Page 29 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2019

core national security issue
concern with well-intentioned actions but not serious for today’s imperatives. This pre- vents complex thinking and consideration of the national security implications of eco- nomic degradation and climate change in an evolving world.
But what happens when environment deg- radation and climate change take affect across the globe, where an act of environmental deg- radation that assists economic advancement for one group disadvantaging another is de- termined to be an act of war. Is it possible that these effects can become more than a long distance potential driver of conflict?
Organisations and systems are slow to change, and historical success becomes embedded as tradition. At some point the change reaches a tipping point that invali- dates tradition.
As an example, modern weapon systems are highly lethal and can precisely target an enemy, yet they remain traditional in the methods of their employment where our
thinking on security has not advanced fur- ther than blue versus red; resources versus resources or territory versus territory. Even in the long ideological war between capital- ism and communism we were still able to define a discernible enemy that was a threat to our national security.
Cultural constraints
Underpinning our five assumptions, and contributing to the seemingly intractable di- vide (at least at the political level) is the cul- ture of Australian society. As a settler nation Australia is imbued with a narrative of hard work and aspiration building success. Don- ald Horne gave us the wonderful sledge:
“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”
The lucky country tag fits nicely with a country that sits a long way in front of all nations having experienced 27 years of un- interrupted annual economic growth. Since 1991 all 34 member countries in the Or- ganisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have experienced at least one period of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth; except Australia. Many of these economies experienced two episodes of negative growth during that pe- riod – one in 2001 following the collapse of the ‘dot.com bubble’; and one during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
From the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in December 2018, the Govern- ment stated “a strong budget position al- lows Australia to face the future with confi- dence, providing a buffer to respond to any adverse developments that might occur in the global economy.”
John Blackburn, in his 2019 article “Aus- tralia’s Economic Security: Is there a prob-
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