Young Australians invited to shape national security policy solutions

A symposium in Canberra to give young people a seat at the table was created by two ANU students seeking to bring in fresh perspectives to the biggest issues facing the nation like climate change, future pandemics, human security, cyber safety, disinformation and social cohesion.

Dom Dwyer and Tom Smethurst founded the Youth National Security Strategy initiative, secured sponsorship, expert advisors, and are now selecting participants with applications closing this week.

"There's young, intelligent people that just maybe don't think national security is a space for them," Mr Smethurst said.

"Bringing people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds in economics, science, technology, engineering, law into this discussion automatically brings a different sort of life to those issues, and demonstrates that they can have an influence in the debate. That is a really positive step forward."

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Mr Dwyer said if young people are going to be the ones to face the outcome of those policies, then they should contribute their voice in shaping what they want the world to look like and how to get there.

"We were doing this because we think it's in the interest of policy contestability to have this generation weigh in and put forward some potentially unheard views," he said.

"In many ways, we as a generation are the greatest stakeholders of strategic policy - we are the very few who will live through the full ramification of strategic change that shapes the world for 30 or 50 years to come."

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