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This project aims to determine what the concept of national security has meant to Australians since 1901, and how its meanings have changed over time. Rather than relying exclusively on the role of speeches, policy statements and crisis moments, it enhances our understanding of national security in the Australian setting by considering how broader popular understandings were formed and interacted with political and policy prescriptions. This history takes into account the roles of changing federal bureaucracies and agencies, and the practices of security. Outcomes of the project will benefit national security policy by better connecting the Canberra policy-making community with the security concerns of the broader Australian public.
This project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project 2021 grant (DP210102254).
Project team:
Project team:
David Lowe is a historian of modern international relations, and Australia's role therein. Ever since writing about Menzies's attempts to create a national security state in the early 1950s in Australia he has been keen explore the history of the idea of national security.
Carolyn Holbrook is an Associate Professor of History at Deakin University, with a particular interest in how historical insights can be applied for the benefit of contemporary society.
Mia Martin Hobbs is an ARC DECRA Fellow at Deakin University. She is a historian of war and conflict, presently working on a history of race, gender, and violence in the War on Terror.
Eckart Conze is a historian of modern and contemporary history at the University of Marburg. His research focuses on the history of security, and he is a founding member of the "Dynamics of Security" Collaborative Research Centre in Germany.
Publications and Media
Publications and Media
David Lowe, Carolyn Holbrook, and Mia Martin Hobbs, National Security in Australia: Identity, Authority and the State since 1901, forthcoming Anthem Press, 2027.
David Lowe, '"Total Defense" and "The Contest Over National Security"', Australian Policy and History, 14 October 2025.
Mia Martin Hobbs, 'Albert Palazzo on the ‘Big Fix’ for Australia’s national security', Australian Policy and History, 30 June 2025
Mia Martin Hobbs, David Lowe, and Carolyn Holbrook, 'The Rise of National Security in the 1930s: An Australian Case Study', Journal of Contemporary History 60:1 (2025): 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220094241303883
Mia Martin Hobbs, 'Imperial Nostalgia in Australian Defence Policy in the 21st Century', Journal of Australian Studies published online 6 January 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2024.2442414
Carolyn Holbrook, "'Chifley spells security': Tracing the Origins of Contemporary Australian Security Discourse', Australian Historian Studies 56:1 (2025): 6-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2024.2387533
Mia Martin Hobbs, “Calamity or Commodity? Conceptualizing Security in the Nuclear Debate in Fraser’s Australia”, History Australia, (April 2022): https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2022.2057339.
Mia Martin Hobbs, "'National security' once meant more than just conjuring up threats beyond our borders", The Conversation, 24 February 2022.
Presentations and Events
Presentations and Events
Professor David Lowe AUKUS Presentation.pdfDavid Lowe, 'On alliances, wars and frames through which Australians view the world'
Published conference paper from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, 2025
Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century
Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century
October 2023
For many countries, the first few decades of the twenty-first century were defined by the concept of ‘national security’. In the wake of 9/11, governments around the world developed new laws, structures, and institutions, in the name of ‘national security.’ Yet an increasingly interconnected world tested national identities, and exposed states and populations to new vulnerabilities. Following an earlier workshop on the origins of concept in the 1920s-30s, in this event we untangled the concept of ‘national security’ in the 21st century:
• Why was ‘national security’ selected by 21st century policymakers over other established concepts, such as ‘national interest’ and ‘national defence’?
• How was ‘national security’ deployed to play on emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and hope?
• How did new kinds of security threats - including climate change, digital technologies, and international terrorism - intersect with traditional security issues?
• How will recent developments, such as Russia’s war with Ukraine and tensions between the United States and China, affect academic security studies? Will these developments, questions of war and peace, lead back (or forward) to a more traditional understanding of security and security research?
Hosted by the ARC ‘A Conceptual History of National Security in Australia since 1901’ team in the Centre for Contemporary Histories at Deakin University, this workshop brought together visiting scholars from the Security History Network in Europe and Virginia Tech Center for Humanities with scholars across Australia working on security-related research.
Full program and slides from project team presentations available below.
20230912 Historicizing N in the C21 Workshop Program FINAL.pdfCarolyn Holbrook, 'The Anzac Legend and the War on Terror'
Presented at the Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century Workshop, October 2023
The Anzac legend became a quasi-religious symbol of Australian nationhood after the war. Following a malaise in the post-Second World War decades, the Anzac legend was revived in the 1980s, and with the demise of the First World War generation politicians stepped into the breach to become the Anzac legend’s ‘commemorators-in-chief’. That Australia’s premier national mythology is a warrior legend has provided the state with a rich vein of military-related rhetoric. Drawing on scholarship on the discursive function and rhetorical ideals of ‘national security’ in the post-war US, this paper examines the ways that the Australian state employed the discourse of Anzac in the transformed security environment of the War on Terror. I will examine particularly the Anzac centenary in 2015 and the elevation of Ben Roberts-Smith, VC as a contemporary embodiment of the Anzac idol.
