion to a program whose assumptions may not survive the next US election cycle, while deferring investment in the near-term asymmetric capabilities that would actually deter a conflict in the 2030s.

Cyber and Critical Infrastructure

The most likely first strike in any conflict involving Australia is not a physical one — it is a cyber strike on critical infrastructure: power grids, water systems, communications networks, and financial systems.

Australia’s power grid is heavily interconnected and SCADA-dependent. The attack surface is large. Air-gapping critical infrastructure control systems — physically isolating them from internet-connected networks — is technically achievable and strategically essential. It is also largely undone at present.

Key hardening priorities:

• Air-gap all SCADA systems controlling power generation, water treatment, and dam operations — no operational technology system that controls physical infrastructure should be reachable from the internet
• Mandate hardware security modules for all critical infrastructure authentication — software passwords are inadequate for national infrastructure
• Pre-position manual override capability — every critical system must be operable by trained personnel without digital networks in a degraded-communications environment
• Regular red team exercises — not just penetration testing of IT systems, but full-scenario exercises simulating coordinated attacks on multiple systems simultaneously
• Classified threat briefings to state premiers — critical infrastructure sits largely under state jurisdiction; state governments cannot defend what they don’t know is being targeted

FOI Requests: On the Record

I believe in transparency as a practice, not just a principle. These are the formal FOI requests I have filed:

• 6 March 2026
  Department of Defence — FOI 1343-25-26: Risk assessments on Australian territory and assets arising from ADF deployments in the Middle East and joint facility operations. Documents relating to Full Knowledge and Concurrence protocols for Pine Gap. Decision due April 2026. View reminder →
• March 2026
  FOI 1482: Supplementary request on surveillance activities and civilian impact assessments. View reminder →

Whatever the response — documents released, redacted, or referred to another agency — the outcome will be published on this page. FOI is a public tool. It should produce public results.

Alliances: Strength Through Independence, Not Dependence

Australia’s alliance with the United States has delivered genuine security benefits for 80 years. I support the alliance. I do not support treating every US strategic preference as an Australian obligation.

A strong Australia is a better ally — one that can say no when the strategic calculus does not serve Australian interests, and yes with genuine capability when it does. An Australia that participates in every US operation regardless of merit, authorisation, or strategic logic is not a valued ally. It is a rubber stamp.

Australia should develop the capability and the political culture to make genuinely independent assessments of its strategic interests — including the assessment that some conflicts are not Australia’s to fight, and that parliamentary authorisation should be required before Australians are placed in harm’s way on behalf of someone else’s strategic objective.