We hear a lot about what think tanks think. We don’t hear much about how they work. But that changed in February when the Albanese government announced a review into public funding for national security policy research.

Depending on how you count them, there are about 75 or so think tanks in Australia. Just three in 10 get some form of government funding, mostly small grants. When it comes to research into matters of national security, the collective outlay from Canberra is estimated to be around $40 million a year, a tiny amount given the federal budget runs to some $600 billion.