Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones: where, why and how

Since February 2025 Australian governments have committed about $7 billion to keep individual industrial plants alive in four regional centres. Whyalla’s steelworks received a joint state and federal package of $1.9 billion. Glencore’s Townsville copper refinery and Mount Isa smelter received up to $600 million. Rio Tinto’s Boyne smelter at Gladstone received $2 billion over ten years, and in August the Tomago smelter near Newcastle, Australia’s largest, received $2.5 billion.

Over the same period Australia lost its only manganese alloy smelter, at Bell Bay near Launceston, when administrators closed it in July with the loss of more than 200 jobs. In April a fire cut output at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery, one of only two refineries left in the country.

Each of those rescues may well have been justified. But each was negotiated on its own, under deadline pressure, with no common test of what the nation was buying. Every one of those centres is on the list of Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones I have proposed in my articles, my submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence and my briefing to RUSI NSW. This post sets out what a zone is, how the sites should be chosen and how a zone would work in practice.

What a zone is

A Strategic Sovereign Industry Zone is a designated regional precinct where government deliberately concentrates the support needed to produce goods the nation cannot afford to run out of. Each zone would offer the same package:

• enabling infrastructure: port, rail, road, water and energy connections built ahead of demand

• tax settings such as accelerated depreciation and investment allowances, tied to capability outcomes

• greenfield workplace arrangements for new facilities

• fast-tracked approvals with fixed timeframes, while keeping environmental and safety standards

• training partnerships with TAFE and universities, started before the first plant opens

A zone is not a tax haven and it is not a subsidy for any business that happens to move in. Its purpose is narrow: to anchor domestic production of the critical goods a national audit identifies, from fuel, water treatment chemicals and pharmaceutical precursors to munitions, critical minerals processing and the metals that defence manufacturing depends on.

We already have the machinery

Australia does not need to invent zones from scratch. The states already run versions of them:

• New South Wales has Special Activation Precincts. The Williamtown precinct, declared in 2020, covers up to 10,000 hectares around RAAF Base Williamtown and Newcastle Airport and is focused on defence and aerospace manufacturing.

• Queensland has State Development Areas. The Gladstone State Development Area was declared in 1993, covers almost 27,000 hectares, and the Coordinator-General assesses and decides every application within it.

• Western Australia is planning the Western Trade Coast around Kwinana, Rockingham and Henderson, alongside the Commonwealth’s new Henderson Defence Precinct.

What these models lack is a national purpose. Each was designed to grow a regional economy, and none is tied to a national assessment of which goods Australia must be able to make for itself. The Commonwealth brings the missing pieces: co-investment through a Sovereign Industry Fund, long-term procurement contracts and a single test for every dollar spent.

How the sites should be chosen

The centres I have named, Newcastle, Townsville, Whyalla, Geelong, Gladstone, Rockingham and Launceston, are indicative. The final list should come from the audit, working with the states, and every candidate should be measured against the same six criteria, published before any site is chosen:

1. A deep-water port able to import inputs and export product.

2. Rail and road freight links to suppliers, customers and Defence bases.

3. Reliable, competitively priced energy, the factor behind most of these rescues.

4. An existing industrial base with anchor firms that new suppliers can cluster around.

5. A skilled workforce and training institutions that can grow it.

6. Strategic fit: proximity to Defence bases and the capacity to produce goods the audit finds critical.

Geography matters too. Spreading zones around the continent avoids concentrating critical production where a single cyclone, cyber attack or blockade could stop it.

Seven candidate centres

Newcastle and the Hunter. Home to one of the world’s largest coal export ports, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter at Tomago and RAAF Base Williamtown, the base for the RAAF’s F-35A fleet. The Williamtown precinct gives the region a ready-made planning framework for defence and aerospace manufacturing.

Townsville. The largest general freight and container port in northern Australia, Lavarack Barracks and RAAF Base Townsville, Sun Metals’ zinc refinery and Glencore’s copper refinery. In May, local leaders and the United States consul general backed a proposal for Sun Metals, owned by Korea Zinc, to expand into copper, lead and other critical minerals. Townsville is the natural home for northern critical minerals processing.

Whyalla. As ASPI has pointed out, the steelworks is Australia’s only domestic source of long steel products such as structural steel and rail, with its own port and iron ore. The steelworks is in administration, two bidders remain and the sale is due to finish by the end of 2026. Whatever the outcome, the nation needs a domestic supply of steel, and Whyalla’s future should be planned rather than rescued.

