Institute For Integrated Economic Research-Australia
AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL RESILIENCE
The IIER-A is teamed with Global Access Partners (GAP) in a project that examines Australia’s National Resilience. The overview of the project follows:
Our security as a nation depends on our nation’s resilience. To paraphrase the 2018 Home Affairs Department report ‘Profiling Australia’s Vulnerability,’ what effects the nation’s resilience is the array of choices and decisions that have been made over generations and the decisions being made now that affect future generations. Fundamentally, the values and trade-offs inherent within these decisions have consequences and getting the balance right is a complex challenge.
Australians are in the midst of a series of natural disaster events, exacerbated by climate change. There is little about the current crisis that should surprise us; the drought and massive bushfires and the pandemic have long been predicted. Despite this, our preparation has been found to be lacking, our acceptance of the need to adapt poorly understood and the need to limit or prevent further such events is an issue that is being left to future generations to address. The tyranny of the urgent makes deeper reflection on issues, with generation-spanning consequences, a political impossibility for some.
Unfortunately, addressing what has been termed “natural disasters” will not be enough. We need more than a bushfire resilience program hastily developed in reaction to the current crisis. We need to be preparing for ongoing impacts of COVID variants in the next few years. We must address both natural and unnatural disasters where the latter are intentionally triggered or are the result of collateral damage resulting from other nation’s actions. An example could be cyber or physical attacks on our territory, economy, critical infrastructure and/or supply chains. Our 90% import dependency for fuels and medicines is a particular example of our growing lack of resilience.
If we address our risks and vulnerabilities in an integrated manner, we can improve our resilience. Improved resilience means improved security. We need an integrated national resilience framework, strategy and action plan. A plan that will enable us to prepare for a broad range of natural and unnatural disasters, to identify where we must accept reality and adapt to cater for a changing world and to prevent, wherever feasible, the compounding of our vulnerabilities in the future. The plan must be a compelling narrative that motivates Australians to demand and take action rather than just reflect or complain.
There is a 2018 Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Framework developed by the National Resilience Taskforce within the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs. The Taskforce Terms of Reference did not include unnatural disasters in their scope of work. However, rather than “reinventing the wheel,” this existing framework and a range of associated analyses can provide an excellent foundation on which we can build a broader, integrated, National Resilience Framework, strategy and action plan that addresses the full disaster spectrum.
Utilising the GAP Second Track model, the development of an integrated National Resilience Framework, strategy and action programme was utilised. The main recommendation from the project is the establishment of an independent National Resilience Institute, funded by Philanthropy, Federal and State Governments and Industry, to help catalyse improvements in our national resilience over the forthcoming decades.
In 2022, the IIER-A will develop a ‘preparedness guide’ that outlines a systems approach to dealing with the growing range of threats, of which environmental breakdown is one of the most significant. It will not deal with the environment / climate issue in isolation; rather, it will be addressed as a component of the range of risks that need to be dealt with as a system.
We will build on the knowledge and experience of our Institute’s Fellows and Associates as well as the more than 250 participants in our National Resilience Project. Given the extensive military experience of our Board, and that of a number of our Fellows, we will also draw from our military preparedness experience to develop the proposed preparedness guide.
We will adapt, where appropriate, decades of development of military preparedness concepts and systems to support improved societal preparedness and thus resilience in the face of growing systemic risks. The preparedness guide will be developed with a modular design so that it can be used by all levels of society from individual level to national level. The modular approach also means that content can be tailored to business, not for profit, or industry sectors and will facilitate the later scaling out to regional partners. The guide will provide a procedural or structural framework which will facilitate leadership at all levels and be tailorable to different cultures and value systems.
We will collaborate in our project with other nations through our growing network of Fellows and Associates in the USA, Europe and in our regional neighbours in order to develop the preparedness guide for broader application across a range of countries and cultures.
National Resilience project update
As a part of our National Resilience Project, IIER-Australia coordinated a series of workshops. We looked at our nation’s resilience through the lens of a world overwhelmed by COVID-19, and in an emerging environment that has been described as trending towards global anarchy. Our intent for the project is to make a contribution to the conversation we have to have in Australia to address how to emerge from the pandemic crisis.
The project is addressing Australia’s national resilience using the following streams which have separate reports:
Education and Research
Health
Public Sector Policy
National Resilience Framework
Culture and issues of Trust and Social Coherence
Industry and Workforce
Energy
First Responders / Defence
Economy
Trade / Supply Chains- (topics incorporated in other workshop streams and relevant submissions made to Parliamentary Committees)
The Final Report, Australia - A Complacent Nation, incorporates, and integrates, the findings of the Project’s nine component reports
Reports and Submissions
Australia – A Complacent Nation:
Our reactions are too little, too late, and too short-sighted
In 2021 Australians are faced with concurrent, and in some cases existential, challenges. These include climate change and the urgent need to reduce emissions, growing global and regional security risks, a global pandemic which will have persistent societal and economic impacts, a global energy transformation where we are lagging the developed world, and a global market model that has resulted in reduced resilience, as evidenced in the face of recent crises.
