Defence Strategy Welcome, But Time Is Ticking

MEDIA RELEASE

The Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL) has welcomed the release of the National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program, noting its significant broadening of what national defence now formally encompasses - civil preparedness, fuel security and economic resilience.

This is the total national defence framework the RSL has long argued for, and seeing it formalised in government policy is an important step forward.

The strategy’s recognition that civil preparedness requires social cohesion and whole-of-nation support mirrors what the RSL’s 1,087 sub-branches deliver every day, connecting veterans, families and communities across every state and territory.

RSL Australia National President Peter Tinley acknowledged the $425 billion commitment over the decade as significant and the trajectory toward three percent of GDP by 2033–34 as meaningful.

“The direction is right, but the pace must match the risk. The threat environment isn’t waiting seven years. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are demonstrating in real time how quickly modern warfare evolves. Investment of this scale deserves credit, and it also demands urgency,” Peter Tinley said.

The strategy’s emphasis on sovereign capability including autonomous systems such as the Ghost Bat, Ghost Shark and Triton platforms being developed locally, is vital. But Peter Tinley said any self-reliance strategy that overlooks Australia’s 580,000 veterans is fundamentally incomplete.

“These Australians are already embedded across the economy, pre-cleared, pre-qualified, and trained to operate under pressure. They are not a cohort to be managed. They are a multiplier to be leveraged.

“This is the argument the RSL will take to the International Operations and Defence Summit in Perth next month and beyond: veterans are the sovereign workforce the National Defence Strategy is looking for.”

Peter Tinley says nowhere is this more pressing than the AUKUS submarine program, which will require an estimated 20,000 workers over 30 years.

“The strategy correctly identifies the workforce challenge but stops short of connecting the dots,” he said.

“Veterans are the answer to the question the strategy is asking. We need structured pathways from military service into the sovereign industrial base, and we need them built now, not in a decade.”

Peter Tinley said the formal elevation of fuel security within the strategy was overdue and vindicated.

“The current national fuel supply crisis has demonstrated exactly why this matters, and the RSL has been raising it as a sovereign vulnerability for some time.

“Reducing dependence on international supply chains for critical energy inputs is not an economic consideration; it is a core defence imperative, and it is welcome to see the strategy treat it as such.”

Peter Tinley said the simultaneous progression of the Government’s defence property divestment plan cast a long shadow over the strategy’s ambitions.

“With the proposal still before the Senate Committee, the anticipated $3 billion in revenue is far from certain and even if realised, it is a fraction of a $425 billion commitment.

“The anticipated sales revenue may look good on paper in Canberra, but selling off bases, training areas and facilities sends precisely the wrong signal to the Cadets, Reservists and community members who are our future recruiting pipeline. It simply doesn’t add up and the voices of Australia’s defence and veteran community must be heard before any sale proceeds.”

Peter Tinley said a generational defence strategy demanded a matching commitment to the veteran ecosystem that underpins it. With the Veterans’ Wellbeing Agency launching in July 2026 and Royal Commission reforms still being implemented, the infrastructure of veteran support must keep pace with defence ambition.

“The best technology is useless without skilled, committed people behind it – and those people deserve a support system equal to the role we’re asking them to fulfil. The RSL will continue to hold the Government to account on both the strategy and its obligations to those who serve,” he said.