Geelong. Hanwha’s $170 million Armoured Vehicle Centre of Excellence at Avalon is building AS9 Huntsman howitzers, with a second line for Redback infantry fighting vehicles, and the Viva Energy refinery is one of the two remaining in Australia. Geelong already combines defence manufacturing and fuel security in one region.

Gladstone. Queensland’s industrial heavyweight: the Boyne smelter, Rio Tinto’s alumina refinery, Orica’s chemical complex, three LNG plants and a 27,000-hectare State Development Area with a single decision-maker. Few places in Australia are better placed to host chemical and metals production at scale.

Rockingham. The centre of Western Australia’s naval enterprise. HMAS Stirling and the Henderson Defence Precinct will support Submarine Rotational Force-West from 2027, build the Navy’s new general purpose frigates and later maintain Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines, with more than 10,000 jobs expected across the two sites. The Kwinana industrial strip next door adds chemicals, minerals processing and a fuel import terminal.

Launceston and Bell Bay. A deep-water port on the Tamar, hydro power and the Bell Bay aluminium smelter, whose power contract expires in December. The closure of the manganese smelter in July shows what happens without a plan: Australia now has no domestic source of an alloy that steelmaking cannot do without.

How a zone would work

The governance should follow the model I proposed to the Parliamentary committee:

• Designation: zones designated jointly by the Commonwealth and the relevant state through National Cabinet, against the published criteria.

• Administration: a single state authority for each zone, on the Coordinator-General or Special Activation Precinct model, giving investors one point of contact and one set of approval timeframes.

• Funding: co-investment from the Sovereign Industry Fund for projects that close a critical gap, with private capital alongside it.

• Demand: long-term procurement and offtake contracts from Defence and other agencies, so a plant has guaranteed customers before it is built. As a procurement professional, I regard this as the most powerful lever of all.

• Accountability: a Department of Sovereign Industry reporting publicly each year on investment, jobs and, most importantly, the additional days of supply each zone has added for the critical goods it was created to produce.

Lessons from overseas

South Korea chose Changwon in 1974 as the hub of its heavy and chemical industrialisation drive, and built the country’s first planned city around it. Fifty years later it hosts 16 of Korea’s 83 nationally designated defence companies and more than 2,500 defence-related firms, and its home province accounts for most of Korea’s defence exports. Hanwha, now building howitzers in Geelong, is one of them. Changwon also shows the work does not finish: it now faces skills shortages, an ageing population and infrastructure that needs renewal. Zones need sustained attention, decade after decade.

The United Kingdom’s freeports and investment zones offer a caution. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that much of the activity such zones attract may simply move from elsewhere in the country, or would have happened anyway, and that their true costs and benefits will never be definitively measured. Australia should design for that risk from the start: support should be tied to new capacity in critical goods, and progress should be measured in output and days of supply, rather than in the number of businesses that relocate.

Guarding against pork-barrelling

Zones only work if they are chosen on strategic merit. If site selection becomes a matter of electoral convenience, the program will lose the confidence of industry and the public very quickly. Three safeguards would help:

• publish the selection criteria before any site is announced

• have the audit’s independent steering committee assess every candidate against them

• apply one test to every funding decision: does it reduce a vulnerability the audit has found to be critical? If it does, prioritise it. If it does not, it should compete on ordinary commercial terms.

From rescue to plan

The rescues of the past eighteen months show that governments already accept these places matter to the nation. What is missing is a plan that decides in advance where Australia will make the goods it cannot do without, and invests on purpose rather than in a crisis. That is what Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones are for, and it is why the national audit has to come first.

This post builds on my articles “A national audit for a stronger Australia” (Defence Connect, June 2026) and “First find Australia’s economic vulnerabilities, then vigorously fix them” (The Strategist, ASPI, July 2026), my submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence and my RUSI NSW briefing. See also What I told Parliament and From audit to action.