The Anzac Legend and the War on Terror.pptxDavid Lowe, 'A Modern National Security State: the Canberra monster securing Australians from monsters'
Presented at the Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century Workshop, October 2023
This paper explores the accretion of powers in Canberra in the name of national security in the 21st century, focussing on the increasingly administrative means by which national security is defined and the growing disconnection between the Australian public and these definitions. The security apparatus built in Canberra has continued to expand without apparent boundaries, even as security advocates have urged holistic, joined-up approaches. The paper considers two significant consequences. One is the marginalisation of traditional sources of strength in interpreting international and transnational change, and the implications for Australia. The second is the administrative blurring of the traditionally-drawn contract between citizens’ rights and obligations on the one hand, and a nation-state’s role to protect its citizens, on the other.
Mia Martin Hobbs, 'National Security from slogan to satire in 21st century Australia'
Presented at Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century Workshop, October 2023
This paper explores the effects of government use of ‘national security’ on Australian culture. In 21st century Australia, the concept of ‘national security’ was largely associated with defence, espionage, and counter-terrorism. The growth of national security bureaucracy, legislation, and competing claims to security by political leaders was increasingly parodied by political satirists. Drawing on cartoons in mainstream newspapers as well as popular television shows, this paper shows that Australian satirists portrayed ‘national security’ as a nonsense slogan, ridiculing its use to project strength, add weight to political claims, silence critics, and create transparent illusions of public safety. These satirical sources mirror scholarly critiques of technostrategic discourse, securitisation, and security theatre.
End of Empire Workshop: Threats, Security, and Stress in the Australia-UK relationship
End of Empire Workshop: Threats, Security, and Stress in the Australia-UK relationship
June 2023
Recent events have revived longstanding questions about the nature and meaning of the Australian relationship with the United Kingdom. Brexit, AUKUS, the death of a long-reigning monarch, and renewed calls for a Republic have shone a light on our economic, military, historical and political ties with the UK. Meanwhile, the unfolding effects of globalisation, China’s economic rise, and the climate crisis underscore the importance of Australia’s position in the Asia-Pacific, with some suggesting that regional relationships should take precedence over historic links to the colonial parent.
Co-hosted by the History Council of Victoria and the Centre for Contemporary Histories, this workshop brought together visiting scholars from ‘Threatened Orders - Societies Under Stress’ with the National Security team at Deakin University to examine the ways in which stress, broadly applied, has manifested in the Australian-British relationship with the end of empire.
Our first panel focussed on Australia, Empire and the Pacific, with papers examining Australia’s role in (de)colonization, international development, and external politics in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific Islands. Our second panel examined environmental security and Australian identity, with papers exploring food production, drought, Australian settlement and placemaking, and expression of climate anxiety. Our final panel explored national identity, with papers investigating the position of formerly colonised subjects in Britain and Australia, the impact of Britain joining the European Union on Australia’s relationship to the UK, the Anzac resurgence, and imperial nostalgia in Australian defence policy.
Full program available below, and see a report from our German colleagues on HSozKult here.
20230608 End of Empire Workshop V2.pdfCH end of empire.pptxCarolyn Holbrook, 'Searching for 'homo Australicus': The New Nationalism and the Anzac Legend'
Presented at the End of Empire workshop, June 2023
The Anzac legend is Australia’s premier mythology of nationhood. It was conceived during the First World War, when soldiers from the newly formed Australian nation fought as part of the British Empire in Turkey, France, Belgium and the Middle East. The original version of the Anzac legend was deeply implicated with British imperialism; it sloughed off doubts about the racial degeneration of British stock infected by the ‘convict stain’ and celebrated the martial capacity of the Australian as a distinctive offshoot of the British race. The dissolution of the British empire and Britain’s turn towards Europe in the 1960s and 1970s undermined the imperial foundations of Australian national sentiment and eroded popular support for the Anzac legend. This paper examines how the Anzac legend defied predictions of its demise during the period of the New Nationalism and emerged transformed and restored as the centrepiece of Australian national iconography, where it remains to this day.
