00:00It was a pretty stark warning this morning from the Chief of the Defence Force, Ros.
00:06He essentially said Australia was now entering a new era.
00:10Now to be clear, the CDF wasn't predicting that conflict was inevitable, nor was he saying
00:16that Australia would definitely end up fighting a war on its own soil.
00:20But what he did say is that the circumstances were now uncertain enough and that the strategic
00:25landscape has altered enough, along with military technology, that Australia now had to prepare
00:30at the very least for that possibility.
00:32And he said that was a real shift because, of course, ever since World War Two, Australia
00:36has conducted military operations, but it's done so entirely far from its soil in places
00:42like Afghanistan.
00:44So what the Chief of the Defence Force was trying to signal, I think, was more than anything
00:48else the fact that Australians needed to think differently about the role of defence and the
00:53threats that were facing it.
00:55He also fielded, of course, some questions about defence spending in the wake of the Defence
01:00Secretary's warning, the US Defence Secretary's warning that Australia needed to get defence
01:05spending up to 3.5% of GDP.
01:08He didn't wade in directly on that, but he did say that Australia's, or that the Defence
01:12Department's expenditure was already at the edge of its envelope.
01:15In other words, he's spending, he's having no difficulty spending the money that is being
01:19given to him.
01:20He certainly didn't wade into the political fray in any way, but I guess the overall message
01:24was that if there was more money that came defence's way, then he would be happy to find
01:29a way to spend it.
01:30Let's take a listen to the CDF, Ros, speaking earlier about the way that Australia's landscape
01:35is changing and some of the threats that we may have to grapple with in the future.
01:39Perhaps, finally, we're having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat
01:47operations.
01:49And that, again, is a very different way, almost since the Second World War, about how we think
01:55of national resilience and preparedness of we may need to operate and conduct combat operations
02:02from this country.
02:04And that's everything from our northern infrastructure, our supply chains.
02:08And Steven, PNG's Defence Minister has also spoken.
02:12What was his main message?
02:13Yeah, this was an interesting intervention from Billy Joseph, the PNG Defence Minister.
02:19He spoke quite a bit about the defence treaty that Australia and PNG announced not that long
02:24ago that they were going to negotiate.
02:26Now, interestingly, things seem to be moving rapidly in that space.
02:30The Defence Minister said that they would meet in the north of the country, or that Australian
02:33ministers and officials would meet in the north of the country next week to discuss
02:37a zero-draft.
02:38That's essentially the first rough draft of the agreement.
02:41So they seem to be racing, potentially, towards a rapid conclusion of that agreement.
02:46He also made it very clear that PNG had chosen its security partners and that its security
02:51partners would be countries like Australia, New Zealand and the US, rather than China.
02:57He didn't criticise China directly.
03:00But he did say that PNG's decision to basically sign this treaty, effectively in some ways abandoning
03:05PNG's long-held, non-aligned instincts, was a clear signal to the region that when it
03:11comes to security, he wants to go with Australia rather than others.
03:15He also indirectly seemed to criticise China's recent circumnavigation of Australia by the People's
03:22Liberation Army Navy.
03:24That, of course, happened a couple of months ago.
03:26But Billy Joseph made the point that that flotilla also went through PNG's waters.
03:32And he said that it was a reminder of the, quote, threats that the region is facing at
03:37the moment.
03:38Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
03:41We all appreciate the threats, you know.
03:43The cycle of navigation of Australia by the PLA vessels, it came through our space as well.
03:48And they did some, you know, live drills in the Tasman Sea and all that.
03:52So we're not, you know, ignorant of what we're dealing with.
03:56But we have to respect its sovereign states, how they make this and as far as how much they
04:03want to spend in defence.
04:05Now, Ros, it's pretty unusual for Pacific ministers to wade into security debates at
04:11all, particularly when it comes to China.
04:13So the fact that Billy Joseph was so blunt there about what he saw as the PLAN's activities
04:20and why it might represent a problem, it does signal that at least for this government in
04:24PNG, they've laid down a few very clear strategic markers and they would like to confine China
04:30to the economic sphere rather than the security one.
04:33Whether that's possible to sustain, we'll have to wait and see.
04:36So please think of the, in general during this training process, please.
04:50They are ready to stop the covidostat?
04:54Didn't expect the covidostat?
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