The Defence secretary has detailed the behind-the-scenes work of departments to help shape the nation's priorities, and in particular in determining national security policy.
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The Defence boss, Greg Moriarty, and top security experts were asked to define Australia's security policy at an Australian National University conference panel, which dealt with the use of deterrence and diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific.
Defence is due to release a national strategy in coming weeks. It will refocus the force towards longer-range capabilities, but Mr Moriarty spoke broadly on how departments inform national security policy.
"In our system, the most important figure in this is always the prime minister," Mr Moriarty told the conference, attended by current and former officials, experts and students.
"The prime minister, in his or her own right, but also as the chair of the national security committee of cabinet.
"They have a very consequential and disproportionate ability to ... set national security strategy."
This makes the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet critical in ensuring strategy "is aligned and in balance" with the prime minister's direction.
Secretaries vet national security submissions ahead of cabinet
Mr Moriarty said senior public servants pour "a lot of effort and intellectual energy" into vetting national security submissions before they reach cabinet.
"The secretaries committee on national security [makes] sure that we don't bring submissions forward to the national security committee of cabinet that aren't really worked through by the other departments."
The Defence boss' comments come after several reports on senior public servants' presence and influence in cabinet meetings.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported in March that Industry Minister Ed Husic has raised concerns about the role of the Finance and Treasury secretaries in expenditure review committee meetings.
"Ministers of course, will retain the prerogative to bring forward their own thoughts, and that is really important in [the national security committee], to make ministers have ownership of that.
"But we try to make sure that say, [we have] a National Defence Strategy that DFAT is comfortable with, that PM&C is comfortable with, Treasury, Finance, Home Affairs, Department of Industry, we bring them all in and they'll work with us."
This is the "iterative policy making" which is the foundation of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's speeches and presentations, Mr Moriarty said.
"We don't have a published national security document, but there is a lot of material that I think careful observers can see the ebbs and flows, and the little nuances in focus that come through those iterations of strategic policy."
Call for a public strategy on national security
A public expression of Australia's national security strategy would be "helpful", a former foreign affairs official also said.
Richard Maude, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs, who now serves as executive director of the Asia Society Australia, reiterated that setting priorities had been "a bit of an iterative process" for the Albanese government.
"But I think the government has a pretty clear, now, set of high-level objectives for the [Indo-Pacific] region, it's had a set of policies that work towards those objectives"
"If [the] question is about the absence of a public articulation of the national security strategy, I do think we're at a moment where that would be helpful."