Views on defence and security from Australia’s
Indian Ocean capital
In a more complex international environment, national security touches almost every sector.
Professor Gordon Flake
CEO, Perth USAsia Centre
11 May 2026
Join the Perth USAsia Centre in the lead‑up to the Indian Ocean Defence and Security (IODS) Conference for a new op‑ed series, Broadening Australia’s strategic focus in an Indian Ocean century. This series examines Australia’s shifting security environment and why Australia cannot afford to under‑prioritise the Indian Ocean. With Western Australia at the heart of this engagement, our experts will explore why expanding our strategic focus is a necessity for our nation’s future.
This first article by Professor Gordon Flake explores Western Australia’s growing strategic significance in an evolving security environment.
Key takeaways
As Perth prepares to host the 2026 Indian Ocean Defence and Security (IODS) Conference, the international environment confronting Australia, particularly Western Australia, is fundamentally different from the environment in which the inaugural conference took place.
In 2018, in support of the WA State Government, the Perth USAsia Centre convened the first Indo-Pacific Defence and Security Conference. The inclusion of both ‘defence’ and ‘security’ was a conscious decision. At that time, the region was largely defined by stability and globalisation. Today, it is being reshaped by geopolitical tensions, supply chains disruptions, and energy insecurity. This shift is an important one for Western Australia. Predominantly a resources exporter, WA is now emerging as Australia’s strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean, and a central player in terms of regional security beyond the narrow military focus of AUKUS.
WA is now emerging as Australia’s strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean, and a central player in terms of regional security beyond the narrow military focus of AUKUS.
Security beyond defence and ‘things painted grey’
Traditionally, defence policy is focused on what maritime specialists might colloquially consider ‘things painted grey’ – warships, planes, tanks, and conventional military forces. These assets remain essential elements of national power and essential to the concepts of national defence. However, it is increasingly clear that the definition of national security has broadened significantly over the last decade.
Energy security is now national security. Similarly, supply chain resilience, critical minerals processing, fuel storage and supply, critical technology developments are all increasingly core strategic concerns for many countries.
Information security has also become a core component of national security. Western Australia’s economy is deeply dependent on digital infrastructure: automated mining operations, offshore energy platforms, ports, logistics networks, and undersea connectivity. Disruption to those systems would have immediate economic and strategic consequences for Australia, and potentially regional partners who rely on Australian resources and energy exports.
In this environment, diplomacy itself becomes a form of national security. Nurturing our relationships with Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and India, countries that we increasingly refer to as like-minded, is an important element of our national security and regional stability.
In this environment, diplomacy itself becomes a form of national security.
End of the benign: a changing international security environment
For some 30 years after the Cold War, policymakers largely assumed that economic integration, investment, and globalisation of trade would reinforce strategic stability. Though the fruits of that era are not gone, that assumption no longer holds true. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has shattered the idea of permanent peace in Europe; there is a war raging in the centre of Europe today. Likewise, the ongoing US conflict with Iran has resulted in major disruptions to global trade flows and reinforced the vulnerabilities of global supply chains. This comes not long after the COVID pandemic exposed risks in international supply chains and heightened demand for strengthened sovereign capabilities. The result has been a broad securitisation of economic policy across the Indo-Pacific.
Critical minerals
The critical minerals sector provides one of the clearest examples of the increasing concern about the security of international supply chains.
The concern is not in the scarcity of rare earth elements or critical minerals – many of which, while critical inputs to modern technologies on which we rely daily (e.g. mobile phones, batteries, electric vehicles), as well as defence, communications, and other national security applications, are actually geologically abundant. Instead, the real strategic vulnerability is in processing capacity and capability, and the usability of those materials.
Over the last three decades, China has invested in the capabilities, technologies, and industries required for processing rare earth elements. As these materials grow in importance to modern life, governments and industry have increasingly recognised the risk inherent in over-reliance on processing by a single country. Resource security, and the supply and processing chains around rare earth elements, is therefore not only about economic resilience but has become understandably an issue of national security.
Energy security
Much of the discussion in Australia today focuses on our own domestic energy usage, but over the last 30 years we have become one of the largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, and our primary customers are in Northeast Asia, especially Japan and Korea. As a result, we have become very important energy security partners for them.
However, the recent tensions in the Middle East have highlighted Australia’s own vulnerability in refined fuel supply. Despite being an energy superpower in raw exports like coal, oil, and gas, Australia imports around 80 per cent of its liquid fuel and remains heavily dependent on overseas refining capacity, particularly from South Korea and Singapore. The Australian government has been very proactive in its diplomacy to ensure that we secure the energy we need to keep Australia moving. This highlights how fuel shortages and energy supply chains have been elevated from economic resilience issues to strategic imperatives for national security.