We are living in a time of shared tragedy; we need to refocus our efforts to build societal consensus and trust to enable the collective action necessary to prepare and to adapt to the reality of our changing world. We need leadership from all aspects of Australian society but particularly our most powerful leaders in business, government, and politics.
The cost of inaction is much greater. We have seen courageous political and business leadership in the past; we need to find that again to deal with the future.
We, the Australian people, need to act and to demand more of our socio-political system, and of ourselves.
Australia’s Poor Energy Systems Resilience
The topic of energy has become so politicised in Australia, both between the major parties and within the Liberal / National Coalition Government, that our national interest and security has been subsumed by both party and personal interests.
This report explores the need for an energy strategy and plan for Australia; one that should be coordinated / correlated with strategies for national security and resilience, economy, environment, industry, and research.
Australia’s Economic Resilience
The economic dimension of national power and influence is central to the hard choices to be made on strategic policy. Currently, Australia's strategic decision making is not configured to integrate security and economic considerations in a way that delivers these twin objectives. Australia needs a strategic, forward-looking, and outcome-based plan for its economic security that is integrated with the other elements of national security under a National Security and Resilience Strategy (which we do not currently have.) .
First Responders and Defence in Australia - Resilience in the Face of Climate Change
The strength of a safety net is directly proportional to the ability of each of its parts to absorb their share of any stress imposed upon the net within its intended limit. While essential elements of our nation’s response, First Responders and Defence are a finite resource whose extended involvement masks our nation’s resilience1 and ability to preserve and restore essential basic structures and functions.
A National Resilience Framework
for Australia
We live in an historic moment of turmoil with a climate and biodiversity emergency threatening the planet, an energy transition underway and the pandemic continuing to spread globally.
This report addresses the need for a National Resilience Framework for Australia. It examines the current situation, our society’s vulnerabilities, gaps and assumptions, leadership challenges, culture and national narrative barriers, and future requirements. It concludes with recommendations to develop a resilience strategy and resilience actions that will underpin a future, broader, Australian national resilience framework.
AUSTRALIA’S SOVEREIGN INDUSTRY CAPABILITY
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-term deficiencies in Australia’s domestic productive capacity and that a reliance on overseas supply chains left the nation vulnerable to a range of future political, economic and environmental contingencies.
The report calls for a broad investigation of Australia’s manufacturing base to highlight areas of sovereign importance which could be strengthened and expanded through a range of government measures. This approach, which has already been embraced to some degree in the 2020-21 Federal Budget, could also generate a range of employment and environmental benefits, as well as support resilience efforts in human resources, social cohesion, disaster planning and other key sectors.
The Australian Healthcare System -
‘just in time’ or ‘just in case’?
The Coronavirus pandemic has exposed a global lack of resilience as a result of a collective failure to assess and act on national risks and vulnerabilities in the face of a rapidly changing world. Australians have reacted very well to the pandemic; but were we adequately prepared for this or a range of other significant risks that have either already manifested or could still eventuate?
The pandemic has brought into sharp relief the inadequacies of Australia’s healthcare system in the broadest sense. The professionalism of our health practitioners has been extraordinary; however, the problem does not lie with them. Rather the ‘health system’ has been found wanting. The “just in time” free market philosophy may have resulted in cost efficiencies, but it has also resulted in significant erosion of healthcare systems resilience as our nation gradually lost manufacturing capacity to the point where we now import more than 90% of our medicines and virtually all of our Personal Protective Equipment, whilst at the same time having no stockholding mandates. Lower cost can come at a very high price in a crisis.
Our politicians have rightly applauded our nation’s health workers outstanding performance and dedication to their duties throughout the pandemic. However, plaudits are not enough. We, as a society, owe it to our healthcare professionals to do whatever it takes to enable and empower them to do their jobs, to ensure our healthcare system is genuinely resilient. The health and wellbeing of all Australians, and therefore the security of our nation, depend on it.
The Australian Health System in 2022 - Update to 2020 Report above
What has changed in the last two years … what do we need to do differently?
We have experienced health worker exhaustion, medicine shortages, supply chain disruptions, loss of domestic manufacturing capability, tribalism and cultural impediments to teamwork and Federal versus State governance disconnects. The 2022 reality being faced by our new Health Minister must be overwhelming. In the absence of a comprehensive inquiry into our handling of the pandemic, there appear to be few lessons identified, fewer acted upon and even less actually learned. Thankfully, the new Labor Government has committed to such a review.
