Towards a New Australian Security
Channel: ANU TV
Date: 2015-03-20

In an interconnected world, Australia’s security interests will continue to expand faster than its capabilities. Emerging challenges will join enduring ones on a crowded horizon of risk. Australia’s strategic lifelines will be caught up in a changing Indo-Pacific region and tensions surrounding China’s rise. Terrorism will test the resilience of Australian society. Australian governments will face hard decisions about whether this country should remain the principal security provider in a troubled neighbourhood. New patterns of risk will call for fresh thinking, new capabilities, flexible policy mechanisms, creative partnerships and an inclusive approach – in short, a new Australian security.

In this NSC Public Seminar, the incoming Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, Professor Rory Medcalf, will offer some assessments on the long-term policy choices Australians and their governments will need to make to advance their country’s security interests in the uncertain decades ahead.

Professor Rory Medcalf commenced as the Head of the National Security College in January 2015. His professional background spans diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks and journalism. Most recently he was the Director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy from 2007 to 2015. Prior to that, Professor Medcalf worked as a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments. His experience as an Australian diplomat included a posting to New Delhi, a secondment to Japan’s foreign ministry and truce monitoring after the civil conflict in Bougainville. He has contributed to three landmark global reports on nuclear arms control. His earlier work in journalism was commended in Australia’s leading media awards, the Walkleys. Professor Medcalf has been active in developing Australia’s relations with India. He is the founding convener and co-chair of the Australia-India Roundtable, the leading informal policy dialogue between the two countries. His current research areas include Australia’s strategic and defence challenges, the further development of an Indo-Pacific concept of the Asian strategic environment, and prospects for maritime and nuclear stability in Indo-Pacific Asia. He holds nonresident affiliations with the Brookings Institution and the Lowy Institute, and is a member of the independent expert panel providing advice on the Australian Government’s 2015 Defence White Paper.