Manufacturing and defence industry
Beyond energy and critical minerals, there is also an increasing focus on re-industrialisation and on defence industry. These two trends go hand-in-hand. Australia has been a strong supporter of the rules-based order when it comes to economics and trade. We have benefitted tremendously from a laissez-faire, free market based open trading system. In the process, however, given Australia’s relatively small population and the relative efficacy in competitiveness of manufacturing capabilities in Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and most recently in China, Australia has allowed its own manufacturing capability to move to areas with perceived competitive advantage. As we became much more of a service-based economy or a resource-based economy, those decisions were less controversial in a benign international environment. But now that environment no longer exists, there is understandable concern over, and a focus upon, rebuilding not just our supply chains, but our sovereign capabilities in that sector.
[T]here is understandable concern over, and a focus upon, rebuilding not just our supply chains, but our sovereign capabilities
Nowhere is that more apparent than in defence industry. While I have little confidence in predictions of global futures, there is one trend in which I have great confidence. Given the changing international environment and growing uncertainty about the willingness of the United States to continue providing the security foundation upon which the rules-based order was built, almost every country in the world is likely to increase spending on national defence.
In Australia, this will inevitably have broad budgetary implications. However, the key point for WA is that the state has a growing industrial capability that must be understood beyond our traditionally dominant resource sector and even beyond the much anticipated AUKUS initiative. Essentially, it is important to focus on a defence industry beyond the narrow confines of AUKUS.
Industrial heft and defence industry in Western Australia
While much of the country was de-industrialising – closing down manufacturing plants in New South Wales and Victoria and deciding to cease manufacture of automobiles – WA followed a different path. Its economy was primarily reliant on resources and commodities: agriculture, gold, iron ore, and gas. Over time this has expanded to include the full spectrum of critical minerals. As a result, WA is often perceived to be fundamentally an extraction based, commodities-driven economy.
What many outside of WA are unable to appreciate, however, is the sheer scale of the state’s resource sector, particularly in mining and gas. As the world’s largest exporter of iron ore, WA hosts companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP, Fortescue, and Roy Hill which together export an average of over 2 million metric tonnes of iron ore each day. Supporting an industry of this scale has required development of world-class engineering and machining capability. Today, there are hundreds of specialist companies – many centred around Perth airport – with engineering capabilities that rival those anywhere in the world. Together, they form a remarkable industrial base.
A similar story can be told in offshore natural gas. Supporting one of the world’s largest LNG industries has produced a highly capable ecosystem of companies with global expertise, engineering strengths, and machining capabilities. In combination with the longstanding work of shipbuilders such as Austal, and with joint state and federal government investment in the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson (adjacent to Garden Island and HMAS Stirling, the home of Australia’s fleet), this has laid the foundations for a significant expansion of defence industry in Western Australia.
This existing industrial capability is now being further leveraged by recent strategic decisions. The launch of Submarine Rotational Force West, which will begin operating in less than a year, will see US Virginia‑class and UK Astute‑class submarines rotating through Western Australia and functionally home‑ported at HMAS Stirling. The requirement to service, maintain, and ultimately sustain these vessels in WA will have profound long-term implications for the state’s defence industry.
The requirement to service, maintain, and ultimately sustain these vessels in WA will have profound long-term implications for the state’s defence industry.
The announcement this past week of the contract between the Australian Government and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build Australia’s future frigates in Western Australia represents yet another step in this process. Together, these developments provide a clear indication of where Australia’s economic and strategic security lies.
Looking forward, looking west
While Australia’s strategic future will continue to be impacted by developments in the Pacific, emerging Indian Ocean dynamics mean that both risks and opportunities are increasingly pointing west. Effective engagement in the Indian Ocean is no longer optional. Western Australia is central to that engagement – geographically, operationally, and strategically. As Australia’s Indian Ocean gateway, the state will play an increasingly important role in our national security, economic resilience, and statecraft conversations in the decades ahead.
Related insights
Trading around the Cape: Australian security and the southwestern Indian Ocean
As the world moves into an era of increased strategic uncertainty, Australia can no longer assume that the northern Indian Ocean’s sea lanes will remain secure. This makes deeper engagement with the strategic landscape of the southwest Indian Ocean increasingly important – particularly as instability and maritime disruptions in the Middle East make the Cape of Good Hope route a viable alternative for trade between Europe and Asia.
AUKUS and the Indian Ocean: Why getting nuclear stewardship right, matters now
As the Indo-Pacific embraces nuclear technologies, the need for strong governance and effective regulation has become increasingly urgent. Australia, through AUKUS, has a role to play in shaping and managing this regulation.
The Indian Ocean is no longer secondary
The Iran war is again exposing a reality Australia has long overlooked: the Indian Ocean sits at the centre of the nation’s economic and strategic security.
Assumptions, not reality: Australia’s Indian Ocean challenge
Hormuz is not the end of the story. It is the beginning. Australia can no longer afford to assume stability in the Indian Ocean. And, with the right vision, Western Australia has the potential to become the nation’s strategic gateway to the region.
