Speech to Defence Horizon Breakfast

Acknowledgements omitted

Australia’s most consequential strategic risk is not that our country will be invaded but rather that a potential adversary would seek to coerce us by impacting our economic connection with the world, our sea lines of communication.

Which for a country like ours, an island trading nation, with a growing proportion of our national income derived from trade, would have a profound impact on our economy.

Indeed, this year we've had a taste of it, a conflict more than 10,000 kilometres from here, in which we are not a target, which has impacted a body of water in a different hemisphere, and yet still has seen an increase in petrol prices at our bowsers right here across the country, and has had a significant impact on our economy.

Those sea lines of communication, they run through the Pacific, Southeast Asia, the Northeast Indian Ocean, our key areas of strategic interest. And so it is impossible to conceive of the defence of Australia without, at the same time, providing for the peace, security and stability of the Indo-Pacific.

And what that describes is a geography of our national security which lies well beyond our coastline, so we need a defence force that can get out there, that can provide a pause for thought for any adversary that would seek to coerce us, to make our contribution to the peace and security of the regions in which we live, that can engage in impactful protection.

And that in turn begs the question: from which part of our country do we project?

Our sense of geography is completely defined by the orientation of north and south axis, we so obviously think of north as up and south as down.

And that gives us a common reference point, means we have a common set of geographic shapes which define our world.

But a rigid adherence to this can blinker us.

It can blur our strategic vision.

If you take a map of Australia, and you rotate it just a little, just 30 degrees clockwise, suddenly Australia’s strategic reality comes into sharp focus. That flank of our continent, from Darwin at one end to Cape Leeuwin at the other, becomes immediately apparent as our front door to the world.

From here, we look upon the most populated country on earth, India.

The second most populated, China.

The fourth, Indonesia.

From here, we see all of our major trade routes with the world.

From here, it becomes completely clear that Perth is quite literally the fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific, Australia's geostrategic ground zero.

And it's for this insight that back in 1987, which meant a young Kim Beazley, and I acknowledge him today along with another former Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds who is here. Kim’s decision then to significantly elevate HMAS Stirling to being Fleet Base West, not only the home of our Western fleet, but the home of our national submarine fleet.

Then our Oberons, now our Collins, and in the future the nuclear-powered submarines that we will acquire under the banner of AUKUS.

At the other end of that flank is our effectively fleet-based north, HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin.

That string of northern airfields that we are investing in heavily so as to project our air force further, in fact, is heavily concentrated in our northwest – Darwin, in Tindal in Katherine, in Curtin in Derby, Learmonth in Exmouth, and in Cocos and Keeling Islands.

At one end of this flank, we have one of our three infantry brigades is located along this coast, 1 Brigade based in Darwin, along with a major component of our special forces, the SAS is based here in Perth.

For our friends and partners, this is the part of our country they have the greatest interest.

Consider America's force posture in Australia today – the 2,000 Marines who participate in the Marine Rotation Force-Darwin, and in time, the 1,000 U.S. Navy personnel who perform part of the Submarine Rotation Force-West of HMAS Stirling.

But it’s not just the United States, the UK will also use SRF-West. For many years Singapore has trained its fast jet pilots at RAAF Base Pearce here in Perth, and recently in the past 12 months they have completed a detachment there of their F-16 fighters, and in the coming years across this flank of our continent, we're doing more with Japan, with Indonesia, and with India.

And behind all of this is a growing and critical defence industry, because in this part of the country we need to build more equipment but critically we need to sustain it.

The Henderson Defence Precinct, this will become the most important naval sustainment facility in our country, it will be the home of our submarine maintenance and sustainment of our future nuclear-powered submarines, and those of our AUKUS partners. It will also be the place where we will build our general purpose frigates, the Mogami-class, as part of what will become, for the first time, continuous naval shipbuilding in Western Australia.

In the not too distant future, 6,000 people will work at the Henderson Defence Precinct, making it one of the largest industrial sites in the country. And across Western Australia, defence industry will provide for 10,000 people.

This is the biggest economic diversification of the Western Australian economy in decades – and this is a sector that will be enduring and it will be constant.

But all of this requires a clear strategic clarity. Under our government, as a result of the Defence Strategic Review and now two iterations of the biennial National Defence Strategy, we have that.

It requires intent to make the difficult decisions to build the defence force required to meet this strategic moment, and we are doing that.

It requires resources – an additional $117 billion dollars that we have put into the Defence budget over the planning decade, we have done that in just over four years. So, to give you a sense of context, in the nine years of the former Coalition Government, they injected just $10 billion into the defence budget over the planning decade. 

What all of that means is that right now, as a percentage of GDP, we are spending more than the vast majority of NATO countries, we are spending more than almost every country in terms of friends and partners who are in East Asia. It means more than Britain and France, more than Germany and Italy, more than Japan and Korea.

And at the heart of that intent, at the heart of that operational delivery, is Western Australia.

And what this means is a significant evolution in the compact between state and nation, a compact which is mutual in its nature, a compact which will provide thousands of high-skilled, high-paid jobs here, which will see the prosperity and livelihood of generations of Western Australian families be underwritten by defence.

And at the same time, it sees this state playing its part-an outsized part in the defence of our country, which itself is historically significant.

Western Australia, through all our major conflicts, through all the great wars, have played its part. 

For more than 125 years down the track, from the weariness on this side of the continent about federation, more than 90 years after the plebiscite of 1933, the relationship between Western Australia and the country has come a long way.

Because today, it is Western Australians who are completely central to the security and safety of every Australian, it is Western Australia which is at the heart of underwriting the defence of the entire of our nation.

And so, every Australian, be they look upon the Indian Ocean, the Southern, or the Pacific Oceans, every each and every one of them in Australia today owes WA a debt of gratitude. 

Thank you.

ENDS