Sources: ASPI The Strategist, David Uren, “The strategic importance of the Whyalla steelworks” (20 February 2025); Reuters via Mining Weekly, “Australia’s Whyalla Steelworks to cut hundreds of jobs ahead of sale” (14 September 2026); Glencore, “Agreement reached on Mount Isa Copper Smelter and Townsville Copper Refinery” (8 October 2025); Rio Tinto, Queensland and Commonwealth governments, Boyne smelter agreement (24 March 2026); Australian Associated Press, Tomago smelter package (13 August 2026); Australian Associated Press, Liberty Bell Bay closure (16 July 2026); The Examiner, Bell Bay Aluminium power contract (5 August 2026); Geelong Independent, Geelong refinery (26 August 2026); NSW Government, Williamtown Special Activation Precinct (2020); Queensland Coordinator-General, Gladstone State Development Area; Department of Defence, Henderson Defence Precinct; Hanwha Defence Australia, Armoured Vehicle Centre of Excellence (2024); The Korea Herald, Korea Zinc and Townsville (27 May 2026); East Asia Forum, “South Korea’s military manufacturing hub needs revitalisation” (13 November 2024); Institute for Fiscal Studies, “Freeports and Investment Zones” (2023).

What I told Parliament: the case for an industry-led national audit of sovereign capability

In July 2026 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence opened an inquiry into Australia’s national civil preparedness and resilience, on a referral from the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence. Press coverage described it as the first parliamentary examination of civil defence preparedness since the Second World War. The Committee is asking how the civil economy would operate and interact with the Defence Force in a contingency, where the strengths and gaps in our preparedness lie and how essential goods and services would be kept available during a crisis or conflict.

Those are the questions I have been writing about all year, so on 1 September I lodged a submission. The Committee has now published it as Submission 16. This post sets out what I recommended and why.

The gap the Committee needs to close

The Productivity Commission’s 2021 study of vulnerable supply chains found that most of Australia’s supply chains are reasonably robust. That is reassuring for everyday goods. It is no comfort for the narrow set of strategic exceptions an adversary would target, and those exceptions are already reasonably well identified:

• Fuel: Australia has not met the International Energy Agency’s 90-day stockholding standard since 2012. In March this year we found ourselves holding roughly 30 days of diesel, and even after the 2026 Australian Fuel Security and Resilience Package the onshore target sits at around 50 days.

• Water treatment chemicals: indicative shortages within 4-6 weeks of a major regional disruption.

• Pharmaceuticals and their precursors: indicative collapse of supply within 6-8 weeks.

• Munitions and precision missiles: CSIS wargaming of a regional conflict found allied stocks of long-range anti-ship missiles exhausted within the first week of fighting.

A peacetime test of commercial efficiency is not a wartime test of national survival, and the second can fail even when the first passes. Closing the gap between the two has never been attempted in a single, authoritative, whole-of-government exercise. That is what I asked the Committee to recommend.

Recommendation 1: commission a formal national audit

Government should formally commission a National Audit of Australia’s Sovereign Industrial Capacity and Resilience. It should build on the work already done by the Office of Supply Chain Resilience, the Productivity Commission and allied wargaming, then go further, giving whole-of-government visibility of where the genuine strategic gaps sit.

The audit should run as a formal inquiry with the standing to compel information. It would call for submissions from industry, unions, peak bodies, defence primes, critical infrastructure operators and the states, with modelling and risk assessment from Defence, Home Affairs, Treasury, Industry, DFAT and the CSIRO. Sector by sector and good by good, it would map stockpiles, import dependencies, domestic production capacity, supply chain chokepoints, workforce and skills gaps, infrastructure constraints and time to failure under realistic crisis scenarios.

Recommendation 2: put industry in the chair and National Cabinet behind it

Australia has no shortage of reviews. They are tabled, welcomed and shelved. Governance is what decides whether this one is different, so my submission was specific about it.

The audit should be led by an independent steering committee constituted as a sub-committee of National Cabinet. The states own or regulate much of the infrastructure and hold much of the workforce and planning data the audit needs, and a National Cabinet structure gives the work a chance of surviving beyond a single electoral cycle. It also signals that sovereign resilience is a national project and the responsibility of no single portfolio.

The chair should be a captain of industry with substantial advanced manufacturing experience, able to command the confidence of both industry and government and to drive the audit with commercial rigour and delivery discipline. Alongside the chair I proposed a senior executive from a major defence manufacturer with a large Australian footprint, a senior scientist from Defence science and technology or the CSIRO, a senior executive from a national logistics organisation, a senior career military logistician and the Chief of the Defence Force or a nominated representative. That mix is there to test feasibility, which a panel that only catalogues risk cannot do.

