By Jo Brick Small Giants Fellow (MBE 2022)
‘National security is about protecting our territory and institutions, and ensuring the safety of all Australians’[1]
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia
In many democratic nations such as Australia, defence and military spending is often the objective measure for security. Defence spending also provides a measurable [Kd1] [JB2] manifestation of national strength through investment in major capabilities such as military personnel and hardware. However, a solitary focus on the military aspects misses the intangible factors that underpin the security of A Good Society.
The Mastery of Business and Empathy (MBE) course program challenges its students to consider and define the characteristics of A Good Society. During my year of MBE study, I defined such a society as one that is marked by the central pillars of identity and belonging, a peaceful transition of power, and one that does not focus value only on economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product. In many ways, such a society is not far from the one we are fortunate to be a part of in Australia. However, one aspect we did not discuss is that A Good Society is also a secure society. As the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet definition of ‘national security’ demonstrates, a secure society is one that has a protected territory and institutions and safeguards the cohesion of its social construct.
There are many significant threats to the security of A Good Society that are focussed on undermining its central pillars of identity and belonging, a peaceful transition of power, and how it defines value. These threats include social fragmentation, undermining confidence and trust in the systems that enable the peaceful transition of power in democracies, and a single-minded focus on ‘growth’ at the expense of the ecosystem that sustains life on Earth. [Kd3] One example concerns the protection of electoral systems in democratic countries that enable the peaceful transition of power. Security expert Thomas Rid discusses the large-scale disinformation campaigns that are intended to undermine liberal political orders that are founded on trust in institutions that are custodians of factual authority – justice systems, public administration, and investigative journalism. Disinformation campaigns have a corrosive effect that are more insidious as they occur gradually and often not noticed and therefore not addressed. As Rid states: ‘A peaceful transition of power after a contested vote, for example, requires trusting an election’s setup, infrastructure, counting procedures, and press coverage, all in a moment of high uncertainty and political fragility. Active measures (disinformation) erode that order. But they do so slowly, subtly, like ice melting. This slowness makes disinformation much more insidious, because when the authority of evidence is eroded, emotions fill the gap’.[2]
These threats to the pillars of A Good Society demand that we renew how we think about security (Head), a re-evaluation of what is important to our lives (Heart), and how we can take action to work together to enhance and protect our security (Hands).
Head – Rethinking Security
The maintenance of military forces is an important aspect of securing the territorial integrity and interests of a nation. However, a focus only on this aspect of security narrows our focus and can allow malign actors to act in other sectors of society to undermine the central pillars of our society, such as social cohesion. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes a cohesive society as one that ‘works towards the well-being of all its members, fights exclusion and marginalisation, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust, and offers its members the opportunity of upward social mobility.[3] These factors are directly related to a sense of identity and belonging within a social construct. There are fissures in every society such as race, gender, and socio-economic factors; that can be exploited to undermine cohesiveness. The risk of these fissures being exploited is a current issue, with the referendum on The Indigenous Voice as an example. Incorrect and malicious claims against The Voice have proliferated online, with bots and fake accounts exploiting social media algorithms to grow and accelerate the spread of false and malicious claims. Security experts claim that these tactics are imported from the United States and were used by anti- COVID vaccination and QAnon conspiracy theorists.[4] Social and political polarisation cause marginalisation and exclusion – the ‘othering’ of certain groups in society. History has shown that this type of social fragmentation and polarisation has the dire consequence of the slow and insidious process of dismantling democracies.[5]
The integrity of electoral processes in democratic nations also lies at the heart of the security of these societies. The integrity of this process must be secured from tampering and disinformation about its operation. In the months prior to the last Australian Federal Election on May 21, 2022, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) established measures to fight against misleading and deceptive information across social medial platforms. These measures included co-operating with major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to ensure disinformation was removed quickly. An Electoral Integrity and Assurance Task Force was also established for the first time to co-ordinate responses across police and intelligence services. AEC officers also responded to false online claims and conspiracy theories that threatened the operation and integrity of Australia’s electoral process. As a part of the AEC’s response, a Disinformation Register was established to list significant disinformation discovered by the AEC, including details of the AEC’s response actions. The AEC Disinformation Register website states: ‘The AEC is not the arbiter of truth regarding political communication and do not seek to censor debate in any way. However, when it comes to the election process we conduct, we’re the experts and we’re active in defending Australia’s democracy’.[6]
Protecting against misinformation and disinformation campaigns are essential steps in securing social institutions. The threats posed by such campaigns are perhaps the most insidious and dangerous because they can often go undetected and require constant vigilance and actions to call them out as the AEC has done for the last Australian federal election. As these examples demonstrate it is essential to take a broad view of security beyond the traditional focus on defence and military threats.
