Election 2025: Australia ‘couldn’t cope’ with major disruption to supply lines, say ex-defence chiefs

Australia couldn’t cope with major disruption to key supply lines, former defence chiefs have warned in a wake-up call to both major parties.

Retired major general Gus McLachlan. Picture: AAP

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Australia would face paralysis and panic within weeks of serious supply line disruptions, such as Chinese warships conducting extended live-fire exercises in shipping lanes, senior defence figures warn.

The nation’s lack of sovereign capacity and contingency planning for fuel, medicines and food inputs is increasingly seen in defence circles as an urgent national security issue.

While the Albanese government has announced plans to draw up a national food security plan, there is concern within defence and food production that action must be taken immediately.

Retired air vice-marshal John Blackburn told The Australian the nation was ill-prepared to deal with extended disruption to supply chains from coercion, piracy, terrorist actions or shipping crisis.

“I think you’d see quite widespread mass panic,” said Mr Blackburn, former Defence Headquarters head of strategic policy. “We would see anger, confusion and panic. There would be an impact on our national psyche.

“When you look at our resilience, our national maritime capacity is almost non-existent, our stocks are ‘just in time’ and very low, our skills-sets are very depleted, the navy is very small and limited.”

Much of Australia’s food relied on foreign ingredients, 90 per cent of medicines were imported, and fuel stocks were limited, while crops needed imported fertilisers and chemicals, he said.

Mr Blackburn said Donald Trump’s second term was “another Singapore moment for Australia”, prompting the realisation it could no longer rely on the US, just as the 1942 fall of Singapore shattered the belief it could rely on the British.

The next government should move quickly to conduct long-overdue detailed risk assessments to identify supply chain vulnerabilities and overlaps: “The assumptions that made us comfortable are gone.”

Retired army major general Gus McLachlan told The Australian recent activity by Chinese vessels off Australia’s coast raised the prospect of more serious actions that could hit supply lines.

“Let’s say that (Chinese) Surface Action Group decided to sit in the seas between us and Singapore and signal that it was to conduct live-fire drills and put out a notice to ships not to enter the area,” he said.

“Say that exercise ran for two or three weeks. How would Australia respond when the ships were the ones trying to bring us fuel?

“I don’t think that’s unrealistic, looking ahead – unless we have the ability to say ‘That’s fine, we have significant fuel reserves, we have food reserves, you can sit out there but you won’t change Australia’s quality of life’.

“At the moment, I’m not sure we could tolerate that sort of disruption for very long.”

Mr McLachlan, a former Land Forces Command leader awarded the US Legion of Merit for work with coalition forces in Afghanistan, said Australia must “move now” to ensure it could respond to “grey zone” actions – those short of conflict but involving disruption or coercion.

“Australia has only 14 days of liquid fuel storage so an obvious way to cause the country significant concern would be to disrupt our fuel supply,” he said.

“Disrupting our access to food would be similarly used against us.”

Australia could not rely on the fact it exported about 70 per cent of the food it grew. “If you don’t have canning facilities, or glass jars with lids, or the ability to dry and process things like rice, you still have a problem,” he said. “We often export the raw material and import it back after it’s processed.”