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RSL Australia national president Peter Tinley has called for Australia to step up national preparedness in the wake of more conflict-likely contested global environment.
Mr Tinley made the comments during a National Press Club Address in Canberra on Monday, 12 October.
He also acknowledged the serving members, veterans and families around the country.
Referencing an announcement from ASIO Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess regarding an investigation uncovering nation-state hackers inside the network of an Australian critical infrastructure provider; Mr Tinley called for a national preparedness framework.
“If Australia is seriously disrupted tomorrow, in a way that reaches our communications, financial system and our public confidence at the same time, there is no single person in the Commonwealth whose job it is to make sure we are ready. Not because anyone has failed. Because the duty of coordination does not exist. This is the missing line of defence. It is a duty nobody holds,” he said.
“RSL Australia is putting forward a National Preparedness Framework, made up of three measures. An Act that makes preparing this country a continuing legal duty. An independent commission to advise which resilience measures are worth the money and an adviser at the centre of government who answers for whether this country is ready.
“RSL Australia will carry that Framework into the next federal election as our national policy platform.”
Australia does not lack analysis, but analysis must become actions, commitments, decisions and then results – according to Tinley.
“Most of what worries me is not new… The first is time: the interval between something happening and the moment a response is required has collapsed. The second is convergence: these pressures no longer arrive one at a time, politely, onto a system built to take them one at a time,” he said.
“Take time first. Our institutions once had a little time to establish what had happened before they were required to say so. That time has gone, and in the hour when it matters, hesitation can look very much like incapacity.
“Then convergence. Mike Burgess describes an environment of concurrent, cascading and compounding threats. The word carrying the weight there is compounding. We are organised to manage events. We are not nearly as well organised to manage their accumulation.
“Put it in one week. If communications are degraded, payments can be interrupted, and when payments go, so do fuel, freight, food, health services and small business, while the public account of it is contested in real time. Each element is manageable on its own. Together, and at speed, they erode confidence, capacity and the ability to act. We insure against far less consequential risks every day.”
Cohesion and Readiness
Cohesions must be built before a crisis, according to Tinley. Citing the COVID-19 Response Inquiry, Tinley reported that the period found Australia entered the pandemic without a clear national management plan and with deficiencies in the National Medical Stockpile.
“Readiness has two halves, and I want to begin with the one that cannot be legislated: trust. There is a great deal of talk about social cohesion and community resilience, and I suggest that we sometimes have the sequence the wrong way round.
“Community resilience and social cohesion are not programmes unto themselves, but rather the outcomes of a community that has trust in its institutions. You do not build social cohesion in a crisis. You find out in a crisis whether you built it well enough beforehand.
“Trust is the half you can’t buy. The other half is material, and the material half can be measured, tested and fixed.
“The Government deserves credit here. The National Defence Strategy released in April makes national civil preparedness and resilience one of its lines of effort, and it allocates the work logically: Prime Minister and Cabinet on whole-of-government coordination, Home Affairs on national resilience, Foreign Affairs and Trade on integrated statecraft.
“Those are sensible allocations. They also demonstrate the challenge. Several capable institutions hold parts of the same national task, while no single officeholder is accountable for maintaining the common work programme, testing it, reporting on it and making sure unresolved risks reach Cabinet. We have capable components. We do not have a framework that requires them to operate as a system.
“(And) the public has noticed. Over fifteen months to February this year, the same College, led by Professor Rory Medcalf, surveyed more than twenty thousand Australians. The shared worry about national security rose from 42 per cent to 64 per cent. Asked last year about fifteen different threats, fewer than one in five thought Australia was very or fully prepared for any of them. That is not a complacent public. It is one that has reached the conclusion ahead of its institutions.”
The Framework
Tinley explored the new intended framework as follows:
“The first (measure) is a National Preparedness Coordination Act, a practical, civilian-led law that makes national preparedness a continuing duty. A law, not a policy that fades between changing governments,” he said.
“It should… place three standing duties on Commonwealth institutions. Be ready. Hold a current plan and test it before the emergency rather than learning how the system works during one.
“Work together. Share what is needed for action and treat coordination across portfolios and jurisdictions as an obligation rather than a professional courtesy.
“Answer for it. Tell Parliament once a year, in terms the public can follow, whether Australia is becoming more ready or less ready. And where a royal commission or an independent review makes a recommendation about national preparedness, the responsible minister must say whether it has been implemented and, if not, why not.
“The Commonwealth should meet that standard itself before asking anything of anybody else and then invite the states and territories into a National Preparedness Compact: shared standards, joint exercises, interoperable planning and comparable reporting. That is not command and control from Canberra. It is national coherence with local delivery, and the states would have to be persuaded, not directed.
“And being ready must mean something, so the Act should require a regular National Preparedness Exercise Programme, with governments, industry and community partners practising together against realistic scenarios.
“The second measure is an independent Sovereign Capability Commission, modelled in principle on the Productivity Commission. Australia will always have more worthwhile resilience measures than resources to fund them. Fuel assurance, digital connectivity, secure access to medicines, domestic repair capacity, energy resilience: all are important, and not all can be funded at once.
“The third measure is a senior National Preparedness Adviser in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, supported by a small permanent team… The job is to maintain the national work programme, make sure plans are tested, ensure lessons are acted on, bring unresolved risks to Cabinet, and report honestly on whether the country is becoming more prepared or less.
“So, the architecture is simple enough to hold in your head. The Act creates the duties. The Commission provides independent analysis. The Adviser provides unity of direction and a name against the task. Cabinet decides, and agencies, states, industry and communities deliver.”
Final Thoughts
“I said earlier that cohesion is not built in a crisis. You find out in a crisis whether you built it beforehand. That is also the most hopeful thing I have to say to you,” Tinley said.
“The Anzac spirit was not invented at Anzac Cove; it was revealed there. It was already in those men when they arrived, formed in families, workplaces, communities and in the ordinary habits of service that made them who they were. The campaign showed the country what it already had.
“We have seen that same quality many times since, in fires and floods, through the pandemic, in our emergency services, in the quiet work of volunteers, in the families who carry the weight of service, and in veterans who go on contributing long after their service ends.
“I have no anxiety at all about how Australians will behave when the time comes. That is not what worries me. What worries me is what we will have ready for them when they do.”
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