2016 DEFENCE WHITE PAPER

Managing strategic risk 33
1.15 A secure, resilient Australia, with secure northern approaches
and proximate sea lines of communication is Australia’s first
Strategic Defence Interest. The self-reliant defence of Australia’s territory
remains the highest priority for this Government, and protecting Australia
from the threat of armed attack or coercion is the primary mission for
Defence.
1.16 We cannot effectively protect Australia if we do not have a secure
nearer region, encompassing maritime South East Asia and
South Pacific (comprising Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and
Pacific Island Countries), our second Strategic Defence Interest.
Australia must play a leadership role in our immediate neighbourhood
spanning Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Pacific Island Countries
in support of our national interests. We must strengthen our defence
engagement with regional countries with interests in the security of
maritime South East Asia, particularly Indonesia, including helping
to build the effectiveness of regional operations to address shared
security challenges, including the threat of terrorism, and increasing the
capability of the ADF to make contributions to any such operations.
SECTION ONE STRATEGY
1.17 Australia has global interests across a broad range of strategic,
economic and foreign policy issues. Our security and prosperity depend
on a stable Indo-Pacific region and a rules-based global order
in which power is not misused, and threats to peace and stability from
tensions between countries can be managed through negotiations based
on international law and the threat from terrorism can be addressed
by concerted international action. This is our third Strategic Defence
Interest. In the Indo-Pacific region Australia must continue to work with
the United States and regional partners to make a positive contribution
to security and stability in ways that advance our national interests.
Australia must continue to play its part in responding to challenges to
the global rules-based order beyond the Indo-Pacific, as Australia is
currently doing in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and in maritime security and
peacekeeping operations in the Middle East and Africa.
2016 DEFENCE WHITE PAPER