Heart – placing value on what matters
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. … Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. … and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play… It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Robert F. Kennedy[7]
As the old adage states, we measure what matters. Yet, to Robert F. Kennedy’s point, there is no mechanism for measuring what actually matters to us – social resilience and cohesiveness, and national health for example. These aspects are linked to a nation’s economic wellbeing, yet it is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that takes centre stage when considering the economic strength and prosperity of a country. Generally, GDP is an indicator of the size of a nation’s economy and represents expenditure on goods and services, national production and earnings.[8] Economic strength can be used as an indicator of national security, as a country’s wealth and economic wellbeing has a direct impact on its capacity to build military forces. As an example, Australia’s Defence spending has been broadly set at 2 per cent of GDP.[9] However, different measures are required to understand the sense of security felt within a society, and this is linked to broader factors such as health, sense of safety, access to housing and financial security, and a sense of belonging in the community.
Work is underway in international organisations and in individual countries to develop alternative metrics that represent national wellbeing and progress, perhaps as an acknowledgement of the limitations of GDP on what truly matters. The OECD published a report titled ‘Beyond GDP. Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance’ in 2018.[10] The report finds that although GDP is a powerful economic indicator, it does not provide any insight into national or social health. It also calls for the development of national dashboards that show factors such as ‘who is benefitting from growth, whether that growth is environmentally sustainable, how people feel about their lives, what factors contribute to an individual’s or country’s success’.[11] Academics Paul Allin, Diane Coyle, and Tim Jackson highlight that:
When GDP conceals crucial difference between the richest and poorest in society, it inevitably says little about the prospects of ordinary people… The pursuit of GDP growth as a policy goal, and the impact that has on government, business and personal decision-making, has accompanied increasing devastation of the natural world, a loss of forests and habitats, the destabilisation of the climate and near-meltdowns of the world’s financial markets. At the same time, GDP has become a poor measure of the technological transformation of society’.[12]
Bhutan is perhaps the most well-known for using its Gross National Happiness Index, after the 4th King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck first coined the phrase in the late 1970s when he said, ‘Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product’.[13] Bhutan has used its GNH as a basis for policy development and to enhance the happiness and wellbeing of Bhutanese society. GNH measures use nine domains and 33 indicators of wellbeing and flourishing, including how basic human needs are met. The nine domains include psychological wellbeing, health, time use, balance, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standard (see Figure 1).
Gross National Happiness[14]
The success of the GNH Index lies in how it is used for national policy development and planning. For example, GNH and GDP are used together to provide a comprehensive understanding of national progress, not just economic growth. Further, any lag in the nine domains provides an indicator to the government that allows for prioritisation of resources and efforts towards these lagging areas.[Kd4] [JB5]
New Zealand Treasury also first released its Living Standards Framework (LSF) Dashboard in December 2018. The LSF has three levels:[15]
· Our Individual and Collective Wellbeing – the resources and aspects of New Zealand lives that are important to wellbeing as individuals, families, whānau and communities.
· Our Institutions and Governance – the role that institutions and organisations play in enabling the wellbeing of individuals and collectives, and safeguarding and building national wealth.
· The Wealth of Aotearoa New Zealand – the overall wealth of the nation, which includes human capability and the natural environment.
New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework[16]
New Zealand’s LSF is intended to impact on policy development by providing the underlying drivers of societal wellbeing and enables an appreciation of the interdependencies across the parts of the framework. Like Bhutan’s GNH Index, New Zealand’s LSF is intended to complement existing economic and financial analytical models such as GDP to enable a holistic approach to national wellbeing and prosperity.
Australia has also instituted its own national wellbeing framework, which was launched by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on 21 July 2023. ‘Measuring What Matters’ is Australia’s new national wellbeing framework. It focuses on 50 indicators across national health, sense of security, sustainability, cohesiveness, and prosperity.[17] The framework is intended to be an iterative process, with ongoing refinement and consultation on the framework as it develops. It includes a Dashboard, which provides deeper content on each of the 50 indicators. Similar to New Zealand, the purpose of the framework is to provide a holistic and comprehensive approach for understanding the underlying factors for national wellbeing and the drivers for prosperity, which will guide Australian government policy development and prioritisation.
The efforts of countries like Bhutan, New Zealand, and Australia – as well as other countries across the world – to explore and advance alternative ways to understand environmental factors, sustainability, social development, and national wellbeing, are central to enhancing a nation’s security outside of traditional military and economic considerations. Most importantly, the recognition of the importance of sustainability and environmental factors lies at the heart of the most important security problem for the world – the need to preserve the very planet that sustains human existence. All other security issues pale in comparison to this.
