Defence strategies in Australia's north in the spotlight after China's military build-up, reported Russian aircraft interest in Indonesia

Australia Broadcast Center

23-04-2025

Western Australia's expansive and largely barren north is often in the headlines as the "engine room of the nation's economy".
But that value, combined with its proximity to the Indo-Pacific, also makes it significant to Australia's defence interests.
It's why the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), a generational assessment of Australia's defence forces, called for bases in northern Australia to be
"The bases to the north are important because it's our first line of defence," University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute research fellow Troy Lee-Brown said.
Dr Lee-Brown says bases like Curtin and Learmonth are highly important.
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The need for that defence has grown, Dr Lee-Brown said, because of "changes in the security structure" of our region, led by China's military build-up.
Recent reports of
A Defence spokesperson said its latest Integrated Investment Program included between $14 and $18 billion over the next decade for "a logistically connected and resilient set of bases, ports and barracks across Australia's north".
A plane on the tarmac at RAAF Base Learmonth, more than 1,200km north of Perth.
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"The government has already approved more than $1 billion in north Western Australia infrastructure upgrades over the forward estimates, including over $700 million for airfield upgrades at RAAF Base Learmonth, to widen and strengthen the runway and taxiway," the spokesperson said.
"Construction will commence shortly and [is] expected to be completed in 2027."
Dr Lee-Brown said works were "overall … tracking in the right direction".
"Whether it's quick enough is another matter entirely," he said.
Priorities need to shift
Chair of the US-Asia Centre Kim Beazley has a firm answer to that question of timing.
"We're not completely unprepared but we don't have yet enough, and the government is undertaking to ensure that we start to get enough," the former Labor defence minister and ambassador to the US said.
"We are going to have to, over the next few years, shift priorities to get there.
Kim Beazley says defence policy is in the right area, but resourcing will be key.
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"It does cost money and it does take people and all has to be provided in order to be able to do it.
"I think we're now much better focused on the defence of our northern approaches, at least policy-wise, than we have been for quite some time.
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The plans are there. The question is to get the resources in to do it and starts have been made.
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Defence spending pledges
Part of that could come from the Coalition's pledge yesterday to increase defence spending from 2.04 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product, where it sits now,
That is more ambitious than Labor's plan to lift spending to 2.3 per cent of GDP by 2033.
"This announcement today, which is a record announcement into defence of $21 billion, is not only going to get us to 2.5 per cent of GDP … it's going to allow us to invest in our defences across the north," Mr Dutton said in Perth on Wednesday.
Peter Dutton spoke alongside Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie (left) at a defence manufacturing facility in Perth.
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Labor had "put in $57 billion additional funding over 10 years" and would "make budget decisions every year".
It's unclear though how much either party will invest in strengthening defences in northern WA, or the rest of northern Australia.
'Glaring hole' in defence
One area where one of the people who worked on the DSR hopes future funding is directed is a "glaring hole" in Australia's integrated air and missile defence.
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Australia's first major defence force review in a generation says the nation's geographical benefits are "radically reduced", with WA's north now a "primary area of military interest".
"Fundamentally, to protect the northern part of Australia, and particular parts of the northern parts of Western Australia where we have key military bases … we need ground-based air defence," the director of foreign policy and defence at the University of Sydney's US Studies Centres, Peter Dean, told ABC Radio Perth.
"At the moment there is a sort of a commitment that we identified in the Defence Strategic Review that there should be a medium-range surface-to-air missile capability.
"But there's yet to be any dedicating funding towards this and there's yet to be a clear program of how we're going to deliver this quickly and that is an urgently needed area."
Professor Dean estimated that project would cost between $6 and 8 billion.
Northern bases at minimal staffing
Another issue to grapple with is the staffing of bases in northern WA.
Currently, both Learmonth and Curtin are considered "bare bases" with minimal regular staffing but the ability to handle an influx of troops at short notice.
RAAF Base Learmonth is one of the bases that needs to be running at a higher capacity, according to Dr Lee-Brown.
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"As the region becomes more fractious and strategic warning time has evaporated … it's strategically important for Australia to have its northern bases running at a greater capacity than they currently are," Dr Lee-Brown said.
But neither major party would commit to that.
Asked if bases in northern WA should be permanently staffed, the opposition leader said he would "look at the advice from Defence at the time".
The US Air Force and RAAF run joint training exercises over Curtin airbase.
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Supplied: U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Dylan Nuckolls
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"But I've been very strongly supportive of us increasing our fuel reserves and making sure that our capabilities are as strong as they can be in our northern and our north-western approaches," Mr Dutton said.
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So we should look more closely with the United States and see what further investment can be made by the US in the top-end.
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That was despite his shadow defence minister later that day saying
Staffing levels considered
When asked, Defence Minister Richard Marles agreed the bases were important but would not say what Labor was committing to.
"We need a defence force that can project, because the location of Australia's national security is not the coastline of our continent, in fact [it] lies much further out," he said in Perth on Tuesday.
Richard Marles says Australia's defence strategy needs to be considered past the coastline.
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"And in order to be able to project it is really important that we have a strong line of northern bases, including the northern part of WA. That is literally the platform from where we project.
"Upgrading those bases is a really important part of what we are doing in terms of restructuring our defence force and building a defence force which can project."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese indicated staffing was being considered.
Photo shows
A missile being fired in the desert.
The federal government announces a major shift in Defence's posture as the world enters the "missile age", warning Australia's natural defences have been radically reduced.
"One of the things that the Defence Strategic Review indicated was the need for our posture, our defence force posture, to be located towards the north," he said in WA on Wednesday.
"That's a program that's being worked out through the Department of Defence with the Defence Minister, Richard Marles."
WA Premier, Roger Cook, suggested he was content with current levels.
"Every Western Australian premier would say we'd want a bigger military presence in the north-west," he told ABC Radio Perth.
Premier Cook says significant work has been done to relocate defence assets into WA.
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"We believe that there's a lot of strategic economic assets there. We believe that it is a point of vulnerability because it's such a vast coastline.
"I do believe that the Albanese Labor government, through the Defence Strategic Review, has done some significant work to relocate a lot of defence assets into Western Australia and that's a very pleasing development."
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