Recommendation 3: test the remedies as well as the diagnosis

The audit’s terms of reference should require the steering committee to assess the feasibility, cost and sequencing of a defined set of measures:

• a co-investment fund that shares the risk of building domestic production of critical goods, from pharmaceutical precursors and water treatment chemicals to fuel refining, munitions and advanced manufacturing

• targeted tax incentives such as accelerated depreciation, investment allowances and R&D credits, each tested against transparent cost-benefit criteria

• Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones in regional centres with existing industrial capacity, such as Newcastle, Townsville, Whyalla, Geelong, Gladstone, Rockingham and Launceston

• long-term procurement contracts from Defence and other agencies

• skills and workforce development through TAFE and university partnerships

• a dedicated Department or Ministry of Sovereign Industry, to give the work continuity beyond a single parliamentary term

As a procurement professional I would single out long-term contracts. Manufacturers will not commit capital to a plant without multi-year demand certainty, and government is often the only customer able to provide it. Framed this way, the audit returns a tested, costed and staged plan that government, industry and the states can begin implementing on the day it reports, rather than a map of vulnerabilities and a further round of recommendations for future consideration.

Why the market will not close the gap on its own

In textbook conditions, competitive markets allocate resources efficiently and government should mostly stand back. Australia’s strategic industries face monopolistic or state-subsidised foreign suppliers, the risk of economic coercion and security constraints that price signals do not capture. Lipsey and Lancaster’s theory of the second best (1956) tells us that in a distorted system, piecemeal reform at the margins can leave us further from the efficient outcome than deliberate action.

That is an argument for targeted intervention in a narrow set of sectors, tested against transparent cost-benefit analysis. It is no licence for subsidy across the economy. The audit is the mechanism that keeps the targeting disciplined.

A national project, not a partisan one

The vulnerabilities a properly conducted audit will find do not belong to one side of politics, and neither should the response. Conducted openly, the audit can also invite Australians into the conversation about their own preparedness, and give them something tangible to see: new jobs, revitalised regional centres and clear accountability for progress.

Have your say

At the time of writing the Committee is still accepting submissions. If you work in an industry that keeps Australia running, from fuel and chemicals to logistics, health and manufacturing, your evidence is exactly what the Committee needs. You can read the terms of reference and published submissions on the Parliament of Australia website.

Resilience cannot be assumed. It must be measured, mapped and built.

Read my full submission: Submission 16, PJCD inquiry into Australia’s national civil preparedness and resilience. The argument draws on my articles “A national audit for a stronger Australia” (Defence Connect, June 2026) and “First find Australia’s economic vulnerabilities, then vigorously fix them” (The Strategist, ASPI, July 2026) and my RUSI NSW briefing (29 September 2026). For the full blueprint, see From audit to action.

Sources: Parliament of Australia, PJCD inquiry into Australia’s national civil preparedness and resilience (2026); Productivity Commission, Vulnerable Supply Chains (2021); Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Office of Supply Chain Resilience; International Energy Agency, 90-day oil stockholding obligation; DCCEEW, Australian Fuel Security and Resilience Package (2026); Cancian, Cancian and Heginbotham, The First Battle of the Next War, CSIS (2023); Lipsey and Lancaster, “The General Theory of Second Best” (1956).

From audit to action: a blueprint for restoring Australia's sovereign industry capability

In March this year, as conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz, Australia discovered it was holding roughly 30 days of diesel. The fighting was on the other side of the world, yet it was enough to bring the country within weeks of running short of the fuel that moves its food, its freight and its Defence Force.

Over the past year I have set out, piece by piece, what I believe Australia should do about vulnerabilities like this: in Defence Connect and ASPI’s The Strategist, on Defence Connect’s Contested Ground podcast, in a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence and, most recently, in a briefing to RUSI NSW members at the ANZAC Memorial. This post brings that work together in one place. The full presentation is available here: https://youtu.be/cjesSOhQZas

The proposition is simple. Most of Australia’s supply chains are fine. The deadly few are not. And at present no one in government is responsible for finding them all, measuring how long we could last without them and fixing them before the next test.

Assembly is not sovereignty

Defence’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise began producing GMLRS missiles at Port Wakefield last December and test-fired the first in April. That is exactly the right direction. But two gaps remain.

First, much of what goes inside those missiles, including propulsion, energetics and electronics, is still imported. If the critical inputs still have to arrive from overseas, our sovereignty comes with a shipping schedule.

