The opposition Australian Labor Party’s promise to establish a dedicated military research agency—akin to DARPA in the United States—will simply spawn bureaucratic red tape and struggle to deliver actual results, according to defence industry expert Lincoln Parker.
On April 28, shadow ministers from the centre-left Labor party pledged to establish a brand-new agency within the Department of Defence, if elected, to fund “pivotal research in breakthrough technologies for national security.”
The Advanced Strategic Research Agency (ASRA) would be geared towards working alongside the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United Kingdom’s newly established Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).
DARPA has been credited with innovations such as unmanned anti-submarines, sixth generation jet fighter technology, the internet, GPS, Siri, and is now working on hypersonic weapons.
Brendan O’Connor, the shadow defence minister, and Matt Keogh, the shadow minister for defence industry, said ASRA would be a “premier avenue” for linking small and medium businesses, universities, and AUKUS countries.
It is unclear how Labor’s proposal will differ from the government’s existing military research and development group, Defence Science and Technology (DST).
Lincoln Parker, chair of the Liberal Party’s Defence and National Security Policy Branch who has worked in the defence industry for 20 years, said Labor’s proposal lacked detail and had “no plan, no budget, and no strategy” on how it would overcome existing hurdles in government research.
“Any government agency is going to be hamstrung before it has already begun,” he told The Epoch Times in an email. “Bureaucracy, government procedure, processes (e.g., red tape), and an institutional aversion to any risk are the impediments Australia faces today to being truly successful.”
Parker said existing private defence groupings were already delivering results and a new government entity would not offer anything different.
“For instance, the entire New South Wales Defence Innovation Network team (where Parker currently works) consists of about four people in total, and we deliver world-leading defence innovation capabilities to both Australia and especially the U.S. military,” he said.
“Try doing that within government. Multiply the headcount and budget by 100 and you’d still not deliver capability into the hands of the war fighter or industry as fast as we have,” he added.
Parker said governments would be better off putting funding into the existing private defence industry rather than promise “the world but deliver an atlas.”
Democratic governments have, in recent years, attempted to replicate the success of DARPA. Germany has its Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND), Japan has its Moonshot R&D, and Canada just announced a CA$1 billion (US$780 million) investment over the next five years into its own science innovation network.
