Agriculture is not just about food security, it’s about national and regional security with Air Vice Marshal (retired) John Blackburn, former Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Air Force

The concern is not just climate change itself but how climate change relates to other parts of our society. Our current political and societal system is not able to deal with the complex interactions between all the issues. Population growth, climate change, the pandemic, economic crisis, energy transition, supply chain disruption, and the conflict in Eastern Europe are all being dealt with reactively and as components, with security implications for our country and our region. 

Many current solutions being discussed amongst the agricultural community are at the tactical level, focusing on what a farmer should do without looking at the risks to agriculture as a function. Then outside this is another layer that includes climate, water, energy, cyber, national infrastructure, sea trade, and the economy. These all need to be addressed on a national and regional level. 

The projected climate impact on food, water, and fishery security for the 260 million Indonesians to Australia’s north will likely result in political instability and mass migration. A coherent food and climate security policy needs to also consider the regional impacts of climate change.

While technology certainly has a role to play the most important issue is cultural change. John found the most successful technology adoption required a combination of top-down design combined with allowing the younger generations to experiment with emerging technologies, and vitally, all the technology effectively communicating with all other parts of the system.  

John has adapted thinking that looks at what makes a military force resilient to identify key characteristics and attributes that make a resilient society. Number one is what the military call shared situational awareness, this is understanding the risks and having an honest conversation about where we are now. The second is teaming, these problems will not be solved by an industry group, scientists, or community action, they will require broad and sustained collaboration. The third and final is preparedness and mobilization, so how do we prepare for the reality that we are likely to miss the 1.5C mark and how do we mobilize our society to manage the short-term impacts and develop long term solutions. 

I recently caught up with John to hear more about his work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

Transcript

Unknown 0:05

John, thank you very much for joining me today.

Unknown 0:09

Thank you for the invitation.

Unknown 0:11

So firstly, Could you outline what you see as the climate food security Nexus and, and how important that is to our societies and our way of life that we have today?

Unknown 0:25

Absolutely, look, we've had discussions in Australia and certainly around the world about climate change and its effects. But certainly in Australia the last 10 years we've been stuck we've had a Conservative government were significant parts of it being effectively in denial about climate change. And so they were able to stall what we were doing about that we didn't have coherent public conversations where the government said, look, here's the risk we're facing. The concerns we have is not just the climate change itself. But how it interacts with other parts of our society. So clearly, food and water security is key economic economics of what it does to our economy, our way of life. What that stopped not just to our national security, but that of the region. And we've been so many historical cases of food or water shortages, leading to instability, demonstrations and riots. But history is there to say what we're concerned about is not just the history part of it, but as we start to look over the next decade or two with population growth, the impacts of climate change the projected problems we're going to face, this is all coming together as a huge systemic risk that's hard to conceive, because the changes are sometimes happening exponentially. And the other big problems is if you just think about this decades so far, so climate change, the pandemic economic crisis, energy transition, supply chain disruption, and now the conflict that we're seeing in Eastern Europe, then being dealt with largely reactively. And as components, the interaction between those is pretty obvious. If you take the time to look at it. But we don't have a political or societal system to deal with that complex interaction we deal with faces. When you think about what they're projecting as the risk to grow in the future. That's only going to get far worse. So that's what's really concerning us, particularly those of us in the national security sector, as well as the climate scientists is that system change and the interaction parts of it that are not being addressed.

Unknown 2:32

So one thing that new black sky has skimmed over too, but it didn't go in into great detail with is how things can snowball, and they can grow as something that starts out very localized, can grow into something much, much bigger. And I think it's on your report that you've recently put out about the food crisis. But how the conflict in Syria prior to that was one of the worst droughts in Syria for a long long time. That led to disruption that was the time of the Arab Spring, which led to the beginning of a civil war in Syria, that then led to a safe haven for the remnants of the al Qaeda in Iraq. Insurgents that led to ISIS. At the same time Putin came in and Russian forces came in the Russians used that conflict to weaponize civilians and try and drive the migration crisis that hit Europe five or seven years ago, 10 years ago. It also emboldened Putin in terms of his ability to attack civilians and do things and maybe get a slap on the wrist by the West, but they will never ever kneel implications even though he regularly violated his Air Force was regularly violating NATO airspace. And then that cascaded eventually into what's happening in Eastern Europe at the moment and whilst none of these things are directly related, the opportunity or the disruption then creates that snowballing effect where something small grows into something much, much bigger.

Unknown 4:05

Yeah. And then if you're not in that is very hard to sort of appreciate the scale of it. Yeah. Back to the cerium example, there are over 6 million people fled the country since 2011. And other 6 million people are remaining internally displaced. The scale of that, you know, we get particularly upset and we were very concerned at some of the illegal migration coming on boats in the last decade to Australia. You know, there might be 1000 1500 people, you're coming. If we think about that scale of what's happening in Syria, and we think of the scale of what's happening in Europe, in terms of the migration problems, the effect, it's hard for us to comprehend because we're experiencing it in Australia's case where we've seen extended drought and the fact of fires everything else we get that part of it. But as you say, you start to piece these together, and authoritarian regimes like the Russians taking advantage of this for their short term gain, and amplifying the effect of the reduction of food exports. So the both Russia and Ukraine on the Middle East, it's nificant to the price growth there. We can't they won't still be able to just completely just subsidize, they're going to enact a position where cost rose will cause huge internal instability. And we've seen countries like Egypt go through that as well before I think it's fairly shaky at the moment economically, and the supply chain, but it's hard for us to really comprehend it. If we're living in a country or an area. It's only seen part of the problem. And therefore, the other problem is, well, what can we do about it just as a case you know, the Australian sitting down here, so it gets by and large put on the backburner. We've got more important things to worry about, and they're not important.

