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Threats to Australia’s vital interests
About the author
Ryan Neelam
Ryan Neelam was Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute. He led the flagship annual Lowy Institute Poll, was project director for the Global Diplomacy Index, and wrote about climate diplomacy and multilateral policy.
‘Cyberattacks from other countries’ now tops the list of threats worrying Australians. Seven in ten (68%) say cyberattacks are a critical threat to Australia’s vital interests in the next ten years, an 11-point increase since 2018. This result comes as perceptions of other threats — including Covid-19 and Russian and Chinese foreign policies — have receded. It also follows three of the most significant corporate data breaches in Australian history: in late 2022, Optus and Medibank user data was hacked and held for ransom, with hackers releasing sensitive health records of some Medibank customers on the dark web. During fieldwork for this Poll, Latitude Financial disclosed a data breach that eventually saw some 14 million customer records compromised.
Australians remain anxious about the prospect of ‘a military conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan’, with more than six in ten (64%) seeing this as a critical threat in the next ten years — steady from 2022, but almost twice as high as in 2020 (35%). However, against a backdrop of thawing Australia–China relations, fewer Australians see ‘China’s foreign policy’ as a critical threat, down six points from last year to 59%.
Despite Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the number who identify Russia’s foreign policy as a critical threat (57%) fell 11 points from last year. At the same time, fewer Australians (49%) see ‘the rise of authoritarian systems of governments around the world’ as a critical threat, evident in a decline of six points from 2022.
Six in ten Australians remain concerned about the threat from ‘North Korea’s nuclear program’ (60%) and ‘climate change’ (59%). Despite rising cost of living pressures, deteriorating global economic conditions, and forecasts of future economic turmoil, ‘a severe downturn in the global economy’ does not appear to loom larger as a threat to Australia’s interests than it did in 2022. More than half (57%) of Australians see a severe economic downturn as a critical threat, much the same as in 2022 (55%). Levels of concern about ‘foreign interference in Australian politics’ also remained steady (51%).
