Engineer Corps grown from 3,000 to 20,000 with 72-hour disaster deployment. NSC of 14 members including state security professionals. ASIO, ASIS, ASD unified under one Director of National Intelligence. Six-track national service for every Australian. SAS dispersed nationally.
The ADF is structured around the wars of the 20th century — large infantry formations, heavy patrol vessels, concentrated air bases, and an expeditionary posture designed to fight alongside the United States in conflicts of US choosing. None of that is the shape of an actual threat to Australian territory. The structure does not match the country, the geography, or the strategic environment.
Australia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth. Cyclones, floods, bushfires — the frequency and severity are increasing. Defence has the people, equipment, and training to be the most capable disaster-response force in the country — and it sits in barracks while volunteers, exhausted and unpaid, do what the Army should be doing. The institutional design is wrong.
ASIO, ASIS, ASD, and the Office of National Intelligence operate as four separate agencies with their own budgets, cultures, priorities, and political relationships. They do not share information consistently. The Prime Minister does not get one picture — the PM gets four filtered pictures and is expected to integrate them in real time. That is not how intelligence is supposed to work.
Grown fivefold to 20,000. Every member: soldier first, qualified tradesperson, certified drone operator, trained emergency first responder. In peacetime: builds SBC corridors. In disaster: deploys in 72 hours. In conflict: defends Australian territory. Budget: ~$6 billion per year — 20% of the 3% GDP defence commitment. The most versatile military asset Australia has ever fielded.
Every Engineer Corps unit maintains 72-hour deployment readiness for domestic emergency. Equipment pre-positioned at six regional logistics nodes: Darwin, Broome, Cairns, Broken Hill, Roma, Alice Springs. Every major disaster zone within 48 hours of a pre-positioned depot. When the flood declaration comes, Engineer Corps units are already moving — not assembling, not waiting on a state request.
ASIO, ASIS, ASD, and ONI consolidated under a single Director of National Intelligence. One budget. One command. One picture — without the fragmentation and filtering that four competing agencies produce. Australia sees with its own eyes. Makes its own assessments. Decides with its own judgment. No allied intelligence service determines what Australia knows about its own region.
National Security Council: Prime Minister (chair), Governor-General, CDF, Director of National Intelligence, AFP Commissioner, Attorney-General, and 8 state and territory security representatives. The state reps are not politicians — they are professional security appointments, fixed 5-year terms, with full clearance. The NT representative knows the northern approaches. The WA representative knows the maritime west. Security decisions made with ground truth in the room.
Border patrol elevated to a dedicated military division with its own command, budget, and doctrine reporting to the Minister for Security. ABF maritime absorbed. Small, fast, agile vessel fleet — difficult to target, cheap to replace, each vessel a drone control hub. Remote drone stations along the entire northern coastline from Broome to Cape York — autonomous, solar-powered, continuous surveillance.
Every Army soldier a certified drone operator and trained in sovereign missile systems. Three spheres: aerial surveillance and strike swarms, maritime surface autonomous vessels, underwater autonomous vehicles. Distributed missile batteries across northern and western approaches — no single point of failure. Sovereign systems built in Australia, owned by Australia, dependent on no foreign supplier for resupply in a crisis.
Every Australian on completing school gives two years in one of six tracks: Engineer Corps · Health and Care · Green Corps · Teaching and Education · Construction and Trades · Civil Defence. Every Australian leaves with a skill, a community, and a sense of national purpose. Conscientious-objector pathway preserved. National service is a covenant, not a punishment.
SAS retained and restructured. Smaller but more capable. Primary mission: sovereign intelligence, counter-terrorism, and hostage rescue in Australia's near region. Dispersed nationally rather than concentrated in one base. No single strike eliminates Australian special forces capability.
Air Force assets pre-positioned at bases in every state and territory — distributed, not concentrated. Dual-use civilian-military airstrips upgraded in every regional hub. F-35 dependency reviewed. Sovereign drone fleet and missile systems prioritised over expensive imported platforms that can be denied by their supplier.
Every dollar of defence spending — 3% of GDP — spent inside Australia. Drones, missiles, communications, electronic warfare, ammunition, vehicles, vessels: all built domestically with sovereign IP. Defence industrial base co-located with SBC corridor manufacturing precincts. Defence is the anchor customer that makes sovereign manufacturing viable. Sovereign manufacturing is the only thing that makes defence credible.
| Current — Wrong Century | MMP — Built For What Australia Actually Needs |
|---|---|
| Engineer Corps 3,000. Most ADF in barracks during disasters. | Engineer Corps 20,000. 72-hour disaster deployment. Builds, rescues, defends. |
| 4 separate intelligence agencies. No unified picture for the PM. | ASIO, ASIS, ASD, ONI unified under one Director of National Intelligence. |
| NSC is a small Canberra committee. No state-level ground truth. | 14-member NSC with 8 state/territory security professionals on fixed terms. |
| Border patrol fragmented between ABF and Defence. | Border Patrol military division. Drone surveillance entire northern coast. |
| Concentrated air bases — single point of failure. | Air Force dispersed across every state/territory. Dual-use airstrips upgraded. |
| No national service. ADF recruitment failing. | 6-track national service. Every Australian leaves with skills and purpose. |
| Sovereign defence manufacturing minimal — most platforms imported. | 3% GDP defence all spent in Australia. Sovereign IP, drones, missiles, vessels. |
No memos pinned to this policy yet. When an MMP memo on this topic is published, it will appear here with a short summary. The full memo index is at moralmajority.com.au/memos.html.