Unknown 5:50

So these are obviously part of conversations in the national security space both within Australia and also with our allies. And then you've also been involved in conversations within the food and agricultural space, and how now are those conversations divergent at the moment, and where you're what you see is the opportunity to bring them together so that everyone's on the same page.

Unknown 6:18

So when I look at about it, again, I'll go we've had a new government. A Labour government came in and nearly a year ago now but the nine years prior to that anything to do with security was generally talked about defense, what the platforms were cyber attacks and terrorism. So that was completely defined in those areas. It didn't start to think of the broader impacts on our society. Interestingly, Australia doesn't have a national security strategy. It doesn't exist. And so when you see that you go, well hang on, what's the risk assessment, one of the issues we're trying to address as a nation then with a region and globally, that's not documented anywhere. So there's not a top down narrative or discussion. Here's the problem we're facing. Thankfully, with the new government, they're far more open to this sort of discussion and it's starting to happen. But as a country, there's no government stated climate risk. Assessment, energy assessment, Food, Agricultural assessment, economic assessment, there's a bit about defense at all, let's go and buy some nuclear submarines because that's gonna solve all our problems, which is completely fast. So interesting. The discussions that we have had with the current government in the various think tanks were involved with, it has to start with the risk assessment. What's the risk we're facing? Let's be honest about it. And the government has committed to do a climate risk assessment. But the first phase of what they've done is just in support of a tense review, and it's going to be classified. So in terms of changing the public dialogue is not much use. However, the government has also started a national risk assessment process. They started at last November and we've been involved with discussions with them about what they're looking at. And this will become part of an annual risk assessment process initially looking short term, but certainly then stretching out and what we're hoping is that if you can have that discussion, it least changes the nature of the discussion in the country. When it comes to the agricultural sector. I've been invited a number of times to talk to sector about their concerns and what the issues are. And it was interesting the statement by the previous agricultural minister on the right side of bollocks a couple of years ago basically said, we don't have a food security problem because we produce three times as much food as we consume. Therefore, there's not an issue. This was a very creative use of statistics. They picked a period of time where we had large amounts of wheat exports and aggregated stuff happens up not a problem. Well, in my discussions with the agricultural sector, they can see some of the problems they're facing. But when you say, Okay, where's your risk assessment? The only risk assessment I could find in Australia came from the National Farmers Federation, a couple of years ago. And it talks about everything from climate change and disease and supply chains, a whole range of things. But the only solutions they offered were really at the very low tactical level. What should a farmer do? Well, they should get insurance. They should hedge. They should look for farming. They should look at Mutual's educational policy, yet nice. The mind map that was produced by the Farmers Federation would be hard for most people to understand, but it's not going to do anything about the systemic risks. So what I've been involved with in talking to them is let's look at one of the risks to agriculture as a function. Let's put to the farmer themselves or the businesses, everything from fuels to fertilizers in both cases. Yeah, we're importing about 90% of all our fuels and a very large percentage of our fertilizers, chemicals, logistics, farm machinery workforce, we can't get the workforce to support the sector because of certain controls that we had during COVID about migrant workers coming in. But so at the tactical level, there's huge issues that haven't been clearly enunciated. They know they've got a problem, but it's not brought together as a system. If you then take the layer outside of that. Think about climate impact. On this. water issues, energy cyber attacks, the infrastructure in the nation that's necessary to support an agricultural sector, ports and shipping. We have so few Australian flagships we effectively have no control over sea trade or the commercial side of it. And we are an island continent, we do need it and of course has the economic effects. So when we look at all of that, what we concluded was, people are seeing little bits that it might affect them as a business but not as a sector. The other thing that been fundamentally missing is what should we do about this? And what is the impact? So food security, and what we've been pushing is, if we look after ourselves, that's understandable and we got a coherent approach. That's a good thing to do. But how do we help our neighbors? I mean, there's over 260 Indonesians just in the north of us if they start to run into food security problems, water, food, fisheries, and that is what is projected to happen. Worrying about a couple of 1000 illegal migrants coming down to Australia by boats is just completely the wrong scale. You've got instability potential. You've got mass migration, and we have no way to deal with it. So the question we posed, we do have the potential to have very large scale agricultural production. We do need to look at the rest of that. But if we have it, let's not just look at how we look after ourselves. What can we do to support our neighbors particularly Indonesia, Papua New Guinea Pacific islands, with our excess capacity, and with binding bilateral agreements, commitments of what we would do as a crisis approaches rather than just saying the market will take care of it. So agriculture is not just about food security. It's about national and regional security. I made that proposal to the various farming groups. Interestingly, when one of the Victorian Farmers Federation started talking about language, the right wing media started accusing them just wanted to get free handouts from government that they wouldn't even consider the logic behind the argument. It was all your clearly after something. So I think the agricultural sectors very responsible, they're trying to look at these areas, but they're trapped with a short term view, which is pretty common across society. And they haven't got a framework in which they can position their arguments beyond just what we're producing at a farm level. But I think it's that important. We've got to talk about agriculture as a food security and national security issue.

