Watch: How to defend Australia

The Great Defence Debate: Maritime Strategy vs Continental Defence — How Should Australia Protect Itself?

Should Australia's defence policy be built around maritime power projection and its alliance with the United States? Or does Australia's security lie closer to home — in a more self-reliant continental strategy less dependent on Washington?

These are among the most consequential and contested questions in Australian strategic policy — and at this Lowy Institute event, two of the country's sharpest defence thinkers went head to head to argue the case.

Jennifer Parker made the case for a maritime-focused defence policy, while Lowy Institute International Security Program Director Sam Roggeveen argued for a continental strategy less centred on the US alliance. The debate covered Australia's security posture, America's role in Asia, the AUKUS partnership, and much more. Each speaker delivered opening remarks before a moderated discussion led by Deputy Research Director Susannah Patton, concluding with questions from the audience.

Rigorous, direct, and genuinely contested, this is essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the choices Australia faces in one of the most consequential periods in its strategic history.

About the speakers

Jennifer Parker is Principal and Founder of Barrier Strategic Advisory, an Expert Associate at the National Security College at the Australian National University, an Adjunct Fellow in naval studies at the University of New South Wales Canberra, and Nancy Bentley Associate Fellow in Indo-Pacific Maritime Affairs at the Council on Geostrategy.

Sam Roggeveen is Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program and author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia's Search for Power and Peace (La Trobe University Press, 2023).

Susannah Patton is Deputy Research Director at the Lowy Institute and Director of the Asia Power Index, the Institute's annual data-driven assessment of shifting power across the Indo-Pacific. Her research focuses on geopolitical trends in Southeast Asia and Australian foreign policy.