Patrick Durrant | Sydney

The inaugural Women and National Security Conference, hosted by the National Security College at the Australian National University, took place in Canberra this week.

The conference addressed many themes, including the importance of enhancing women’s participation and leadership in national security-related policy and decision making, implementation and practice.

“One thing I've learnt is that prejudice does not survive personal connection.”

The event brought together participants from the breadth of the national security communities in government, private sector, academia, the diplomatic corps and NGOs  both local  and overseas and some of the keynote speakers included the Minister for Defence Senator Marise Payne, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Senator Penny Wong, and Secretary of the Department of Foreign affiars and Trade Frances Adamson.

“No matter where I go or what I do, in this role I meet the most amazing women in national security,” Minister Payne said.

Adamson said that having two female ministers in the National Security Committee was “not good enough”; similarly she found it unsatisfactory there had never been a female head of mission in either London, Washington DC, Tokyo or Jakarta.

 Senator Wong said action to combat the “clubby character” of the “intelligence cloisters” needed to happen quickly and added, “One thing I've learnt is that prejudice does not survive personal connection”.

  Chief of Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin put it simply when he said that diversity improves capability. He declined to say when there would be a female service chief for the first time but hinted that Navy was at the forefront of the gender diversity challenge. He also noted that realistically the cultural change required within the ADF was a long term program and said that warfighting experience was still critical to senior leadership roles.

“If you force it you risk failure,” he said. “Generational change takes a generation, but we will get there.”

At the conference, Minister Payne announced the creation of the Minister for Defence Visiting Fellowship in Women, Peace and Security at UNSW Canberra, located at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

“This honorary Fellowship will provide teaching, research and mentoring to UNSW Canberra in order to transfer knowledge and where appropriate, practice into mainstream academic courses,” she said.

Minister Payne intended the Fellowship to fast-track the incorporation of Defence's learning from various deployments into the Academy's civil and military education and training programs; it would also transfer the latest research findings of the university's Faculty back into Defence for refinements into deployable capability.

“The objective is to make the whole of Defence approach to Women, Peace and Security a ‘business as usual’ capability enhancer.”

  The Fellowship will be open to Defence civilian and military applicants with further details to be released in due course.