Unknown 12:48

Do you see differences between the conversations going in like you just described within Australia, and conversations that may be going within, you know, larger security organizations such as NATO that are that live in a different environment being that obviously the history of Europe it's not an island there is a history of conflict, they understand it's just many, many years of, of, of Western civilization that's happened. Do you see those conversations differently to seek evolving differently to what's happening in Australia?

Unknown 13:26

Because they're actually living in the middle of a particular conflict. Problems, the immigration problems, there is a much more robust conversation. I see that largely in the think tank space like Chatham House, some of the other think tanks in Europe. They're really taking a broader view of it. The interactions I've had with the EU and NATO and a small levels of Think Tank revealed to me the stovepipe, thinking in bureaucracies was very well established. The inability to think beyond that stovepipe is there. That's the nature of of bureaucracy. But within Europe, in discussions I've had with some senior officials there, there's still huge gaps. I think the Italians and the Spanish are very concerned about the mass migration they have been experiencing. Out in North Africa, the Middle East, whereas quite a lot of the other countries are far less concerned because they're a bit further away. They're all looking to the east now with pins madness. So yes, there are a lot of gaps, but I think the discussion and the scale of that discussion in the academic and think tank space is leading, particularly in Europe, and in parts of the US that haven't been captured by the political divide. And that's a richer discussion than in Australia, because in Australia, the think tech community is very, very small. And there's not the scale of philanthropic funding to actually support this sort of activity. So we need to look to some of those discussions and thinking there and ask ourselves how we apply it. But we also need to build the connections with our neighbors to have a shared view of where we go. If we don't agree what the risks are for the region. Then we'll go off and do our own thing, which is probably not the best way.

Unknown 15:00

In in the egg space. There's a lot of conversations I hear on part of where they're talking about, especially from the benefits of technology to come in and change things. I guess one of the most robust is in the alternative protein space. It's but it's a lot of it's also generated is driven by the fact that, you know, we need to cooperate we need to work together, we'll create these technical solutions, and then, you know, we'll just roll them out and people will adopt them. How do you see and obviously the there's a there's a whole lot of cooperation and collaboration that's just innately assumed. And it's not assuming that there's going to be some antagonists who are trying to derail the whole system for their own political gain. How do you see big, great power competition coming into this the likes of China especially, and, and Russia, but then there's also people that may potentially Middle Eastern countries or other countries that could also or South American countries where there is this alignment politically with Western values? How do you see that coming into it?

Unknown 16:14

Well, the work we've done with the Institute for Integrative research Australia has been looking at our national resilience, and we've tried to define what are some of the characteristics and attributes of a society that would make it more resilient. And we think there's three particular areas. Now what we did is we took this from looking at what makes a military force resilient and tried to apply it to civil society. And it didn't map across pretty well. So this project we've been running for a couple of years with geography England has gone and said look, whether it's economics whether it's agriculture, whether it's energy, industry and research, a couple of things are important. Number one, is what the military call shared situational awareness. Let's look at what the risks are. Let's have an honest conversation. And that needs to be done independently otherwise, it gets either political spin, or national spin. We're seeing that competition, but you need to have an honest conversation and fess up to the people and what I've said to the politicians here that when I've been involved as people aren't stupid, if you just tell them to the face, this is where we are now. This is where we could be a mess. It's gonna get ugly. Yeah, these promises of that reduced energy costs and you know, everything's gonna be wonderful solar panels, not it's gonna cost us more, because the transmission second thing, if you've got that understanding of the problem, the next real poor thing is teaming. And once you realize you're not going to solve this just by an industry group, or scientists or a community action, it has to come together. But if we explain the need, then that's critical. The third thing then becomes preparedness and mobilization. We know the climate impacts regardless of what we do in the short term with emissions is going to get worse. And we also know that we don't do something they're going to exponentially. So what do we do prepare for the reality of what's coming? Don't assume the chart has any 1.5 It's gone. I think the charts are getting to reality whether it's happy is not going to happen. So what do you need to prepare for it? How do you mobilize society the last time we mobilized our society, frankly, was just before World War Two at the start of World War Two. So this the title of our main reports has been Australia, that complacent nation, and that's what our risk is. So the very first thing to talk about the issues you're saying is having to deal with these pressures. Is that again, a national dialogue and national understanding and unwillingness to approach this as a team and get on and do some action. That's a huge challenge. What I found in the past in the energy space, the main adversaries have been the lobby groups for the fuel companies. And they have had huge push up. There's not a problem here. The market can fix it. I found the same thing when we've dealt in the health sector with pharmaceutical companies. There are some very good ones but the very big ones are after their business interests. And I think as you look at the transition we're talking about in food production, for example, you're gonna have a hell of a lot of pressure from people who want to keep the existing system running, particularly in countries where, for example, beef production is a huge industrial scale. It's not quite at that scale in Australia. We've got some different issues. And so the challenge of that is how to push back on the near term business interests, but also be realistic with those people arguing for the push. I mean, we still have groups in Australia and if you want to be completely renewable power by 2030, and have no emissions whatsoever, I'm sorry. That's not going to happen. It's going to take decades for us to get through the reduction of fossil fuels. Just read people Vaclav Smil, when he starts talking about the realities of energy transitions. It will take us decades to go through the sort of transition you're talking about it needs to happen but if we don't start by saying is if we do nothing, this is what it's going to look like. And it's going to be absolute chaos. If we do something, here's the difficult steps is going to take a bit of time it's going to cost us some money. But that's the reality if we don't have that as a national discussion there's no way that we have other places to say Western countries can push back against the far right that we're going to see coming out of Russia or China or these other countries. So what we're arguing let's get our act together as fast as we can, so that we're not fighting ourselves, and then see how we engage with the other thing is really careful about the west east divide issue. If we don't find a way to partner with our large neighbors to the north like Indonesia, then we can be happy as we like and pretend we're part of this Western world and connected, but we're a long way away from Europe and America. We've got to work out how we will partner with our neighbors and that will be a challenge given given the history and the various variability in our relationships with our new neighbors, apart from the Kiwis, who we only hate when they beat us.

