When we cast our gaze across our island, where do we find the sources of our national power? How do we ensure that our fate is not left to the gods, or in the hands of others? In Richard Crawley’s 1910 translation of The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides had the Athenians tell the Melians that, “you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. These brutal words, pivotal in ‘The Melian Dialogue’, laid bare the Melians’ fateful choice of subjugation or the risk of annihilation by the Athenians. Thucydides recorded the Melians as quickly choosing their freedom but then offering a futile, even minimalist, defence against the Athenian siege. An enduring question of the Melians is whether, after all that had gone before, they gave enough thought and effort to the safety of their country. Or whether, the confidence of one people long occupying an island, a sense of right being on their side, and trust in the Spartans to aid kindred, ultimately led to their destruction. The Athenians had a view on this, cautioning the Melians, “we are struck by the fact that, after saying you would consult for the safety of your country, in all this discussion you have mentioned nothing which men might trust in and think to be saved by.” The Athenians went on to observe, “your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious.” We should ask ourselves, facing a similar dilemma, whether we too risk beguiling ourselves with strong rhetoric unmatched by our military strength. Or whether we neglect some resource in the national cause.
In less poetic terms, the 2024 National Defence Strategy lays out certain actions for Australia if we are to avoid a Melian-choice and possibly their fate. Yet it lacks the boldness demanded of our time, instead offering the hope of potent forces marshalling somewhere in the future. And its reckoning of our resources passed by the deep pool of human intellect. Thus, a read of the document offers little about how the national intellect, or its outworking in imagination, inquiry, and invention, will be brought to bear in our national defence. The 2024 Integrated Investment Program offers little more to assure the reader. Both take as their start-point that research must occur, in the forms of innovation, science and technology, focussed only it seems on delivering those chosen defence capabilities. These documents suppose the great thinking has already been done, and that what is left is spent on hastening the future forces. But deep thinking must continue and the dialogue amongst ourselves. What has been missed so far is the need to unite the different knowledge, research, and thinking, now and which could be, towards the national defence efforts. What has been missed, too, is the need to secure the national intellect towards assuring our broader security, interests, and prosperous way of life. Above all, what has been missed by government is how prioritised, resourced, and coordinated research, and the foundational intellectual capacity, can form an important element of national power for Australia. We are forfeiting a means to grow in national strength, and to gain whatever else, by not using our intellectual resources more consciously, imaginatively, and purposively. Human intellect is the great agent of civilisational change.
Thus, we say there is a case for an office of national research to wield the national intellect as an instrument of national power. By national intellect we mean in basic terms the knowledge, skills, and rational faculties of the nation. And we identify the sum of the national intellect as an element of national power. In distinction, though, the role of an office of national research would be to foster, guide, and use research to draw upon, but not claim, the intellectual capabilities of Australia, and from amongst our allies, to secure to us the ideas, knowledge, and thinking that will contribute towards defending the nation and responding to national challenges. Research occurs throughout Australia, but there is no single body, even at the federal level, that ensures our national resources are orientated towards this intent or these purposes. The National Defence Strategy warns of a deteriorating strategic situation and that we no long have a ten-year warning time for planning and preparation to meet the threats and risks to the nation. The document is clear that all arms of national power must be used to defend Australia and advance our interests. We think it surprising, therefore, that research in the expansive terms described here is not widely understood, nor employed, in this way. This is especially as the 2023 Defence Strategic Review was explicit in saying research and development are elements of national power to be deployed to make Australia more stable, confident, and secure.
For us, an office of national research would instrumentalise the intellectual capabilities of the nation to affect our, and our adversaries’, geostrategic calculations. It would also integrate as a tool of statecraft, recognising that knowledge is dormant power. And it would be another mechanism to promote material and social flourishment in Australia and the near regions. It is not our purpose here to describe what form or structure an office of national research should take. Form should follow function, as Louis Sullivan posited of design. So instead, we outline next what we think are the main functions of this agency. At this stage, we imagine it having three core functions or roles. It would advise the federal government, on a biennial basis, on the short to medium and medium to long term national research strategy. These time periods could be one to five years and five to fifteen years. And it would implement the strategy approved by cabinet, which should include whole-of-nation research areas, their prioritisation, the resources, and any specific directions within a legislative framework of federal research rules. This situates an office of national research as an advisor and an actor, by developing policy and implementing programmes. But it would also have an important governance role, beyond accountability and transparency, by using its means as strategic levers to broaden knowledge and maximise the practical application to national priorities.