To help produce a “snapshot” of our health system over the year we gathered 21 health domain experts and asked them about their current concerns. The challenge does not seem to be defining ‘what’ needs to be done, but rather defining ‘how’ it needs to be done, prioritised, and actioned as an overall system. There is still no apparent integrated risk analysis, health system strategy and plan that could guide an integrated health system roadmap.
Enhancing public sector policy capability for a COVID world
The public service is a core social institution whose foundations, purpose and performance need to be rescued and restated and, as a result, better protected into an uncertain future to which it will be an inescapably central part of any effective response. The pandemic has brought out the best of the public service which has performed for the most part above expectations and to very high standards, though with high-profile exceptions. However, the policy capability of the public service has reached dangerously low levels and needs to be rapidly and purposefully rebuilt. The odds of the current generation of politicians accepting that as a legitimate and high priority for their time, attention and spending are low, which is a big risk in itself.
Protecting Australia’s Sovereign Research Capability in a COVID World
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the extent to which Australia’s sovereign research capability is vulnerable to a significant downturn in demand for higher education from international students, putting at risk Australia’s hard-won international reputation for high- quality research and the substantial benefits that it produces.
The future of Australia’s world-class university research sector is now precarious due to the loss of international student revenue and will take many years to recover. Our response to this needs to take account of this new reality.
This paper has attempted to identify a range of structural problems with the current system which have less visible in the era of ever-growing international student revenues. Just as Australia once lived “off the sheep’s back”, our university research sector has been living off international students. They are gone now and they won’t be back anytime soon. The need to address these structural issues is now urgent.
Trust, Social Cohesion and Resilience:
A Conversation- Starter for Australia
This report focusses on trust and social cohesion as vital foundations for resilience, how these are in danger of being eroded, and how they can be protected and enhanced.
Australia is at critical point of change, a potential ‘tipping point’. Covid-19 has highlighted vulnerabilities and inequities as well as raising questions about what sustains or damages resilience. Trust has been falling, social cohesion is under threat, the basis for resilience may erode rapidly unless we act purposefully.
Australia is not alone in this regard. Some trends are world-wide, linked to long term change.
National Resilience is a National Security Issue
Presentation to the Alaska World Affairs Council - 11 Dec 21
Submission to the Parliament of Australia, Joint Standing Committee Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Inquiry into the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for Australia’s foreign affairs, defence and trade, June 2020
The Coronavirus pandemic has exposed a global lack of resilience as a result of a collective failure to assess and act on national risks and vulnerabilities in the face of a rapidly changing world. We should not try to replicate the pre-COVID-19 Australia in the recovery. We need to capitalise on the positive aspects of our response, such as the social solidarity and the Federal / State political collaboration displayed in Australia, and learn from the negative, such as the fragility and opaque nature of our supply chains and the lack of preparation in critical areas such as in our health infrastructure and parts of our economy.
We need to redesign critical components of our supply chains under what we are calling a ‘Smart Sovereignty’ model. The essential complement to Smart Sovereignty is the establishment of “Trusted Supply Chains.”
Trade without Trust - Submission to the
Parliament of Australia,
Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth Inquiry into Diversifying Australia’s Trade and Investment Profile, September 2020
Over the past decade we have seen our trade and investment profile evolve without any apparent system-wide analysis of resulting risks and vulnerabilities. In pursuit of the lowest cost we are incurring a very high price in terms of our sovereignty and resilience; one which we are yet to fully understand. We have, in effect, left our resilience, and therefore our sovereignty and security, to the largely foreign-owned market. A market in which we do not trust many of the nations we trade with today.
If we are to maintain an acceptable balance between our sovereignty, security and economic wellbeing, then we must recognise firstly that economic over-dependence on any one country in terms of exports or imports is a risk to our sovereignty and security. Secondly, the behaviours of a number of countries during the early stages of the pandemic, means that our blind faith in the largely foreign-owned market to meet all of our needs in a crisis, without taking precautionary measures such as stockholding, is foolhardy.
MARITIME TRADE DEPENDENCIES AND RISKS
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A National Security Issue
This October 2019 paper was also submitted to the Parliament of Australia, Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth Inquiry into Diversifying Australia’s Trade and Investment Profile, in September 2020.
At the heart of a National Security Strategy, there should be a Maritime Trade Strategy. Today, in Australia, neither exist. This Article summarises the presentation made to the Australian Naval Institute Goldrick Seminar in Oct 19. It discusses some of the issues that could be considered in such a risk assessment. These include intentional interruption of trade, collateral damage from events such as an economic crisis leading to a failure of credit, natural disasters and climate change and PANDEMICS. Who would have thought ?
Pearcey Oration
September 2020
- How do we Address our Resilience and Preparedness in this Age of Mistrust.
The presentation commences at the 18 minute mark in the You tube link below. It discusses the resilience issues being explored in the National Resilience Project and how the ICT sector can be a key part of addressing our resilience issues.
Australian Institute of International Affairs July 2020
A presentation on Australia’s National Resilience