Unknown 20:57

Unfortunately,

Unknown 20:59

the old black splitting the Wallabies is a way to frequent

Unknown 21:02

occurrence. So yes, that's a very, very consistent it's like the brothers that they are family but she has

Unknown 21:14

completely completely there's a map the US in one of the reports that you shared with me where the red designates areas that are highly prone to water stress in the coming I think the timeframe was 2040 and there's very, very big red bands that runs basically from Turkey all the way east through China. And then going into Indonesia and if you and also in through the obviously through the middle east through the Gulf, the GCC countries. If you look at that area of land, you've probably got close to four more than a third of the world's population living area of land. As as Australia and I guess as as those who want to maintain the current rules based order, what needs to be done or what you see is needing to be done to maintain the stability of those countries and keep the populations fed and happy and employed.

Unknown 22:32

Think the very first thing to be done is accept that this is a real risk. We still have a lot of people that are no no, you know we're heading towards an ice age. Don't worry about any sign so except it's a real risk. And then we'll have to have a discussion is what what can we do we've got 26 million people, which is fairly small. Got a really interesting infrastructure versus population density problem. So we've got our own unique challenges the country, but could we work much closer with our neighbors particularly up through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea after Philippine zeal to help them because what we do have is a very large landmass, and whilst a lot of it is arid, there is the potential to have increased agricultural production and things in there. So it's what I think in the cases there'll be, as world agree the sort of things but when we focus on to help, and in our case, we should be thinking about natural asset base landmass resources, can focus that where possible, not just another economy, but helping those in the immediate region so that we have a more stable region. Now, when you think about the path all the way through North Africa, the Middle East into China, that's beyond our scale to do with it, but if I was sitting in Europe right now, that's what I'd be most worried about, because seeing how they're going to manage that is a huge mental leap. I can I can imagine how we handle our regional pieces. But the other areas big problem, what the only thing that we also can do because a supplier of natural resources is focused on improving the trade relationships with those companies rather than buying nuclear submarines to deter them from attacking us. So we have this mentality that's really out of date and security. If I have a few weapons platforms, I'm safe. No, we're going to work out how we better work, the trade, sharing of resources and working together that's going to be far more important in my view, than a nuclear submarine. Politics is not working that way at the moment. So it's motivating people do that real problem. Australia's Got me as you know, Australia, Australia's Got a huge amount of benefits, but we have a complacency in our culture, which is this bit like a parrot trying to run with a parachute deployed on your back. It's gonna give us the trouble to do it. But it's changing that thinking. It's not just about us, it's about the region. And what's realistic for 26 million people to do? A lot more than we're currently doing.

Unknown 25:08

Use the word situational awareness previously, and I think that alludes to very much what you said. It's, it's about knowing exactly where you are and what the dynamics of the situation you're in. And from my experience, I think Australia has had Australia is or has been the lucky country. It's great climate. One of the the, one of the better governments in the world. There's very few governments who if I had the chance to, you know, swap, I'd just swap for

Unknown 25:43

certainly not the UK, the US at the moment.

Unknown 25:47

Or there's many, many others, they struggle to find one that, you know, if he could just do the little switcheroo you would would choose to and Australia has been very, very fortunate to have great resources. It's had a very high standard of living, but that has led to complacency. Do you see? Obviously politicians, as all leaders and political leaders need to have played a huge role in driving any of these changes in situational awareness, awareness. So where do you see but that's also limited by our we've also got a shorter political cycle of three years compared to Britain and viable in the US at four, and then much shorter than the dictatorships of our nurseries. So how do you see that playing out politically from that perspective? And then, where else do you see the leadership needing to come from in terms of changing that awareness?

