Preserving our cohesion and institutional health

Social cohesion underpins our national resilience. It is Australia's greatest strategic asset—more than any mineral wealth or military might. We can weather almost any threat or crisis so long as we remain united by the bonds of mutual trust, shared values and information, and an inclusive national identity.

As much as it is our greatest source of strength, our cohesiveness rests on a fragile edifice. Maintaining social cohesion requires constant work against the centrifugal forces threatening to pull it apart.

Disinformation has emerged as one such force. More and more, we see it propagate virally and corrosively through social media. Authoritarians, extremists, and other bad-faith actors are weaponising information in our digitally dependent world. The falsehoods they spread aim to cleave fissures between Australians' sense of belonging, values, and even reality.

Indeed, our very identity as an embracing, multicultural society is under threat. Disinformation plays a key role in this, but the causes go deeper. In particular, we must confront the rise of ethno-nationalism—a cowardly and atavistic return to race-based definitions of 'us' and 'them'. We cannot let these ideas fray our unity and common purpose as a plural, modern democracy.

Nor can we allow foreign interference to have the same effect. Some states seek to deny our diversity, coercing Australians with overseas heritage on the false basis that they owe allegiance elsewhere. Beyond targeting specific communities, foreign interference has the broader aim of undermining our public institutions. The intent is to subvert not only our sovereignty, but our very faith in the institutions that bind our diverse society.

All this is not to say that Australia's sovereignty and unity are in disrepair. As the Director-General of Security made clear recently, "Our democracy remains robust, our parliaments remain sovereign, [and] our elections remain free…"

But given these intensifying challenges, we cannot take our social cohesion or institutional health for granted. We must actively preserve them in the following ways:

Tackle disinformation on social media. Large social media companies have taken important if belated steps in dealing with disinformation, including through reporting and flagging methods. Australia will continue to engage with social media and tech companies, pressing for sustained progress in meeting their responsibilities as custodians of the digital public square. While our approach will generally preference cooperation over regulation, we will mandate that tech companies operating in Australia report regularly and publicly on the prevalence of disinformation, bots, and influence campaigns on their networks; as well as the extent and success of the companies' actions to tackle them. Mobilising public transparency and accountability in this way is likely to stimulate greater due diligence than heavy-handed regulation, which would bring real risks of market exit.

Establish a Government Communications Agency. Coherent, timely, and trusted government messaging is crucial in emergency management. That became acutely clear during the pandemic and recent natural disasters; successes and failures hinged on the clarity and reach of government communication. But as we also learnt from Ukraine, government communication can be strategically harnessed towards more pro-active ends, too; whether that's countering disinformation and propaganda, boosting domestic morale, or rallying international support. In light of these domestic and international lessons, Australia will work towards establishing a dedicated Government Communications Agency, which would centralise all existing crisis and emergency communication functions of the federal government. The non-political Agency would provide a much-needed capability in being able to sustain coherent, multi-media messaging about concurrent crises. Over the long-term, the Agency would also take on a more proactive role, harnessing strategic communication in countering disinformation and cyber-enabled influence campaigns.

Equip the Australian Electoral Commission to continue upholding election integrity. The Australian Electoral Commission is an unsung pillar of national security. Its trusted, impartial, and transparent delivery of fair elections underpins the health of our democratic system. To help sustain the highest levels of trust in our electoral process, we will ensure the AEC remains properly resourced in countering new threats to its operations and mandate, such as disinformation and foreign electoral interference. We will also seek to maintain ballot boxes over e-voting to avoid the risk of actual or perceived compromise by cyber means.

Advance progress towards a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament. We will be diminished as a society so long as our constitution denies due recognition and an empowered voice to First Australians. We will therefore work to lay the groundwork of advocacy and consensus-building needed to pass a referendum. We will also work towards achieving the other pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart: Treaty and Truth.

Promote civics and digital literacy education. To help reduce our vulnerability to disinformation, Australia will endeavour to embed digital literacy in the national curriculum. Likewise, we will aim to introduce civics education as a means of fostering shared knowledge and appreciation of inclusive values, democratic processes, and our mutual obligations as citizens.

Disrupt and deter hostile, state-linked cyber influence campaigns. Through ASD, Australia will maintain a ready and capable cyber-warfare capability that can be used to disrupt cyber-enabled influence or interference against our elections, institutions, or information environments. Our posture will be pro-active and pre-emptive in general, especially against non-state actors; but we will maintain due regard to escalation risks against major state actors.

Strengthen Australia's civil society. NGOs, volunteers, and community groups play an important part in anchoring our shared sense of togetherness and belonging. We should not underestimate the value of that social capital as a basis of national resilience. To strengthen it further still, Australia will increase grant-funding opportunities for civil-society initiatives that aim to promote social harmony, such as inter-faith iftars or volunteer settlement support services.

Counter foreign influence and interference. Australia's approach will remain animated around the five pillars of the CFI, which include enhancing capability, engaging with at-risk sectors, deterring perpetrators, defending against acts of foreign interference, and enforcing our CFI laws (including the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme). In terms of resourcing, however, we will particularly step up efforts under the public-engagement pillar, which aims to raise awareness, promote due diligence, and forewarn about specific threats as ways of reducing our vulnerability to foreign interference in the first place. In being preventative, it is the most strategic pillar to emphasise.

Improve the language-accessibility of government services and communication. Australia will work to ensure that critical services, such as Medicare, Centrelink, and MyGov, are more readily accessible in the languages of Australia's main migrant communities. We will ensure the same of public communications of the planned Government Communications Agency, ensuring it can harness multi-lingual as much as multi-media messaging to maximise the reach of its emergency or strategic communications.

Improve settlement support for migrants and refugees. Australia will continue to build on the Settlement Engagement and Transition Support (SETS) program as an effective model for long-term, comprehensive settlement support. However, we also plan to replace all Temporary Protection Visas with Permanent Protection Visas, which would automatically expand eligibility for the SETS Program. For the SETS program to continue delivering in that context, it will require a significant effort in the meantime to engage and prepare additional service contractors.

Elevate the role of the Australian Multicultural Council as a government-advisory body. The Government will more actively leverage the Council's advice, ensuring that policies across the areas of social cohesion, multicultural affairs, and immigration and citizenship are shaped by the Council's input in pro-active and consultative ways.

Establish a National Integrity Commission. Corruption corrodes both trust in democracy and democracy itself. In doing so, it weakens the glue that binds us symbolically and functionally as a society. It is therefore crucial that we establish a powerful, independent National Integrity Commission as a safeguard against corruption in the federal system.

Reform Australia's electoral finance system. To preserve the actual and perceived integrity of our political system, we will move to ban corporate donations and mandate real-time reporting. We will also increase the rate of AEC-determined election funding in order to make up for the fall in overall donations.

Prevent violent extremism. It is important that we tackle violent extremism as both a symptom and driver of social discord. Initiative 1.3.3 details the pro-active and preventative approach we plan to take (alongside our planned means of countering extremist violence when necessary).

Increase support for foreign language public broadcasting. Australia will increase funding to the ABC and SBS, supporting an expansion of their foreign-language news and entertainment programming.