Senator Russell Trood (Liberal, Queensland) said today that while the Rudd government’s first National Security Statement was a start towards Australia developing a comprehensive national security strategy, the government had missed a unique opportunity to make a significant contribution to Australian security planning.

“The Statement overall was a great disappointment and underscored the fact that the Rudd government has a long way to go before it can provide Australians with convincing evidence of its ability to successfully advance and protect Australia’s national security.”

Senator Trood noted that the release of the Statement followed one of the key recommendations contained in his policy paper, the emerging global order: Australian foreign policy in the 21st century, published by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, in March this year.

“I concur with Mr Rudd’s view that, ‘Australia cannot afford a short term, reactive approach to national security’, but his Statement does not offer confidence that his government can live up to the challenges it poses,” Senator Trood said.

“There is a host of catch-all phrases about ‘whole-of-government national security priorities’ but they provide no more than a perfunctory analysis padded with feel-good rhetoric.”

“The most glaring failure is the absence of any broad, overarching national security strategy,” Senator Trood said. “The whole point of a national strategy is to draw together all of the critical elements of the nations’ security interests and advance a comprehensive plan for their advancement and protection. This Statement fails to make any serious progress towards meeting this challenge.”

“The Government commits to ‘an Australian diplomacy that will be more activist’, and admits to a need ‘for diplomatic resources that are more in depth and more diversified than currently exist’. These are worthy sentiments, but ring hollow considering the $57 million Mr Rudd ripped out of the foreign affairs budget less than a year ago,” said Senator Trood.

“This is an important reform, for which I have been calling for a long period of time, but it shows all the signs of having been rushed to completion and is, therefore, unlikely to serve as a useful or effective foundation for the future development of national security policy,” Senator Trood said.