Unknown 26:46

Yeah, so covered in the I'll go straight to where does it have to come from in Jason, where it's a time it's a second thing of resilience society that's teaming. So it's getting industry community government at all levels, taking a shared or shared role in this because our federation structure in Australia, a wonderful legacy of the Brits making sure that we couldn't get out of control. It actually is quite a problem in to try and get coherent pathway for the country because each of the states have so much own authority and then looking after themselves, not the nation as a whole. I mean, they see that the pandemic was stupid border closures, and wonderful statements from Queensland saying that Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders and meanwhile, northern part of New South Wales you weren't allowed to go across the border for hospital. You had to travel huge distances because you weren't Queensland. I mean, this is moronic. So back to Australia on the politics system. Yeah, I wouldn't want to swap it. I've seen better leadership and are they reasonably Singapore's leadership? Spend a lot of time working. That is brilliant. I just wouldn't want to live under guided democracy. It's not quite the flavor that I would enjoy. But the leadership that I've seen, because they have that it's just been quite stunning, but they're very small, in Australia's case of two party system has led to behaviors and values that are not adequate to deal with the challenges we face a much more connected world today. So the scale of the challenges the rapid change, the blue party political system, results in short term thinking

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Unknown 0:05I heard a podcast the other day from Senator Jacqui Lambie. She's a bit of a character for those who don't know Australian politics and Tasmania, Samantha. And she just said that as an independent what she's seen is that the priority within the parties is by and large party so just so you can get elected and not the country. And as they divide for political reasons it really still sing. I think she's right. So in Australia, what can you do about it? So quite a few of us around in the climate time community, but also the think tank community. We've been supporting the groups who are supporting the tail politicians. So for those who don't know, these are independents, mostly women that have stood up and a lot of electorates largely over things like climate change, and societal good and said the parties are delivering what we need because they're internally focused. And we've had a significant growth in Independence. It's a really interesting movement. So we both support in briefing their candidates and personally I donate every week, to the groups that are doing it. The reason being, is that if we don't create a situation where the two major parties realized continuing behavior, as they're doing is not going to help them. We won't get political level change. On the other hand, I wouldn't like to see countries like Italy with so many minor parties. You have to form coalition's every six weeks or something to keep it out. You don't want that. But when you get a long established party, there's left and right. That looks after itself, but particularly on the right they've lost the plot. What the problem was is they didn't have a large enough minority, so they had to satisfy the extreme right, without which they would lose the majority. So you have probably four or five idiots on the far right, starting to drive a climate denial approach and delays for the last nine years. Thankfully, Labour's impermanent slowly but we've got to find a way of disrupting the political system in a constructive way. And that's what a lot of people are trying to do and you'll see the mood change there. The problem after that is you're not going to see state government behavior changes until we get a lot more Australians a being informed by what the risks are. But with a distrust of government. It's not just kind of come top down. This is why there's a lot of connectivity with think tanks and community groups. We need people from each level say it with Australian security leaders Climate Group, the reason we formed it, largely from retired military was a previous Chief of Defence Force it was WG and retired civilian bureaucrats and the national security sector is we wanted to have a conversation with the population who are either just right just right or center and say, Look, this is not a greeny thing. It's not a left wing thing. This is a serious problem we've got to address and so we wanted to use voices. He had decades of experience and military to communicate with a group that distrust the left and is following the right out of habit to say we can't keep doing this and we've had a small degree of success doing that. So we've as that group tried to target a group to just nudge them to the left of it who aren't politically aligned within the party. So it's that mixture of think tanks, community governments at all levels, and we've got a growing interest in the industry groups now to get on board this because they realize we're gonna hit this way with energy transition. You can either fight it and then you're gonna lose out your profit or you can get on board the train. But it's that team approach this that I really think has changed in the last two to three years, thanks to the last government, under Scott Morrison being feeling atrocious and completely untrustworthy. So that's actually helped our cause a little bit. Unknown 3:54When we're not the only nation that seems to be deeply in the two party ruts, our five eyes friends, being especially the US and the UK, very very entrenched in the two party system. They've both got their own individual nuances in terms of how that how that plays out. But that's very much compared to someone like France that did have a very strong two party system and then Macron came in and split that through the middle. How do you see that from the IPS from the international perspective? Unknown 4:36I look at New Zealand I mean that they will have different electoral system that again, results in some challenging coalition issues. You know what they're trying to do, but again, their country just a very small country, small number of people. I don't see anywhere there's got the perfect model because I don't think you get a model. Well, everything's a compromise and that's fine. What we decided is and again, obviously, you can't come and change it overnight. We're talking about a decade's transition. So what we're trying to argue that he's for our political system, which is I read it if we don't have a bunch of learnings. I mean, there are strange people there. But by and large, a lot of individual politicians are so well motivated to try and do the right thing, but they're trapped in their party mechanisms. So those of us that have these discussions is how do we move fat or nudging towards a broader perspective? By creating a public dialogue where it's not good enough? Not good enough for you just to tell us you're going to do all this pork barreling and give your electric money. We want to know what you're doing for the nation. And that seems to be having an effect particularly with the tail moment. The drastic there too, is that we're getting more women into the parliamentary system, which is about time and we're