In the various debates and arguments on Australia’s defence, one thing is at least is settled: the government has agreed to continue funding national security strategic policy work undertaken by a sector composed of think-tanks and university centres that is significantly compromised.

This is the inevitable result of the sector being financially beholden to their various funding sources – most often foreign and domestic governments and corporations whose interests require the production and maintenance of threat, and thus weapons acquisition, so as to ensure ongoing high profit levels.

They tend also to attract a clerisy of conservative, even hawkish, thinkers, and where China and Russia are concerned, the evidence is that they attract radically conservative and particularly hawkish thinkers who arrive at conclusions through processes that a great many independent scholars and analysts would find anathema.

An attempt was made in 2024 to address and reform this situation. A distinguished former public servant with extensive experience in foreign policy and national security, and Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Peter Varghese AO, was selected to lead the review.

It was transmitted to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in late July 2024 containing 14 recommendations; the government’s response was published in December of the same year. To summarise: it was a bland acceptance of a schedule of unexceptional improvements to the policy advice ecosystem. The government accepted the finding that the sector was not broken and should be indulged at its current funding level of $40 million per year.

Broadly, this ended the review cycle of an investigation to which only minimal promises were attached. That said, with imagination it could have been the bearer of radical reform and innovation.

In this writer’s assessment, the review was a disappointing outcome: an opportunity........

© Pearls and Irritations