USSC Director of Foreign Policy and Defence Professor Dean is featured in an article discussing the need for the Australian Government to speak openly about how civil society could be mobilised in time of conflict, after the release of Australia's National Defence Strategy last week.
Professor Dean says that “the government has made a range of decisions in the National Defence Strategy that clearly indicate it is doing the work. For some reason, the government doesn’t want to talk about it publicly though. It is either worried about the public narrative and/or it’s not ready to have that discussion."
“But it doesn’t have to be alarmist. We had the ‘war book’ in the 50s, the 40s, the 30s, the 20s. It was prudent to do it then. It is prudent to do that planning again.”