The Hon Malcolm Turnbull AC, 29th Prime Minister of Australia
Opening Remarks at the Sovereignty and Security Forum 2026
National Press Club, Canberra
**Check against delivery**
Thank you very much, Emma, and welcome everybody.
Thank you all for joining us again. I held a conference on these topics last year and my motivation was, frankly, very deep frustration that these issues relating to our sovereignty and security in the changed, disrupted world we are facing today were not being discussed in our Parliament, or generally in our public discourse.
I felt that our Parliament was gaslighting the Australian people in pretending that nothing had changed, and that everything was the same, and that anybody that suggested we were living in a different environment, was somehow or other unpatriotic or alarmist. A year ago, some people thought that when I said the new world order overseen by President Trump is one of might is right, and that international law was no longer to be regarded as applying to the great powers, many thought that was a bit alarmist. Or they hoped that ‘might is right’ was just a subtext. Well, friends, we know that today it's not a subtext, it's the headline. It is the headline.
Think of the U.S. National Defense Strategy, a considered document you would think. This is not the ebullient rhetoric of a President or a politician. This is written by the Pentagon. It describes the international rules-based order as “a cloud castle abstraction”. So that's the official thinking of our great ally.
So we are living in a very, very different environment. We're reminded of that, of course, with the war currently underway between Israel, America, Iran, and increasingly Iran's neighbours.
So how does Australia respond to that?
Ironically, we have made ourselves more dependent on the United States than ever, particularly with the AUKUS deal, there's no question about that, at a time when the United States is less dependable than ever. And that is not for the reasons that Hugh White has written about so eloquently over the years that a weary Atlas would not be able to continue shouldering the burdens of protecting this part of the world. It's no doubt that may well be part of it still, but it's because the United States has made it quite plain that they will not be as reliable as they had been in the past, and that their allies have to do more and stand on their own feet and be more resilient and independent. And so right at the time when we are called upon by circumstance and policy to stand on our own two feet, we fell to our knees. And this issue, so vital, so central to our independence, to our prosperity, to our security, to our sovereignty, is barely debated in our Parliament. So I'm thrilled we have two Members of Parliament here today - Andrew Hastie and Garth Hamilton - I wish there were more. Because honestly, this needs to be a real focus.
Compare…the Sydney Morning Herald did this very eloquently this morning… compare the candour of the German Defence Minister here on this platform yesterday about the world as he finds it. That's the sheer, just the blunt honesty, no rhetoric, very practical, factual, with the... I don't know what you call it… the flannel that we get from our own leaders. We need to call a spade a spade.
This is more important than ever. I want to thank the University of New South Wales this year for partnering with us in holding it, and in particular David Kilcullen for co-hosting it with me….I also want to thank the team at the University of New South Wales for helping with the logistics and I particularly want to thank Kerry Pinkstone, my Advisor, who, as she did last year, has just played an enormous role in pulling all of this together.
There are no issues more important facing Australia today than the ones that we are discussing. And we, and hopefully this event, like last year's event, will give more people the freedom, the window of opportunity to debate them, particularly in our national political discourse. The competition should not be who is the most obsequious to the United States. The competition should be is who stands up most clearly, most thoughtfully, most practically, for this country.
Because this is the only country we've got. We have to recognise that there was a very key critique of AUKUS made back in 2021, by the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian in his testimony to the National Assembly, and he said more in sorrow than in anger, Australia has chosen security at the expense of their sovereignty - which was fair comment - but he says, I fear they will end up losing both. And as time has gone on, those remarks, they hit me as an Australian, as a patriot, they hit me really hard because I felt [and] I feared he was dead right, and everything that's happened since has underlined that.
Finally, can I say, trust is vitally important in politics. Authenticity is important in politics. Politicians that tell the truth, and are upfront, are seen as authentic, and people will trust them. Trust in politicians and politics is declining. The McKinnon Institute recently published an important work on that. If our leaders are not telling the truth about the circumstances in which we live, and not confronting them honestly, clear eyed when everybody knows the threats we're facing, then all that does is constantly gnaw and erode away at the trust that is so vital to our democracy.
Hopefully we will be blunt, candid, clear eyed today, and that will encourage others to do the same.
**ENDS**
Sorry comments are closed.