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Last week at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition, the Women in Defence Association hosted a panel discussion exploring the infrastructure solutions to maritime security.
Led by Women in Defence Association (WIDA) founder Rachel Falzon, the panel explored the array of defence and security challenges that are facing Australia and New Zealand and analysed the readiness of both industry and civilians in the event of a national military security threat.
“When I think about maritime infrastructure and how that is supporting maritime security and more broadly our maritime strategy, I think we have a number of challenges we need to grapple with,” said Jennifer Parker, an expert associate at ANU’s National Security College.
Parker, who served over two decades in the Royal Australian Navy as a warfare officer, continued explaining how Australia’s primary naval bases, which were established in the 1911 Henderson Plan, have resulted in a limited naval presence in northern and north-western Australia, which will be critical land points if a war with China were to occur, due to its proximity to the South China Sea.
“We are equally concerned about China’s military capability, their rise, but how they choose to use that capability, and we recently saw the harassment of a maritime patrol aircraft in the South China Sea, the question for Australia is how do we respond to that.”
Phillippa Batchelor, general manager for transformation (defence) at Ventia, an Australian company that provides maintenance and management services to critical infrastructure, said that “there are only so many resources, so many personnel”, and that Australia’s defence readiness requires a stronger infrastructure base.
She said that “we need to make sure we’ve got the data to be able to track maintenance and keep everything in the condition it needs to be in when it’s called on and provide that surge in capacity to be able to support the defence force when it’s needed”.
“Were trying to provide the baseline so the defence force has got the confidence, got the resilience, got the capacity to step forward with confidence,” Batchelor said.
Currently, Australia’s maritime infrastructure remains an “ignored” facet of defence as Parker said, noting the vulnerabilities in the north and a lack of funding as critical exposure points in Australia’s defence readiness.
“Infrastructure is critical to everything we do,” Parker said
The outbreak of an offensive attack on Australia would not only expose national shortcomings in defence infrastructure but have a critical impact on neighbouring nations, most notably New Zealand.
Royal New Zealand Navy Captain and Director of Maritime Domain Colleen Smith said that “everything we do is in consideration of Australia … we exercise with the RAF, our OPVs are built in Melbourne …we think about how we will be able to work with Australia to deploy or field capabilities”.
“When you [Australia] make a capability decision, you’re not thinking about how New Zealand will receive that, but that’s exactly what we’re thinking about.”
Smith explained just how critical a strong infrastructural base is in the face of a national security and sustainability crisis.
Reflecting on how the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the extent to which national infrastructure in community and industry, supply chains, and the workforce needed to adapt, implying that mobilisation goes far beyond defence and encompasses a range of industries that need to ensure readiness in the case of conflict.
“To immobilise our health workforce and to mobilise our supply chains during COVID, exposed weakness, and you can apply those lessons to an event that threatens national security in a different way, so what depth do you have in your workforce so you can increase the capacity of your infrastructure?” she said.
Parker said it is important for Australia to have conversations of what an attack would mean for the everyday person’s way of life, “our fuel, internet”, but to not fall into alarmist rhetoric.
“Aware and alert but not alarmed.”
