On 25 November, the Australian Policy History Network and National Security College, ANU co-hosted a one-day conference on ‘Concepts of National Security: Australian and international perspectives’. The program was shaped largely by David Lowe and Carolyn Holbrook and sought to contextualise concepts of national security in different temporal and geographical contexts, with an emphasis on its significance in Australia.

Program Details:

Introduction: Sue Thompson (NSC) 

Opening address: Caroline Millar (Deputy Secretary, National Security, Prime Minister and Cabinet)

The History of National Security as an Idea: Keynote by Eckart Conze (Philipps University Marburg); Panel discussion by Jon Piccini (ACU), William Stolz (ANU), Matt McDonald (UQ), Joan Beaumont (ANU/Deakin)

National Security in Practice: perspectives from the past: David Ekbladh (Tufts, Boston), ‘The Longer Swing: Rethinking Security and Strategy in the US during the Low Dishonest Decade of the 1930s’; Carolyn Holbrook (Deakin), ‘National Security and Public Health in Australia: An Historical Perspective’; Ian Kemish AM (UQ), ‘Changing notions of national security, A practitioner’s perspective’

Who are we securing in the digital age? Who are we watching?: Panel discussion by Frank Bongiorno (ANU), Matthew Ricketson (Deakin), Mia Martin Hobbs (Melbourne/Deakin)

National Security Beyond Canberra: Sue Thompson (NSC), ‘Regional Co-operation and the Evolution of Southeast Asian Security’; Peter Ferguson (Deakin), ‘Resilience, Biopolitics and the Logistics of Security Debate in Critical Security Studies’; Rory Medcalf (NSC), ‘Reflections’

Perspectives on the Australian history of cyber security: Ian Warren (Deakin), ‘Legacies of National Security Developments from the 1970s’

Concluding Remarks: David Lowe (Deakin)