By these core roles, we imagine an office of national research would perform several operational functions. Some are worth mentioning here. It would receive, check, and facilitate in an efficient manner routine and urgent research requests from federal agencies and departments that meet the strategy requirements, and which do not duplicate past or current research work. It would act as an in-house research service for agencies, departments, and authorised persons from its own holdings and wherever else research is held in Australia. It would also act as an agent to obtain research held in allied countries just as it would perform that function for allied agencies and departments for Australian research. Similarly, it would facilitate joint research between Australian and foreign researchers. So, it would also provide a broader means for classified and sensitive research to be aggregated, conducted, or sourced without the beneficiary being known or their specific interest being revealed. These functions have been well-received in our discussions with government officials. It would also foster a fellowship of Australian researchers, wherever housed but particularly for those outside of our universities, to promote a strong diversity of independent thought. And it would ensure the integrity, objectivity, rigour, and sharing of the research that is available or produced.
We have several more observations about why we think there is a case for an office of national research in Australia. According to the Australian Academy of Science’s figures, the 2024-25 Federal Budget contains about 14.93 billion dollars of expenditure of all types (including tax-based) for science and research this financial year. The expenditure in the defence portfolio is about 0.7 billion dollars on science and research. But as the Academy of Science points out, that 14.93 billion is spread across 227 science and research programmes and 15 federal portfolios, under the responsibility of multiple ministers and departments. There is currently no single agency that has oversight and responsibility for ensuring that the science and research budget is directed towards our prioritised national interests. For example, the federal government recently announced the National Science and Research Priorities for the next decade. These Priorities are intended to help the government to ‘align its effort and investments in the science, research, technology, innovation and commercialisation system’. And they are intended to ‘provide focal points towards which researchers from across research and innovation can concentrate their combined efforts to help solve Australia’s greatest challenges’. But national defence is not one of those five priorities.
The closest is ‘Priority 5: Building a secure and resilient nation’, by which research ‘will strengthen [Australia’s] democratic institutions and freedoms while addressing challenges from foreign interference, mis- and disinformation, and polarisation’. And that Australia will be ‘ready for and able to respond to shocks caused by climate change, natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, rapid technology changes and more competition for resources and supply chains’. It is indisputable these are important for our national security, but they do not overlap with the six capability effects in the National Defence Strategy, nor the eleven main capability investment priorities in the Integrated Investment Program. Thus, it is difficult to reconcile the National Science and Research Priorities with the Integrated Investment Program, which declares 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 force. And it is difficult to understand how these competing priorities can be supported by the small pool of Australian researchers within the same timeframe. It can only be hoped that the Department of Industry’s strategic examination of research and development to determine how Australia can maximise the impact and value from related investment, which was announced in the Federal Budget, will in time identify the need to vigorously align nationally funded research priorities.
The division between civil and defence research, whether deliberate, reflects the widening separation in the civil-military relationship in Australia since the Vietnam War. We are not referring here to the narrower relationship which describes the role of the military in society. We have in mind the tripartite relationship between the citizen and the state, the soldier and the state, and the citizen and the soldier. Laid flat, we are referring to the place of the military in civil society and the outworkings of improvisation, national defence, and self-reliance. We take as a theme, like many others, the imperative of government having and holding a coherent strategy for defence. What we observe of Australia, though, is that despite the enduring affection for the ordinary soldier, there is an otherness towards our defence institutions and national defence. This can be clearly seen in how we create laws with narrow exceptions for defence requirements, instead of creating laws around these things. The same is true, as we see it, with public policy and research. But as a nation with limited resources relative to our risks and responsibilities, indeed to our remoteness, we cannot afford to view these things in a compartmented manner. The effort of government must be towards every breath and dollar used on simultaneously achieving as many national objectives as rationally possible on each occasion. In this, we envisage an office of national research as contributing a unifying force to maximise the national resources. While we divide our thinking and resources between peace and war, our adversaries tend to apply their means and purpose on a line of conflict only.
