Australia has unveiled a new National Interest Framework which integrates security considerations into domestic economic policy, aiming to secure economic resilience and security amidst changing global power structures and increasing geopolitical tensions. But Australia has not yet placed strategic economic diplomacy at the forefront of the framework. Managing Australia’s security environment requires emphasising the importance of maintaining reliable international and domestic supply chains, managing foreign investment, and adapting to significant influences such as rising powers like China and the accelerating impacts of climate change.
Australia has announced a strategy for economic resilience and security. The Treasurer and Treasury Secretary have articulated a new National Interest Framework that is designed to help guide policy development and check the drift that has seen national security considerations increasingly dominate economic policies without constraint or clear logic.
The new economic security policies attempt to integrate security considerations into domestic economic policy on critical infrastructure, resilient domestic supply chains and our role in strengthening international supply chains. They rightly came with warnings about security interest mission creep, something that has been missing recently in Australian policy.
Getting domestic settings right is critical but not enough in our more uncertain world. Changes to Australia’s external circumstances are driving these policy responses and Australia’s economic security policies need strategic economic diplomacy at the forefront.
A much larger China has changed the structure of global power and wealth, and hankering for a unipolar world is a fool’s errand. Other emerging powers also have more weight now.
Great power rivalry between Australia’s main........