Should Australia be more like Dundee or Barty?

University experts in international relations have written a new book that aims to challenge the conventions around what Australia’s national security is and could be in the future. 

In their new book, Girt by Sea: Re-Imagining Australia's Security, the University of Adelaide’s Professor of International Security Joanne Wallis and LaTrobe Asia director Professor Rebecca Strating pose questions about Australia’s strategic ‘personality’. 

“This book had its genesis in March 2020, when a group of academics and think tank analysts were invited to the home of the Department of Defence for a day-long discussion of Australia’s future strategic options,” said Professor Wallis. 

“One of the speakers was asked who represented Australia’s ideal strategic personality; he said Crocodile Dundee – confident and with a big knife. The idea that Australia’s way of viewing, interpreting, and behaving in the world should be exemplified by someone who is hard-drinking and boorish, and who solves problems with a big-knife, sat uncomfortably with us.  

“It seemed to reflect a stereotype of Australians that was unflattering when the film came out in 1986 and was even less desirable and accurate today.” 

Professors Wallis and Strating proposed an alternative model in Ngaragu woman, champion tennis player and national Indigenous tennis ambassador Ashleigh Barty. 

Professor Wallis said it was time to turn a critical eye to longstanding assumptions and circumstances around national security and reimagine how Australia should understand its strategic challenges. 

“This book is our attempt to apply a fresh lens to Australia’s national security – one that takes a balanced view of the diverse challenges we face and resists assumptions about the stability of the existing regional order."Professor Joanne Wallis, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide

“This has required us to interrogate the constructed idea of Australia that foreign and defence policymakers are seeking to defend, and to think critically about the meaning of security.” 

The book examines the six maritime domains of central interest to Australia -- the north seas (the Timor, Arafura and Coral Seas and the Torres Strait), the Western Pacific, the South China Sea, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. 

“We argue that the maritime domain is in many ways a case study in the difficulties of achieving a ‘joined-up’ approach to national security, one in which the different government departments and agencies work together to implement coherent strategy,” said Professor Strating. 

“We demonstrate why it doesn’t make sense for Australia to take a siloed approach to maritime security when the challenges emerging in and from the seas are strategic, economic, environmental and human in nature.” 

Girt by Sea will be officially launched on Tuesday, 30 April. 

Tickets are available via https://events.humanitix.com/girt-by-sea-re-imagining-australia-s-security   

Following the launch, a public Q&A session with Professors Wallis and Strating on topics covered in the book and related contemporary Australian security issues will be moderated by Professor Jessica Gallagher, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (External Engagement).