getting people got not going in who are not professional politician. They haven't gone from uni to union movement or being a staffer, then to being staffer then replacing their bosses when they retire as instant candidate. We're getting some really interesting people there. So there's no particular model to follow. Our culture, again, is a bit of a unit problem. But what we argue is what's the journey to more sensible government models that look after the nation, not their own individual interest? Madness is this decades moment as well, but it's actually seeming to take a better path than I've seen the UK or the US take on the journey that they're presently on. The other thing is that we don't want to overplay the security issue, but we do have major security challenges, but a huge ask a couple of previous generations how they solved, you know, water mobile one or the other stuff. They had a major security challenges. So let's not kid ourselves, but I think if you had the climate change on top of this, that's the real challenge that individual countries can't do by themselves. But trying to get the international cooperation for this is such a major problem that we end we're going to end up reacting to it as things start to fail. But can we better be better prepared? And can we mitigate some of that damage that's coming out as if we are Team? Yes, I think we can. But man, this next couple of decades journey is gonna get Unknown 7:23here. I'm in Silicon Valley, so here in Silicon Valley, but also the conversations you have more you hear with the research and development corporations in Australia, the RDCs people like MLA or the graduates Research and Development Corporation or the equivalents in the UK and Europe. There's a huge focus on technology development for solving all of our climate and our food challenges. And I'm not dismissing that technology can be hugely revolutionary in terms of its development and what that value can be. But everything we've discussed is all about people how they interact, how they behave, the choices they make. And there seems to be a misalignment in my thinking about how much is being invested in that technology development compared to how much we need to focus on us as humans and what we do and how we behave and interact in our cultures and our our, how we behave, and where do you see that balance? And if there is an imbalance, where do you see opportunities to redress that? Unknown 8:38I think the situation we're in there's not much money to be made by doing cultural change is the fundamental problem whereas he cannot do that. I mean, the carry on a bit chat GPT now I find absolutely fascinating. It's almost mania carrying on about this can solve our problems the world's not It's a clever than a technology, but man, it's going to lead us down a worse track that we're in now. So technology needs to be there when we were looking at this the military, and we try to do something quite different. We talked about the top down, top down design meets bottom up innovation. If you just purely go for bottom up innovation, you can have a great time, the whole lots of bits and pieces in the military sense but if you then try to make it work together as a military force, it falls apart pretty quickly. So the best of luck, the best joint strike fighter in the world, everything else acknowledged for any good if it can't communicate with the other parts of the team in a combat system effectively if it doesn't have the system support and logistics to make it work. Then all of these is a shiny toy. And we're still stuck there in the middle of delivery. And I'm saying that based on 43 years in the military, finally left reserve in 2019. So we're stuck in there this thing as a society we've got the same problem Oh, the latest update to the iPhones gonna solve this problem. I've now got aI generation for this is going to solve this. You need that bottom up innovation but there has to be context or framework that occurs with what we did in the military when we try to do something quite different. A lot of work on this five years ago was put that broad framework in place, which is a top down approach. Now allow the younger generations to experiment with emerging technologies, not the older guys because they tend to get a little bit trapped and new way of doing business because you're preserving your career particularly well young guys generally comply with different technologies, and ask what effect it has on your operational outcomes. Then stand back and say well, what are the characteristics and attributes that are being affected? Take those and inject them into the top down thing saying okay, there's wonderful top down design but we want this characteristic and this attribute built into our system, because that's going to make us more operationally effective. So you haven't arrived at that point, sitting in a sterile room. Here's the future warfighting concept, technologies allowing us to do things quite differently. How would that impact how the system works? What looks good fine. Just check it in. Experiment with it years. It's hard for bureaucracies and systems to allow that degree of disruption to happen through the federal marketplace. I know. We went through this with the Air Force change when I said don't give it to the generals. It's direct lit the fires and oh six telecom protests in our case, let them run it, because they're going to end up being the future chiefs. And it did work to a degree. The first co lead we have from the sixth level in 2015 is now the air force chief. So he went through a different way of looking at it in quite a different way of thinking. In our society, we're going to have the same thing. The vast majority of technology is coming out we buy completely not used properly. We won't understand the potential we're just playing with it. We've got to look at COURAGING somehow in our society, that ability to experiment with it, but ask the question, how can we use this to make the way our society works better? That requires quite a different level of approach, and requires educational institutions that aren't just chucking out degrees to foreign students to make money. There's a slight problem with our university sector in Australia at the moment in that area. So we've got a look at the education system, intelligent use of technology, and experimentation and innovation. And I admire the innovation culture that was evidence and if it doesn't, you know for a long time where you're living now, I've seen it within us industry in pockets. I've consulted the US industry for 10 years, the big players, big defense players. I've seen it in pockets, but I've seen it in Australia less so in the high tech area. And by with a few startups, I'll say it pockets, but we don't have the risk. Culture, the investment culture in Australia that I've seen in the US in particular, that creates the environment that accepts failure, rewards for success, and there's a label to do rapid development. The VC environment Australia's much tighter and I've been involved now with three startups. As an investor as well as creates a completely different perspective on things when your own money is involved. But that innovation culture experimentation is what is missing, as well in Australia. And we could take a little bit of that what we said in the US and what they head off but Unknown 13:27that's the