Address to ANU National Security College – Securing Our Future: a ready and resilient Australia

Zoe McKenzie MP

Shadow Cabinet Secretary

Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations

Member for Flinders

SPEECH

ANU NATIONAL SECURITY COLLEGE – SECURING OUR FUTURE: A READY AND RESILIENT AUSTRALIA

Wednesday, 25 March 2026

One of the things I think that we have failed to do as politicians, parliamentarians, public servants, whatever you want to call us, is to tell people what our core function is.

My core function is to work hard to achieve two goals: keep Australians secure and keep Australia prosperous.

It’s not my job to make you feel good about yourself, my job is not about the vibes, my job is to make this stuff work, so you can do you, to the best of your ability and according to your interests, not mine.

This conference goes to the first part of that responsibility: keeping Australians secure.

And in doing a good job on the first task, we are already making good progress on the second task.

But for us to spend time doing the first task well, Australians need to place a value on it.

The astonishing thing about the massacre on Bondi Beach in December was that it made Australians instantaneously understand that duty.

The conversations I had with Australians about national security, defence, the importance of social cohesion, and our investment in these issues, both in terms of time and dollars, were manifestly different.

Again, this is borne out in NSC’s report “No worries” which will be the backdrop to your discussions today, which states:

“our survey data reveals a public where worry about security has risen rapidly, from a large minority to an almost two-third majority in little over a year.” (Page 8)

I might say, those of us on the Coalition side understand that duty well, not because we are better than Government or the cross-bench, but largely because, as the report NSC has shown in its second report, Voices from Across Australia, we come from people and cultures who instinctively understand and value our security highly, more than other parts of Australia.

When you read that report, you see there is an immediately obvious overlap between the regions which elect Coalition MPs, and the communities which the NSC report shows place a higher importance on national security: Australians aged over 55, regional and rural communities, lower socioeconomic groups, and the Australian-born. And in the Australian Parliament, we represent those people and their values forcefully, that is also our job.

This was no where as clear to me as this time last week, as I understood democracy classes (whereby I talk to kids all over my electorate, from Grade 4 to year 12, about parliament and democracy and what we do up here), and was asked repeatedly, by 11 year olds, about fuel security and when the war would end.

That has never happened before; usually it’s social media reform and a rather unhealthy obsession with e-bike laws, but last week the questions came think and fast about national security and global conflict – but given that the Cradle of the Navy, HMAS Cerberus is located in my electorate, I should have been less surprised.

Since I have been elected, and indeed, I would say for the decade before that, I have focused very much on the impact technology is having on our lives:

the way we live,

the aspirations we form,

the way we talk to each other,

the way it underpins, or indeed, undermines, democracy.

It’s a rich field of study for those in this room, and if you want to get a grip on how technology feeds fracturing, socially, politically, and economically, I highly recommend, Tim Urban’s, “What’s our problem?” – you will get no better manual on modern life, particularly, in terms of public discourse, and its heartbreaking lack of civility and indeed reflection online.

Algorithms feed on division, they are indifferent to truth, and allergic to moderated, methodological explanations of why things are they way they are, and the long-term plans one must build to make things better…

Rage is their diesel, and unlike the rest of Australia, they are suffering no shortage.

But rage pulls us away from the ‘safe and peaceful communities’ the NSC’s report tells us they crave – it creates febrile, dangerous places, both digitally and physically.

We have failed to be wide-eyed and honest with ourselves, and most especially with our children, about the way algorithms work, and the impact they are having on our ability both to sustain safe and peaceful communities,

…. but also even to argue in favour of them publicly.

Interestingly, the NSC report showed a particular sensitivity to the threat of ‘foreign interference in Australia’s politics, government, economy or society (72%), and AI enabled attacks (77%), we understand that technology has a role to play in our perception and actual insecurity, but we are looking further afield than our feed.

Danger, I would suggest, is even closer to home. That danger may not be in your or my feed, but I can assure you it is in our son’s feed.

We are, through these devices and our use of them, reprogramming the human model, and at the same time, making it easier to employ a machine for tasks than humans, ensuring more people – and specifically may I say – more men, spend time down these digital rabbit holes, with each increasing generation.

Which brings me to my third point I wish to highlight from this excellent work the NSC has done, communication. The report found that over half of all Australians believe government shares too little information about security threats.

I couldn’t agree more. As someone who used to sit on PJCIS with Luke, and Andrew, and James from whom we will hear next: I am famous for telling the Secretariat that even as members of the Committee, we need to be told more.

How are we to assess the adequacy of the architecture, the administration, the assets and resources of our national intelligence and security ecosystem without understanding the threat? I put it bluntly.

If I have gather more understanding of the nature of the threats we face from Le Bureau des Légendes on SBS and Sasha Baron Cohen’s The Spy on Netflix, rather than what I am learning on this committee, then this country has a problem.

Needless to say, expert briefings were hastily organised for Luke and me as then newbies on the Committee.

But the meta point remains: if we here, in that building across the pond don’t fully understand what the threats are, how is the average Australian to know?

At NS26 on Monday Colononel Jussi Kosonen said to the gathered group “in Finland, National Security is everyone’s business”.

Right, I thought: so how do we get to that status?

Discussions about national security are in darkened corridors, specialist and expert debate clubs, and often, dare I say, in ‘man-talk’ – meaning women tend to self-exclude, at the punter level at least – and I notice with joy increasingly less so at the expert level, as I noticed a long line of extraordinary women who lead our intelligence agencies today appearing before PJCIS.

But the gender balance in most rooms regarding defence shows, [not this one though] this tends to become a conversation between men, and women often self-exclude, feeling they understand less, even though they may not.

The men in the room need to be more cognisant of that.

Conferences like this are important at building confidence in the national security debate, and – continues the extraordinary work the NSC does in raising capability in both parliamentarians and young people through the courses and exposure it provides to them here …

But we must work out what a common conversation about national security sounds like, and looks like, and how we share it – because as the Report also showed us, more than two thirds of Australians believe we have a responsibility to “do more to make our communities peaceful and safe” – but we in no way guide them how to.

When I read through the NSC’s report on Monday and Tuesday after its release on Sunday, I couldn’t help but wonder what the results might be like if a fourth flight of data had been collected after 28 February.

The report cites that in November 24, 42% of respondents were worried about national security, in July 25 it was 50% and by February 26, it was 64%.

On the eve of 28 February, I sat in the Bundestag cafeteria with a German friend, a former MP, indeed, one I met through the extraordinary outreach work the National Security College does with the Global Dialogue a think tank based in Berlin which focuses on the Indo- and Asia-Pacific regions.

Unfortunately, this German MP lost his seat in Germany’s national elections a year ago, ratcheted as they were by the election of Donald Trump – and he now works for an Israeli defence company.

As we enjoyed a beer in the setting sun, Marcus told me, you won’t get home.

I told him don’t be silly, of course I will, Etihad is getting me home tomorrow.

He said, you won’t get home.

I emphatically responded: yes I will.

He said, “if you do manage to get on the plane, be sure to watch Top Gun 2.”

I asked “why”, and he said, “that’s what will be happening underneath you.”

I got home to Australia that Saturday night, transitioning through Abu Dhabi with about 6 hours to spare before hostilities broke out…

As I landed, I opened the news and said, “oh dear”.

In today’s world: What is unthinkable is unthinkable, until its real.

It is our job in this room, to keep one eye on the unthinkable, and to bring the population along with us.

Needless to say, that night, I watched Top Gun 2.

ENDS.