Second, GWEO covers munitions, inside Defence. The fuel, water treatment chemicals, medicines and fertiliser that sustain both the force and the nation sit outside its remit, and nobody is doing the equivalent work for them. The 2026 National Defence Strategy widened the idea of National Defence to include economic security and civil preparedness, yet Australia has no whole-of-nation assessment of its industrial resilience, no published mobilisation plan and no National Security Strategy since 2013.

What an audit would actually measure

The 2021 Productivity Commission examined 5,950 imported product categories and found 292 were vulnerable to concentrated global supply, 130 of them used by essential industries. Vulnerable is not the same as critical, and the Commission’s list included festive decorations and swimwear. The task is to find the narrow set of products that are both.

For every critical product, a national audit would measure four numbers: stock on hand, daily consumption, domestic production capacity and the lead time to find another supplier. With those four numbers, time to failure becomes a calculation rather than a guess. Today we rely on indicative estimates: water treatment chemicals within 4-6 weeks of a major regional disruption, pharmaceuticals within 6-8 weeks and precision munitions within the first week of a high-intensity conflict, based on CSIS wargaming in which the United States exhausted its long-range anti-ship missiles in less than a week. We should not have to estimate how long the nation’s drinking water can be kept safe. That figure should be known.

Who should lead it

Reviews in Australia are too often tabled, welcomed and shelved. The governance of this audit is what would set it apart, which is why I have been specific with the Parliamentary committee about how it should be led.

The audit should be run by an independent steering committee, constituted as a sub-committee of National Cabinet, because the states own or regulate much of the infrastructure and hold much of the data the audit needs. Its membership should combine industrial, scientific, logistics and military expertise:

• an independent chair: a captain of industry with substantial advanced manufacturing experience, able to command the confidence of both industry and government

• a senior executive from a major defence manufacturer with a large Australian industrial footprint

• a senior scientist from Defence science and technology or the CSIRO, to test the technical feasibility of proposed responses

• a senior executive from a major national logistics organisation, to analyse import dependencies and chokepoints

• a senior career military logistician, to bring wartime preparedness judgement

• the Chief of the Defence Force or a nominated senior representative, so findings are tested against operational requirements

It should run as a formal inquiry, open to submissions from industry, unions, peak bodies, defence primes, critical infrastructure operators and the states, with analytical support from Defence, Home Affairs, Treasury, Industry, DFAT and the CSIRO. It should build on the work of the Office of Supply Chain Resilience and the Productivity Commission rather than start from scratch. And it should report within a short, fixed timeframe, publishing its findings and protecting only what is genuinely sensitive.

Most importantly, its terms of reference should require it to test the cost, feasibility and sequencing of the measures below, so that it returns a costed, staged plan that government, industry and the states can begin implementing on the day it reports.

Why the market will not fix this on its own

An importer of water treatment chemicals chooses the cheapest reliable supplier and holds as little stock as it can. The cost of a shortage falls on the public, on hospitals and on the Defence Force, and never appears in the import price. Resilience is systematically under-priced, so it is under-supplied. There is a coordination failure too: an investor in a domestic chemical plant needs guaranteed customers, while the customers will not sign long-term contracts for a plant that does not yet exist. Government is often the only party that can break that deadlock.

This is hardly a radical argument. Adam Smith himself defended England’s Navigation Acts on the grounds that “defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence”. Treasury’s 2024 National Interest Framework acknowledges that private firms “fail to appropriately price in the required level of economic resilience and security in critical sectors and supply chains”. And Lipsey and Lancaster’s theory of the second best tells us that where distortions such as foreign subsidies and state coercion cannot be removed, pursuing market purity at home can leave us worse off.

That case has limits, and the audit is what enforces them. Every major funding decision should face one test: does it reduce a vulnerability the audit has found to be critical? If it does, prioritise it. If it does not, it should compete on ordinary commercial terms.

Five levers, used systematically

Government already holds the tools. What is missing is a shared evidence base and a single plan to direct them.

• Co-investment: a Sovereign Industry Fund sharing risk with private capital in pharmaceutical precursors, water treatment chemicals, fuel, munitions, critical minerals processing and dual-use manufacturing.

• Tax incentives: accelerated depreciation, investment allowances and R&D credits, tied to capability outcomes and tested against transparent cost-benefit criteria.

• Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones: described below.

• Long-term procurement: as a procurement professional, I would single this one out. A multi-year contract gives a manufacturer the certainty to build capacity it would otherwise never build, and lowers unit costs as volumes grow.

