Mia Martin Hobbs reviews The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security (Melbourne University Press, 2025)
Six months into the second Trump presidency, Australia’s ‘great and powerful friend’ has imposed tariffs on Australian imports and stood up the Prime Minister at their only face-to-face meeting. Meanwhile, the AUKUS agreement – conceptualised by Australian politicians as the backbone of Australia’s future security – is being reviewed by both the UK and US governments, and shipyards in both countries are struggling to produce enough submarines for their own fleets. In 2025, the only certainty seems to be that Australia cannot depend on our foremost military ally.
This is the argument underpinning The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security, by Albert Palazzo, one of Australia’s leading military historians. As the title suggests, Palazzo offers a radical reimagining of Australian defence, proposing ‘the nation’s first grand strategy’ for national security. Palazzo argues that Australia does not need great power allies for protection, and instead should refocus on building Australia’s defensive capabilities. Readers of Hugh White’s How to Defend Australia and Sam Roggeveen’s Echidna Strategy will be familiar with the underlying argument: Australia can no longer rely on the US for protection. While The Big Fix differs in detail from How to Defend Australia (which focusses on maritime denial) and The Echidna Strategy (which argues for redirecting rather than increasing defence spending), Palazzo’s new work adds to the growing consensus among defence commentators that Australia must develop an independent strategy for national security.
The book begins by laying out the thinking behind the AUKUS arrangement and why Australia’s enduring dependence on alliances is now a clear strategical and ethical blunder (Chapter 1). Palazzo then turns to an assessment of the threat environment, focussing on China and climate change, and persuasively argues that Australia faces more realistic and significant dangers from the climate crisis than it does from China (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 sets out the realities of Australia’s global position as a second order power seeking to maintain the status quo, and explains why a ‘Strategic Defensive’ posture is the ideal defence philosophy for Australia. Chapter 4 highlights the gap between the goal of a Strategic Defensive position and the weaknesses of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) today. Chapter 5, ‘What Needs to be Done’, offers concrete policy changes to Australia’s military to meet this Strategic Defensive position.
As this outline suggests, the bulk of the book is dedicated to pointing out major flaws and failures in Australian defence strategy and security policy, past and present. Palazzo’s skewering makes for a satisfying cut-through of Australia’s self-image as a mature middle power: Australia is ‘not a strategy-minded nation’ (60) and has an ‘immature definition of security’ (54); throughout its military history Australia ‘has committed as little military force as possible and its presence has made absolutely no difference to the war’s outcome’ (61); the contemporary focus on China over climate change shows that leaders ‘have decided to focus nearly exclusively on the threat that they prefer rather than the one that presents the greatest danger’ (54), but it would have been ‘uncharacteristically courageous’ of Australia’s leaders to do otherwise (55); AUKUS is neither ‘courageous nor bold’ but the logical conclusion of subservience and dependency, and it ‘has made Australia less safe instead of more so’ (3-4). Palazzo substantiates this polemic with key evidence of existing national security weaknesses: the vulnerabilities of the ADF’s reliance on imported oil in either war with China or the climate threat; the pointlessness of purchasing stealth submarines when detection technologies are advancing so quickly; and the questionable strategy of developing a ‘littoral force’ that plans to project across waters where Australia has no right of movement (128). However, because the book is weighted toward unpicking the problems of Australian defence, the final chapter, while substantial, feels thin by comparison.
Despite this imbalance, Palazzo’s final chapter offers a radical reworking of the ADF to ensure it can respond to both the potential conflict with China and the reality of a changing climate. He lays out in detail the specific programs that should be adopted, and which planned acquisitions should be cancelled. For the Navy, he advocates transferring patrol boats and duties to Border Security, and cancelling planned future acquisitions (including AUKUS) in favour of uncrewed surface and subsurface vessels. Ultimately, he envisions a much smaller naval force working on tenders and operating vessels from a distance, which, he argues, is ‘the logical endpoint of precision strike and sensor revolution’ (123). For the Air Force, he recommends moving away from fast jets, instead mimicking the US Air Force’s ‘Rapid Dragon’ approach of using transport vessels to launch long-range missiles. For the Army, he urges the development of sovereign drone capability, and in perhaps the most dramatic recommendation, he proposes that the Army shift from a small, mostly full-time force to a larger and majority part-time reservist force. These are only the highlights of a broader reimagining of Australia’s military around national defence.
These are controversial plans. Palazzo acknowledges that moving the ADF away from what has traditionally been seen as the ‘peak’ of military careers – being in charge of vessels, flying fast jets, and training for overseas combat – will be unpopular, ‘hard decisions’ (151). Nonetheless, he is clear that these roles no longer serve Australia’s national security. His recommendations also address the ongoing recruitment crisis in the ADF: first, by reducing the size of the full-time ADF and focussing it on highly skilled positions in coastal defence, and second, by reorienting Australia’s military missions around the defence of Australia rather than fighting wars overseas to maintain an alliance. Palazzo argues that by sending ADF personnel to inflict violence in Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘win the hearts and minds of the American leadership’, Australia ‘morally compromised’ the personnel who were sent there (24). It is likely that far more Australians would be attracted to the ADF if the career was actually centred on protecting the country from direct threats rather than waging wars that do nothing to keep Australia safe.
More significant even than the proposed restructure is Palazzo’s emphasis on the consequences of climate change as the primary challenge for the future ADF: with mass displacement, resource scarcity, and increasing conflicts in our neighbourhood as vulnerable states collapse under the pressure of this ‘threat multiplier’ (49). Reflecting an awareness of the caution among climate experts of ‘securitizing’ climate change by militarising all responses to it, Palazzo is careful to delineate responsibility. While he recognises that the ADF will need to respond to climate-related conflict, he argues against its use to manage the worsening fires, floods, heatwaves, and cyclones. Instead, he urges the government to create a dedicated federal disaster response agency, to support state-based agencies and separate the management of natural disasters from what is primarily a warfighting entity.
Yet this recommendation also raises questions about how other non-military security issues should be managed. Palazzo recognises that the Albanese government’s 2024 National Defence Strategy only considers the role of the ADF and so offers a ‘very narrow understanding of what national security actually is’ (92), but his Big Fix is likewise almost entirely focussed on military capability. Although he briefly mentions the range of national security threats we face – growing inequality, further pandemics, the weakening of democracies around the world, developments in cyber and artificial intelligence destabilizing essential systems, and the instability of the United States – there is nothing in the book about how to respond to these threats to economic, health, social, infrastructure, and political security in Australia. While Palazzo’s main area of expertise is defence, his insights into managing the climate crisis domestically demonstrate a broad understanding of the multifaceted nature of security and threats to it. It would have been a valuable addition to see a ‘beyond military security’ chapter from Palazzo, to complete a truly comprehensive ‘grand strategy’ for national security.
