We need to talk about the Australian Strategic Policy Institute during this campaign, a defence and national security think-tank administered via a government-owned company.
ASPI is core to the “strategic face” Australia presents to our allies, our rivals, our region and the world. It was also created by the Liberal-National Coalition — and is its political plaything. With Trump 2.0 turning our strategic world on its head, it’s well and truly time to ask if ASPI houses the kind of up-with-the-times, plain-speaking policy wonks Australia needs to maintain and build geostrategic bridges across troubled Indo-Pacific waters. Or are we looking at a bunch of neocons who’ve passed their use-by dates?
China syndrome
Three of the five members of ASPI’s governing council were appointed by then-defence minister, now Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, almost exactly three years ago. ASPI was conceived by John Howard’s Coalition government in 2001, which means it has China hawkishness and US allegiance in its organisational DNA. The self-proclaimed “independent” think-tank was intended to showcase additional, even alternative, thinking to the defence and security policy establishment.
ASPI has proved controversial in recent years for its hardline China stance. It poked the panda in sensitive times for the supremely consequential Canberra-Beijing relationship as it drifted further into the equally portentous US strategic alliance by opening a $5 million Washington DC branch office in 2023. The branch houses its North America Program.
Think inside the box
In its neoconservative heyday, ASPI made it by clear inference as a government-funded “anti-China think-tank” on to the notorious 2020 Chinese list of “14 things we hate most about Australia — and want changed”. These were China’s bellicose and impossible “peace terms”, put forward at the hostile height of the recent $20 billion-a-year trade war and diplomatic freeze presided over by the Morrison Coalition government circa 2019-22.
ASPI’s unpopularity with Beijing was thanks in large part to its dogged focus on issues like China’s human rights violations against Uyghurs in western China, 5G and Huawei cybersecurity threats, and Chinese Communist Party infiltration of Australian universities and society. Highly legitimate concerns in context, but also carrying a lot of geopolitical baggage for Australia, caught as it is between two superpowers: its greatest economic partner, China, and its greatest military ally, America.
In 2025, this highly challenging juxtaposition looks more difficult than ever. ASPI could be quite important given Chinese warships recently lapped our island continent and as US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and DOGE-master Elon Musk have gone rogue on the rules-based global order that Australia clings to as its superpower security blanket.
Same, same, not different
Australian taxpayers fund most of ASPI’s budget through the Defence Department and other federal agencies. (Traditionally the US chipped in a little, although good luck with that now we’re into the slash-and-burn Trump 2.0 era.) But interestingly, ASPI’s key personnel line-up remains significantly dominated by Morrison government appointments which were made less than two months before the May 2022 election that Labor won. A wealthy ultra-conservative ideologue and former National Party deputy prime minister John Anderson AC is one of those last-gasp appointees to its governing council.
Yep, that very same John Anderson, who, post-politics, became a big deal in the coal seam gas industry, and who launched and chairs the Page Research Centre, a National Party-linked policy think-tank that champions coal and gas, and more recently nuclear energy.
The very same Anderson who’s a founder of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), the newish international network of ultra-conservatives and the Christian Right, sworn to defend Western civilisation (as they want us to know it). ARC leadership includes a who’s who of Australian conservative politics, including opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie — ex-military and a staunch ASPI follower — and former Liberal PMs Howard and Tony Abbott.
The very same Anderson who on his podcast hosts the likes of Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Council in the US, architects of the Project 2025 extreme-right agenda now playing ideological muse to the Trump administration’s reign of chaos. That interview, in February, lauded Roberts for “The West’s last stand”.
Justin case
The other ScoMo era-Dutton appointees are: Coalition “captain’s pick” as executive director Justin Bassi, a former senior Liberal ministerial staffer and public servant with expertise in cyber intelligence, who also sits on the council; and Michael Keenan, a former federal Liberal MP and cabinet minister. That’s three out of five council members.
We must ask: is Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles — who oversigns ASPI — the dopiest guy in the whole Labor cabinet. Surely it’s time to cast aside timidity, or ASPI-indifference, and out-Dutton Dutton et al?
There’s no need to suggest the merest possibility of ideological bias with ASPI’s line-up, nor to prove there’s not. But it’s entirely open to argue that a different government, in new and alarming times, should bring in fresh faces and thinking.
To be fair to Marles, Labor appointed a review into funding for ASPI and parallel think-tanks such as the United States Studies Centre and the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. It reported late last year. As a result, in slow but steady reform which critics have scorned as a not-so-hidden agenda to “rein in” ASPI, it will have to compete for funding post-2027, and may have a government “observer” added to its council.
The review recommended withdrawing public funding, so ASPI also may have to shut its US office. However, this deserves rethinking given 2025’s Trump-generated tsunami of policy and allegiance upheavals.
Hit refresh
The review, and the government’s mainly supportive responses, set Coalition China hawk pulses racing, with accusations of Australia having caved in to Beijing. This in turn played into the Dutton election strategy to paint Anthony Albanese and Labor as weak on China and national security, and thus is sensitive political territory for Labor.
ASPI’s chair, a former federal Labor MP for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann, was appointed in 2023 by Labor. She joined its council as a member in 2020 during the Morrison years. (Under ASPI’s charter the opposition of the day gets to nominate one council member.)
The case for a refresh at ASPI seems self-evident. A root-and-branch overhaul is needed, if it survives, including but not only to de-Duttonise this potentially still valuable institution.
Is Marles the dopiest guy in the Albanese cabinet?…YES.He should consider American citizenship,although with Adolph Trump running riot, it’s not assured.
I agree. He and his subservience with Aukus is shaking my allegiance to Labor, a great shame for me.
It is a head to head competition between Myopic Marles and “Plodder” Butler for the dopiest member of cabinet.
The pathetic simpering from Marles towards our “hunky wonderfully protection by the marvelous US” and “Plodder” Butler and his cost cutting “Nurses are doctors, really” policy, which has already failed in the UK’s NHS are both terrifying in the fact that we appear to be equal opportunity employers of the ” Completely out of their class” category who are not disabled or disadvantaged, so much as, “They have to be given a job”.
I agree and most of these right wing hawks and bigots could not care less about human rights in china or palestine or australia
After the murder of the Red Crescent ambulance drivers and the UN employee, with the facile attempt at hiding the war crimes, ASPI is really in need of being shot down.
Strange that there is no mention of USA defence industry contributions to ASPI.
China hysteria serbes them well.