We are conscious that, on first read, our case for an office of national research may seem at odds with a recent article of ours. In that article, we said that knowledge does not thrive when it is centralised or confined, that it is fundamentally undemocratic to do so, and that bureaucracy limits the creation of knowledge. We decried the tyranny of short strategy, by which we meant in that context the tendency of government to respond to immediate issues without making serious attempts to widely test its thinking or to understand the relationships between means and ends. We said that knowledge is dispersed by nature. In that form, it encourages liberty and is the source of societal and material flourishment. We claimed that dispersed knowledge is the democratic edge. We maintain those views. But in the article, we said that dispersed knowledge is only effective if it can be brought together at critical moments. We also said there is a need to foster a broad and diverse fellowship of independent thinkers, those who can bring contestability and different intellectual capabilities to the national defence and security discourse. We described these individuals as working at the intersection of scholarly and everyday knowledge, but not always housed in the universities or think tanks. We can also describe these thinkers as those who ask the ‘so what’ and ‘now what’ questions. Importantly, we said that Australia should foster knowledge as a national weapon, claiming it to be a potent form of intellectual warfare.
Our case for an office of national research is, to us, the logical progression of our thinking in the article. It is a response to the question we posed there, where we asked if the National Defence Strategy requires harnessing all arms of Australia’s national power, should that not include using the diverse intellectual capabilities that exist beyond government. Of course, we are conscious that it is a particular Australian trait to regard government intervention and regulation as the best response to every problem. And we are especially concerned by the bureaucratic tendency to control knowledge and its creation. It is important to recall Wolfgang Kasper’s observation that, “the stock of knowledge, which a community owns, grows when people are driven by curiosity or self-interest to risk exploring new ideas and concepts, individually or in co-operation with others”. And that, “a social climate that favours individualism, enterprise, risk-taking, trust, independence and rivalry (competition) has always been conducive to the growth of knowledge”. An office of national research must hold these as guiding principles, even while unifying the resources, effort, and purpose of the national intellect. It must be the marketplace for big ideas and practical solutions. It must prize the invention not the inventor. And it must share a visceral rejection of regulation beyond necessity. Reflecting these ideals in statutory function is useful, but the selection of leadership and staff who embody those things is superior. They would be the lever, not the leverage.
Thucydides recorded the fate of the Melians as being their annihilation by the Athenians. After twice breaking out, but not exploiting it, the Athenians pressed their siege vigorously. Starving and “some treachery taking place inside”, the Melians were forced in the conclusion into unconditional surrender. The Athenians executed the grown men, sold the children and women into slavery, and colonised the island. The Spartans never aided the Melians as the Athenians had predicted. The ‘Fate of Melos’ is the tale of a lesser power unsure of how to secure itself within a contest of two greater powers. History has a future as history has a past. But Australia can still ensure a Melian-fate is not ours. Whatever the merits of the National Defence Strategy, what is indisputable is the need to bring all elements of national power to bear. That requires greater self-reliance. And we say that it means we must recognise and use the national intellect as an instrument of national power. We must grow the ‘stock of useful knowledge’, as Kasper described it, for which we believe an office of national research is ideally suited. We hold, writing in the trenches of intellectual warfare, that ideals and ideas win wars. But they also make for a flourishing, prosperous, and resilient society. An office of national research may not only help democratise the fight for our democracy, it may also help break down the anti-intellectual tradition and tyranny of short strategies which are formidable obstacles to our fuller nationhood. As we cast that gaze across our lands, and stare outward from our shores, have we done all that we can, to assure that fate is in our hands? We must avoid poetic tragedy, and the enslavement of our children.