Conclusion: Hands – Security through cross-sector collaboration
‘Be curious, not judgemental’. Ted Lasso
Security challenges that face countries including Australia require a multidisciplinary approach to address. The protection of electoral processes, for example, requires collaboration between cyber-security specialists, media professionals, and government officials. Further, the complexity of the challenge posed by changing public and private sector thinking behind economic systems is immense and cannot be tackled by economists or government agencies alone. The challenge therefore is for people to extend their hands to others outside of their own spheres of expertise and comfort. This requires the Ted Lasso attitude and the courage to connect, and to start building bridges between sectors and disciplines that would never otherwise connect. As a young military officer, I saw the world through the prism of defence as being the only sector of importance to national security. As a much older and more experienced professional, I have come to realise that the security of our nation requires us to move outside our silos and to work together to address the out-of-sight security challenges that face us – whether it is mis/disinformation, the undermining of our democratic institutions, or the degradation of the environment. Perhaps most importantly, collaborative work is essential if these generational problems are to be overcome. We must become the bridge builders who forge a path for the generations that follow us:
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”[18]
Notes
[1] Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ‘National Security’ https://www.pmc.gov.au/international-policy-and-national-security/national-security (accessed 26 July 2023)
[2] Thomas Rid. Active Measures. The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. London: Profile Books Ltd., 2020; p. 10-11.
[3] Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, ‘Social Cohesion’, https://www.oecd.org/dev/inclusive-societies-development/social-cohesion.htm (accessed 31 July 2023).
[4] Tom McIlroy, ‘How Online Disinformation is hijacking The Voice’, Australian Financial Review (online) https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/how-online-disinformation-is-hijacking-the-voice-20230721-p5dq7p (accessed 31 July 2023).
[5] See Murat Somer and Jennifer McCoy. (2018). ‘Déjà vu? Polarization and Endangered Democracies in the 21st Century.’ American Behavioral Scientist, 62(1), 3–15.
[6] See Tom McIlroy, ‘How the AEC faced the online trolls and won’, Australian Financial Review, June 17, 2022 https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/how-the-aec-faced-the-online-trolls-and-won-20220616-p5au4l (accessed 26 July 2023).
[7] Robert F. Kennedy. Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (online) <https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968> (accessed 02 August 2023).
[8] Paul Allin, Diane Coyle, and Tim Jackson. ‘Beyond GDP: Changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis – three leading experts’. The Conversation, 19 August 2022 https://theconversation.com/beyond-gdp-changing-how-we-measure-progress-is-key-to-tackling-a-world-in-crisis-three-leading-experts-186488 (accessed 02 August 2023)
[9] Jennifer Parker, David Uren, Bec Shrimpton & Rob Bourke. ‘The Big Squeeze. ASPI Defence budget brief 2023-2024’ https://www.aspi.org.au/report/big-squeeze#:~:text=The%20government%20will%20start%20providing,%25%20to%20more%20than%202.3%25. (accessed 02 August 2023).
[10] Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand. ‘Beyond GDP. Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance’. OECD report, November 27, 2018 <https://www.oecd.org/social/beyond-gdp-9789264307292-en.htm> (Accessed 28 July 2023).
[11] Stiglitz et al, ‘Beyond GDP’.
[12] Allin et al, ‘Beyond GDP’.
[13] ‘Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index’, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative <https://ophi.org.uk/policy/bhutan-gnh-index/> (accessed 02 August 2023).
[14] Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index’, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
[15] New Zealand Government Treasury, ‘Our Living Standards Framework’ (Last Updated 12 April 2022) <https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/nz-economy/higher-living-standards/our-living-standards-framework> (accessed 03 August 2023)
[16] New Zealand Government Treasury, ‘Our Living Standards Framework’.
[17] The Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP, ‘Release of National Wellbeing Framework’, 21 July 2023 https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/jim-chalmers-2022/media-releases/release-national-wellbeing-framework (accessed 26 July 2023)
[18] ‘The Bridge Builder’ by Will Allen Dromgoole. The Poetry Foundation website https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52702/the-bridge-builder (accessed 10 August 2023)
[Kd1]Measurable?
[JB2]Agreed.
[Kd3]It would be great to include a couple of examples here, of how these threats embed themselves in the culture over time.
[Kd4]Query on this point (and I only know this because I went there): 4000 Bhutanese are applying for exit visas, & overseas opportunities, daily. Is there space in this piece to comment on the ubiquitous nature of western culture/ values prevailing, that make people think acquisition (having, not being) are more important for happiness? Might be beyond scope & a whole different essay!
[JB5]This is an entirely different discussion for another paper, Kristy. Maybe one on the infectiousness of culture.
