Defending Australia campaign to examine twin threats to national security: Foreign adversaries and skills shortfalls

Australia faces two massive national security challenges – deterring belligerent foreign adversaries and training enough workers to build our next-generation military tech.

The gigantic twin challenges of keeping Australia safe from increasing military threats and finding skilled workers for Australia’s biggest-ever project, AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines, will be examined during a series of special Advertiser reports.

The latest Defending Australia campaign, which launches today, will include agenda-setting coverage of the intensifying threat from China’s unprecedented military build-up and the scramble to boost both the national security capability and workforce.

Australia’s response to space warfare, the next major emerging threat, will be examined by experts, along with the accelerating preparation for the Adelaide-based nuclear-powered submarine construction in a $368bn project.

The campaign will be capped by a Defending Australia summit in Canberra on June 16, in Parliament House’s Great Hall.

This will feature a high-powered panel discussing workforce skills.

Participants in the forum will include Australian Submarine Agency director general Jonathan Mead, BAE Systems Australia chief executive officer Craig Lockhart, ASC managing director Stuart Whiley and Premier Peter Malinauskas.

Former Chinese detainee and Sky News host Cheng Lei will moderate another panel about building defence capability, featuring Babcock Australia chief executive officer Andrew Cridland and KBR vice president Australia defence and security solutions Nic Maan.

In an Advertiser interview, Vice Admiral Mead issued a rallying cry to skilled workers, students and young people across the nation to get involved in the biggest and most complex project ever undertaken in Australia.

“This is a national endeavour. It won’t be solely done in South Australia … we welcome the other states’ workforce and their capacity to be able to feed into the heart of the SSN-AUKUS build program, which will be down at Osborne. We need to draw upon every aspect of Australian society and industry for the program,” Vice Admiral Read said.

“If you’re up for a challenge and if you want to participate in the hardest thing that Australia has ever undertaken, if you want a sense of purpose, if you want to test out your mettle on doing something which is more complicated than the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station, if you want to make history, you come down to South Australia and we’ll give you a job for life.”

Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Malcolm Davis said discussion about increasing defence spending should be an important focus of national conversation.

“We do need to go up to somewhere between 3 and 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence, and we need to do it as soon as possible,” he said.

Mr Davis, a defence strategy expert, said this increased spending should include investment in sovereign space capability, both in manufacturing and launching satellites.

Delivering the keynote address at the second national Defending Australia summit in Canberra in May last year, Mr Malinauskas urged a united national effort to build the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine project, saying Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard could not alone meet the mammoth challenge.

Mr Malinauskas also called for a “healthy influx of skilled migrants” and houses to accommodate them, warning the Adelaide AUKUS submarine construction would need a huge amount of workers and they would need to be backfilled in other industries.

The first national Defending Australia summit, at Canberra’s Australian War Memorial in May, 2023, brought together military, business, education, diplomatic and political leaders to discuss the AUKUS submarine project.

Originally published as Defending Australia campaign to examine twin threats to national security: Foreign adversaries and skills shortfalls