• Skills: TAFE and university pipelines for the engineers, technicians and logisticians that mobilisation requires, starting before the first plant opens.

Regulation deserves a mention as well. Many barriers to domestic production are approval timeframes and planning delays designed for a world in which supply was assumed. Streamlining approvals for projects of national significance, while keeping environmental and safety standards, is often the cheapest intervention available.

Strategic Sovereign Industry Zones

The zones are where those levers meet the ground: regional centres with ports, rail, energy and an existing industrial base, such as Newcastle, Townsville, Whyalla, Geelong, Gladstone, Rockingham and Launceston. Each would offer the same package: enabling infrastructure, tax holidays and accelerated depreciation, greenfield workplace arrangements, fast-tracked approvals and training partnerships with TAFE and universities.

The dividend goes beyond security. Zones mean skilled jobs, revitalised regional cities and supplier networks growing around anchor investments, and they give Australians something they can see being built. One caution: zones only work if they are chosen on strategic merit. If site selection becomes a matter of electoral convenience, the program will lose credibility with industry and the public very quickly. The list above is indicative; the audit, working with the states, should decide.

A permanent home: a Department of Sovereign Industry

Good policy in Australia routinely fails for one reason: audits produce reports, governments change and priorities shift. Our partners have solved this with permanent institutions. The United States has the Defense Production Act and an Office of Industrial Base Policy. The United Kingdom has a Critical Imports and Supply Chains Strategy backed by a Critical Imports Council. Korea has run its Defense Acquisition Program Administration since 2006.

Australia’s Office of Supply Chain Resilience does valuable work, but it is small, sits within a single portfolio and has neither the mandate nor the funding of those institutions. A dedicated Department of Sovereign Industry would own a ten-year Action Plan, coordinate across defence, health, energy, agriculture and critical infrastructure, run the Fund and the Zones, maintain a national risk register and report publicly on progress. Defence would keep what only Defence can do: capability requirements and operations. Above all, the department would give the work continuity, with someone accountable for it after the ministers who launched it have moved on.

Korea shows what that continuity can build. After the Korean War it was among the poorest countries in the world; through decades of consistent, state-guided strategy it built globally competitive shipbuilding, electronics and defence industries. Today Hanwha’s plant in Geelong is delivering Australian-built AS9 Huntsman howitzers. We are already benefiting from another nation’s industrial strategy. The question is why we have not adopted one of our own.

The economic case

In 2024 Bloomberg Economics estimated that a war over Taiwan would cut world GDP by about ten per cent, roughly US$10 trillion, and that even a blockade would cut world output by about five per cent in its first year. For an export-dependent economy like ours, the damage would run to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Against that, early action returns avoided loss, lower unit costs over time, private investment in the regions and a security dividend: an Australia that is harder to coerce, and therefore easier to defend. The investment should be staged over the ten-year plan, with every commitment tested against transparent cost-benefit criteria. The audit would also save money in its own right. Today, decisions on stockpiles, industry support and reserves are made one sector at a time, often in the middle of a crisis. A single evidence base would direct scarce funds to the vulnerabilities that matter most.

Stockpiles matter, and I support them. But they buy time; they do not buy capacity. A chemical plant takes years to commission and a process engineer the best part of a decade to train. The foundations of resilience must be laid before a disruption arrives.

Resilience, not division

Australia’s multicultural society, including its large and longstanding Chinese-Australian community, is a strategic asset. The concerns that drive this work relate to the actions of state actors and have nothing to do with any community within Australia. That distinction must be maintained in everything said about the audit. Handled transparently, the audit can do something more: give Australians a shared stake in their own preparedness.

The first step

Each step in this blueprint depends on the one before it: the audit, then the ten-year Action Plan, then the levers, the zones and a permanent home. Without the audit, the plan is guesswork. The audit is achievable within a single parliamentary term, and it should stand or fall on the evidence under any government.

Resilience cannot be assumed. It must be measured, mapped and built.

This post draws on my articles “A national audit for a stronger Australia” (Defence Connect, June 2026) and “First find Australia’s economic vulnerabilities, then vigorously fix them” (The Strategist, ASPI, July 2026), my submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence inquiry into national civil preparedness and resilience (September 2026) and my briefing to RUSI NSW (29 September 2026). Watch the full RUSI NSW presentation, including its list of sources: https://youtu.be/cjesSOhQZas