This report aims to help the Australian Government and its defence apparatus negotiate Australia's security environment at a time of great global upheaval. It presents the new realities of the Australian-US alliance, examines how $59 billion p.a. in taxpayers’ money for defence expenditure is being spent and concludes with recommendations for a Minister for Defence after the 2025 federal election.

This report comes at an unusual moment for Australian security – in the middle of a federal election campaign and at a time of great global upheaval, dominated for now, by big new uncertainties being injected rapidly by the Trump administration in Washington DC. But the turmoil is bigger than Washington. Two wars are still underway, in Europe and the Middle East. Military power relativities are changing, and new ways of war are showing their power in the Middle East and in Ukraine. 

It’s a bad time to realise that the United States – Australia's key ally – which has underwritten Australian and regional security for decades, has now become less reliable and more demanding than at any time since the signing of the ANZUS Treaty in 1951. It finds that the Australian Defence Force is very dependent on US military technology and appears to be becoming even more so.