best thing to be what you're saying about young people because in conversations that keeps on coming up and becoming such an important factor, and I was actually in a conversation at Harvard Medical School a year or so ago with people of our generation and the guy who was there working with us who was an undergrad. And it came up that everyone needs to have a mentor. The only difference was all the people of our generation needed to have a mentor who was the undergrad who would actually help us to actually think in a more agile, young way, rather than the traditional, old young person or the mentor. So I think there's a lot of how do we how do we use or how do we leverage young people more and give them a greater role to play? Unknown 14:22It has to go both ways. Because in the end, the reality is we're dealing with quite a inflexible world with a whole bunch of really nasty realities. We have to deal with the trade offs and compromises. So I think yeah, that interaction between the generations is important. Working out where to give them free rein, which is a problem that older generations don't want to deal with often. And the second thing is to be able to have a conversation saying Yeah, great idea. How do we actually make this happen? is a much more complex issue. And again, I'm on my second electric car now, solar on the roof. I've been working in this space for years. But I realized that some of the aspirations we're hearing about everyone's gonna be driving electric vehicle 2035 This week fantasy. You just start to look at the reality of mineral extraction, cost to the environment, that availability, and we're going to have a very complex mix of technologies that have all been designed in stovepipes in our society. So we have to accept that. There's a great bunch of ideas that we have to inject into society. We've got a bunch of people and they want to change on the right. Where is that middle path that allows us to do this transition as fast as feasible. And that's the bit of the problem that I'm seeing when I look at the left side. Yes, we are going to have to produce emissions as fast. Yes, we have to do all these other things. But you can yell up the wall as much as you like, if you can't work out how we're going to nudge or move the system, then all the best ideas that will come to nothing. And that's the difficulty. And the other thing that I found, certainly in the military about once you get to star x bureaucracy is once you get to the Senior Executive Service, your ability, your time availability to think decreases. You're stuck in a political and bureaucratic process. And particularly for our public servants in the last with the previous government for nine years. They were hemmed in told don't give me policy ideas. Just give me information sit there and do what I tell you. And that rains are places, I guess, dulled down rope. So, that's the problem. I see that the people actually have the time to think of probably the mid level rain level that often they don't get listened to, which is why we did this experiment. Therefore, give them the chance to design the future if it was nice, and it was interesting, but what was the blockages not them. The blockages ran into some of the senior people saying that's all fine and good, but this is my priority for the next few years. Forget the other stuff. And so there was no willingness in on the part of some to make that compromise you must make as a senior leader, you have to compromise to allow space for the ideas of the next generation. That is my goal sheet has been risky. But if you're not prepared to fail, you shouldn't be leaving. When we did a major change or Air Force 20 years ago, I sat down with the air force chief and said if 30 or 40% of what we're about to propose to do with our Airforce change program works. That'll be a really good success, but you got to see a lot of failures. And this guy, Chief at the time was the first guy I've ever come across at the senior rank level says I'm not prepared to accept that amount of failure. If it takes us to a different position. I was done. So this is 99. In 2000. We started with a major change in our thinking and culture, not just the platforms. But as with most things, it really depends on the personality of the leadership group and its cycling. It'll stall and then it has to be re energized then it stalls. If you don't drive backwards, when it stalls. Well, is that something? So you get these incremental steps, surely dependent on the culture and leadership ability of the team at the time. That's why paddy should get it in the political system. I think we have to nudge it enough or make it uncomfortable enough by the emergence of these new groups like the tails to make them rethink their way of doing their job as politicians and become leaders instead of managers because very few leaders up it Unknown 18:33and it comes back as well to I guess building that situation away in the situation with witness of the greater population. So they are that flow or that huge mob mass of people there's also to drive that because they're aware of what the risks are Unknown 18:52talking to people on the road so am I used to be on the right side of politics for most of my career until I had this awakening. I've met a few assumptions here that are fundamentally wrong. So I sit at the center now and but I weren't allowed to either party but I'm very happy that the Labour Party is in at the moment. But I've been out talking to people who consider more on the right side of politics. This is all imagination. These are the scientists who've got this plot of whatever about climate change. I've found that particularly if I were so tired puppet go on, that I can actually have a conversation with them with that background credibility from being a conservative military person can say, Well, I gotta tell you, I don't think this is made up. I know. But I know Nobel Prize winning climate scientists I've dealt with, I think, I think they know what the hell they're talking about. This is getting really ugly. And it's like being in the military and saying there's a threat over there, but I'm not going to prepare for it because I don't think it might not be real and then when it goes wrong, then that's a good thing about the millage that you prepare for so many things that will never happen, because you don't know the consequences and not preparing for society, the balance from reaction to reaction and particularly if you're lucky. Like we've been economically, with all these resources. You can say oh, that's worked for us before we react very well. Why would we bother repairing this is what I get out of something. It's what we're going to get as more people in the middle or even slightly on the right, to have that different conversation change and bring a few more across. You've only got to move about 10% of the population. You know, nudge theory says 3%. All right. And in that case, if we can move about 10% We're going to be on a major success. And that's what we're trying to do is move a couple of percent initially and see if we get momentum but not go rushing off to the other side of politics and go Boca, it's compromised. Unknown 20:46But I think from what you're saying about Australia or people who've got it right for a period of time and think that there's an issue and you know, from a farming perspective, someone will say that