Mia Martin Hobbs, 'Imperial Nostalgia in Australian Defence Policy in the 21st Century'
Presented at the End of Empire workshop, June 2023
The announcement of the AUKUS agreement in 2021 intensified concerns about Australia’s relationship with the US and the possibility of being drawn into a war with China. Less attention has been paid to the UK-Australian relationship within the AUKUS framework. In this paper, I argue that imperial nostalgia serves to normalise the UK-Australian defence relationship in the 21st century, with both the UK and Australia drawing on their historic ties with the ‘lesser’ partner to counteract fears of US dominance and smooth over anxieties about working within an ‘Anglosphere’ in the Indo-Pacific.
Ideas and Concepts of National Security: Australia and Europe in Comparative Perspective
Ideas and Concepts of National Security: Australia and Europe in Comparative Perspective
December 2022
In December 2022, we traveled to Germany to co-convene a workshop with Eckart Conze, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Marburg. The workshop brought together scholars on security from Germany and other parts of the world, exploring the different historic uses of "national security" internationally.
Papers by the Australian team focussed on the interwar years. While US scholars have explored the intellectual and policy transition from 'defense' to 'national security' in the late 1930s and 1940s, they remain mostly within the boundaries of think-tanks and government circles. But the term was used in other countries, including Australia, during the 1930s, and it was deployed in a wide variety of ways. Our research demonstrates the need to go wider and deeper in locating of the origins of national security as it emerged between the two world wars.
From left to right: Carolyn Holbrook, Mia Martin Hobbs, Eckart Conze, David Lowe, David Ekbladh at the Herder Institute, Marburg
Presentations at Ideas and Concepts of National Security: Australia and Europe in Comparative Perspective, University of Marburg, December 2022.
David Lowe, 'Enacting National Security Law: Intelligence and Intransigence'
Carolyn Holbrook, 'Concepts of National Security in Australia during the Interwar Period: The National Insurance Debate'
Mia Martin Hobbs, 'Compound Threats: Themes and Uses of 'National Security' in Australia in the 1930s'
Carolyn Holbrook, 'National Security and Public Health - A History From Below'
Presented at Concepts of national security: Australian and international perspectives, 25 November 2020
Australian historians have found connections between national security and public health in programs like school hygiene, physical education and maternal health. These analyses are focussed on the state. This presentation argues that by understanding more clearly the uses of public health and national security that lie outside the power and apparatus of the state, we can better understand the popular well-springs of these concepts—and hence, their power to shift public opinion.
Australian Dilemmas: Then and Now - a forum on Australian Foreign Policy
Australian Dilemmas: Then and Now - a forum on Australian Foreign Policy
20th July 2022, Robert Menzies Institute and the University of Melbourne
After a day of discussion on the historical forces that shaped Australia's past and present standing in the world - including ideology, technology, international partnerships, and the environment - Professor David Lowe took part in the dinner panel with Geraldine Doogue, Greg Sheriden, and Maj Gen Mick Ryan to cast a look forward at the decisions Australians will need to make politically, culturally, and strategically to navigate the trials of a more volatile century.
Fulbright Fellow visit
Fulbright Fellow visit
July 2022
We were delighted to host Professor David Ekbladh (Tufts University) for a month this winter. Professor Ekbladh's forthcoming book, Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2022) reveals how new ideas developed by the international community in the interwar period shaped American thinking on the modern global order. Professor Ekbladh visited Deakin on a Fulbright fellowship, and through this collaboration we explored American/Australian understandings of national security in the 1930s.
New Interventions on the History of Australian National Security
New Interventions on the History of Australian National Security
Panel at the Australian Historical Association 2021 conference
Panel at the Australian Historical Association 2021 conference
2 December 2021
The concept of ‘national security’ has become particularly powerful since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The term has justified the establishment of a greatly expanded national security state in Australia and rafts of new legislation, all underpinned by political rhetoric that encourages us to be alert to imminent threat. This militarised mobilisation of the concept of ‘national security’ has been countered by appeals to expand the term to include environmental, social, economic, health and other threats to the security of the nation-state. These three papers seek to expand the parameters within which we understand the term ‘national security’, to alert us to the fact that the concept has a history of its own, and to begin the process of recording that history.
Paper 1: 'We Are Australians': Security Assessments of Soviet Children Applying to Return to Australia, 1956-61 - Ebony Nillson
Paper 2: 'The Security Situation Changes Everything': Empathy and Ideology in the US Reconstruction of Iraq - Mia Martin Hobbs
Paper 3: Towards a genealogy of Australian national security - David Lowe
Chair: Carolyn Holbrook
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