Not all is quiet on our southern front and Canberra is asleep at the wheel. Australia needs to consider Antarctica as a “slow burn” flashpoint set to evolve over the coming decade. We need a government with strategic bandwidth beyond election cycles that can reacquaint itself with the art of crafting good Antarctic policy.

Part of the problem is the Australian government has too narrowly conceptualised the Indo-Pacific strategic theatre. The 2020 Strategic Update constrained the geographical bounds of the “immediate region” of interest to Canberra within the Indo-Pacific to the “north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland south-east Asia to Papua New Guinea and the south-west Pacific”.