they their family has been farming this land for 100 years or 150 years and it's still snowing but from a from a ecological and climatic perspective. That's that's the second that's a very, very short period of time, but it's getting people understand that that 150 odd years he's actually rather insignificant in terms of the grand scheme of things. Unknown 21:24And his big trade. My brother in law was a farm dairy farmer 45 years or whatever. He could see the things that changing were happening over time, particularly in terms of your water availability and things like that. One pressed me about the firm's Federation's I've been dealing with I've dealt with a mentor of ours three times now, at this conference, they had climate scientists and they're saying, just watch what's happened to the weather bands as they moved south in Australia. This is what's happening with farming production. This is what's happening with water production. And then you hear we had the last conference in the middle of major floods in Victoria that closed down huge parts of the roads, couldn't move into it. And I gotta tell you, not just the young people, but a lot of the old ones going, this is real, it is happening. We've got to do something, what they feel not empowered to do is to actually convince the public you know, the grip, the wider grip of the population of which way to go. Young Farmers in particular, but a lot of farmers are saying now we know the serious problem. They also know that they've got a serious job to do in terms of the food production requirements, and in some cases, particularly with methane issues and cows, anything else. There's a lot of opportunistic slogging off at the agricultural sector. We've got to understand how long is it going to take them to adapt and they will adapt to the changing needs. And we kind of say, Oh, we're gonna grow proteins in fats over here. Don't worry about this. It's kind of like a long time. And it's not only the ability to grow the protein is the ability of getting the society to accept that's a good way to go use it. So we've got all these complex issues. And of course, we're going to get the pushback, you know, from from parts of industry that want to keep going exactly that yes, we will. I don't mind if that pushback comes from Australian industry, because we need to have a proper debate. What really get me out of nose out of joint is particularly like in the fuel sector, the vast majority of lobby groups are foreign owned. And so I've taken a lot of time to say to the government, you've told us the previous government, but energy security is a shared responsibility between government and industry. A lot just gone that's complete BS. You're saying you can share national security sponsibility with the vast majority of our fuel industry, dependent on imports and most of it being foreign owned, that's rubbish. And so by going on national television and saying, This is what the politicians are saying, Are you serious? I've gotten to a lot of Australians this feedback I get is we didn't realize that that's what they were doing. So really gets on my nerves when he got foreign industry, making lobbying action for their own profit at the cost of Australia's security and resilience. And that happens to attack in the pharmaceutical sector is in the energy sector. In the food sector, just look at the fertilizer. Industries that left Australia because we mismanaged gas prices. And I know from talking to my friends in the fertilizer sector, how just in time fertilizer deliveries are and what the consequences are, or even a month delay, there's a food production, and also the vulnerability the sources of weird inputs to the fertilizer and chemicals are coming from. And we're going we're happy to, for example, maintain huge import dependence on China, but we're gonna go and buy nuclear submarines because they're a threat to us, and that will deter them. This is, this is Monty Python sketch. Berger. We should be focusing on how to use the resources like gas with the largest LNG exporter in the world, not just to make a foreign company rich, but to ensure that we got a fertilizer industry because without that, a lot of what we do is going to go out the window but it's hard to make that connection because it's the neoliberal religion we have for the last decade and leave it to the market or solve the problem. Takes a fair bit of time to change but it's lunacy what we've been doing things looking good. Unknown 26:17My observation right now is the scale of the challenges are such if I look at my generation, for example, it's a mixture of fear. You've got mortality, state spacing and staring in the face. We've got these complex things happening. And when you people feel they're powerless, they can't do much about it. So one of the reactions a lot of people do is they shut down and they go close. I can understand that. But we just got excited people. It's not just about us. It's about the next generation. It's about our neighbors very else. We we can't just shut down and say, Well, I'm gonna hang on for the next couple of decades while still breathing. We need to be involved in this discussion on how we help society as a whole and I appreciate like some people are very in difficult positions economically or so society where they are, and they're so busy just doing day to day problems typically lead like at least more in a flood area. You're concerned about how you're going to rebuild those destructive floods, not about what's going to happen in five years. Those of us who have the luxury of time or the economy or things like that, we need to take stronger voice and having this discussion and trying to help the chain rather than just what people say you should just go and enjoy retirement. Go play golf, me that. You'd be brain dead within six months. So yeah, it's trying to get more people active in that area where they have the capacity to do it. A lot of people don't. Unknown 27:48Thank you very much. Is there anything that you think we need? To add that we haven't already discussed? Unknown 27:56But I guess the final point I make, which is what I say at the conference is when I speak because I generally get people fairly depressed after about 14 minutes. I say I'm actually optimistic. And the reason I'm optimistic is certainly this last work I've done the last three years with these 250 people, all volunteers and looking at these problems. We as a nation, I'm sure this isn't the most country of the world. We have a lot of smart people sufficient to actually work out what to do. We have the resources in this country because we're fortunately in Britain down below natural resources. There's only one thing that's missing. To stop us addressing it. And that's leadership. And so I'm optimistic because I know we've got the tools. And I know with the right sort of nudging and pushing, we can improve. So I'm not going to sit here and go doom and gloom. You know, the world's gonna fall apart or fall out basket and whoever else does to Mars. Because that's going to be the ultimate solution. We can fix the problems we're facing. We just got to pull out the digit and get on with it. Unknown 28:56Wonderful, John, thank you very, very much for speaking to me day today. It's been an absolute pleasure. You're welcome and Unknown 29:03thanks for the opportunity and I look forward to keep chatting in the future