A Vulnerable country? : civil resources in the defence of Australia

Abstract

The fundamental conditions of Australian national security planning are quite unique. There are no overseas models which Australian national security planners can copy. The sheer size of Australia poses enormous defence planning problems, compounded by Australia's extremely limited resources and their concentration in essentially one corner of the continent. In endeavouring to establish a more selfreliant defence posture for Australia there will have to be greater use of civil resources. This book focuses on strategic assets and vulnerabilities in the civil infrastructure and concludes that a concerted approach to both short and long term infrastructure development, involving close civilmilitary interaction, would make a major contribution to the development of an efficient and effective posture for the defence of Australia. The process of developing and mobilising the latent national security capacities of civil resources is not something which is best left to improvisation. The military and the nation as a whole need to plan in peacetime for fhe high level of civil-military cooperation likely to be demanded in war. All this points to the need for some sorf of national and regional coordinating machinery coupled with the delineation of national objectives, especially in relation to the infrastructure. Planning for national security must proceed in tandem with that for national development.