Australia needs an office of national research, to make the greatest use of our intellectual resources in building our defences, strengthening our economy and supporting our society.
The 2024 National Defence Strategy urgently calls upon us to use all arms of national power to defend Australia and advance our interests. But Australia has overlooked the national intellect.
By national intellect, we mean the knowledge, skills and rational facilities of the nation to inspire our collective imagination, inquiry and invention. The purpose of an office of national research would be to foster and focus public and private research, including from overseas, towards our national priorities.
This new office cannot be expected to solve all problems, however. But as a nation with limited resources relative to our risks and responsibilities, indeed to our remoteness, we need a central body to focus on finding ways to maximise the uses of our resources in national defence and to respond to our other national priorities. We need that body to draw upon the intellectual capabilities of the nation, to draw in expertise wherever found, to grow that ‘stock of useful knowledge’ as Wolfgang Kasper described it.
This office is necessary because no part of the Australian government has oversight and responsibility for ensuring national research resources are directed towards defending the nation and responding to national challenges.
According to the Australian Academy of Science, the 2024–25 Federal Budget contains about $14.93 billion in expenditure of all types for science and research this financial year. The expenditure in the defence portfolio is about $0.7 billion on science and research.
As the Academy of Science points out, that $14 billion is spread across 227 science and research programs and 15 federal portfolios, under the responsibility of multiple ministers and departments. Because funded programs are tied to portfolios, they are not necessarily tied to national defence priorities.
The Albanese government recently announced the Australian Research Council’s National Science and Research Priorities for the next decade. The list contained five priorities, yet national defence is not one of them.
This is in contrast with the Defence Department’s Integrated Investment Program, which declared that ‘delivering on National Defence includes ensuring that Australia’s research and innovation sector supports the most pressing defence and security priorities to accelerate the delivery of next-generation capabilities’ to the defence forces.
Initially, such a body should gather, catalogue and review all research already conducted or being conducted, to make it accessible to government and researchers. After that, it should focus on research against a unified list of national priorities.
For example, two early projects could be the assessment of national advantages, constraints, vulnerabilities, and risks; and developing whole-of-nation preparedness plans against identified threats and contingencies to protect the nation, maintain the economy and normal life and substitute for critical defence capabilities.
There is a need to restore national defence as a motivating theme in Australia’s national life. Although there is an enduring affection for the ordinary soldier, there is an otherness towards our defence institutions. New polls suggest that fewer young Australians are willing to fight if Australia faced a war like in Ukraine. Far more are instead prepared to flee the country. In both cases, these poll numbers have risen since 2022.
The National Defence Strategy has apparently done nothing to strengthen our commitment to defend ourselves.
Our proposed office should not be thought of only as a defence endeavour. We imagine this as a big idea for the nation. The coordination and concentration of the intellectual resources of the nation on our national priorities offers the best means of achieving our objectives.
Core functions for an office of national research would be advising the government on research priorities, implementing the research strategy approved by cabinet, and undertaking a governance role to broaden knowledge and maximise its practical application to national priorities.
Operational functions would include:
— Facilitating and managing research requests from across the government;
— Acting as an in-house research service for the government;
— Acting as a national research agent across Australia;
— Acting as a two-way agent to obtain research held in allied countries and to handle their requests for our research;
— Providing means of obtaining and handling classified, sensitive, export-controlled research;
— Cataloguing existing and developing new research methodologies and sharing information about them to accelerate research, foster innovation and ensure rigour;
— Ensuring the integrity, objectivity, rigour and sharing of research information; and
— Fostering the tradition of research and fellowship of researchers, within and especially outside of universities, so that there is a large pool of suitably educated and experienced independent-thinking researchers to meet national needs.
The national intellect is an element of national power, based on diverse and independent thinking that is driven by curiosity and the competition of liberal democracy. It must be wielded like other instruments of national power.
