Australia’s sovereignty debate can sometimes get tied up in knots. Sovereignty does not mean isolated self-sufficiency. Rather, it means preserving our strategic options and our agency to make decisions in our national interest.
That might best be done by building our own capabilities and making our own plans, by working with partners, or some combination of both. Whatever the right mix, the government needs to build public confidence – especially in uncertain times – by being clear about the tradeoffs.
The world is navigating a shifting global order marked by intensifying strategic competition and the growing use of force and coercion. In his spotlight discussion at the 2026 ASPI Defence Conference, Hugh Jeffrey, deputy secretary for strategy, policy and industry, described a global rules-based order that respects sovereignty not as a naive idea but as critical to Australia’s interests. Among other things, it gives smaller states agency.
He further argued that a ‘holistic approach’ to national power was needed to protect sovereignty and that ‘rules without power is a pipe dream’.
Often, the definition of sovereignty is unclear. But sessions throughout the conference presented broad agreement that the sovereignty we seek is political sovereignty. Jeffrey articulated it as ‘the choice our leaders have to make in the best interests of the people who elected them’. Industry voices reaffirmed that the aim of sovereign industry was to give our prime minister and deputy prime minister ‘sovereignty over decision making,’ as put by Matt Opie, the chief executive of Defence SA, during the panel Industrial Resilience and Australia’s Freedom to Act. These statements define sovereignty as the ability to make decisions in our best interests, but they assume that Australia has the agency to do so. Overall, speakers measured sovereignty by the agency of our elected leaders to make effective decisions in our best interests.
Australia’s current debate assumes that agency to exercise sovereignty can change. As Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles put it in his keynote, ‘the decisions we make… will either increase sovereignty or decrease it’. Admiral David Johnston, then chief of the defence force, argued in his special address that ‘we are a nation with agency’, and Marles, Jeffrey and Johnston independently argued that good defence strategy can expand that space and build agency. It’s here that the ongoing strategic debate on how to build power while not increasing dependence comes to the fore.
Confusing the debate is the conflation of sovereignty and degrees of autarky. Sovereignty is the end we seek; agency is the effect necessary for our leaders to exercise that sovereignty. Military self-reliance through partnership is one way with which we build that agency. Jeffrey succinctly said ‘what we want is sovereignty with real choices… and so self-reliance is the way.’ The conversation should shed the conceptualisation that ‘sovereign anything’ implies that indigenous autarky is necessary. In reality, agency is built by calibrated degrees of control in prioritised areas, integrated across all arms of national power. Military self-reliance is just one mode.
Johnston and Jeffrey championed the idea that alliances improve Australia’s agency. Current debates around AUKUS rightly question what is being compromised and for what gain but unfortunately often land as a critique of partnerships. Jeffrey rejected the idea that alliances infringe on sovereignty, saying that isolationist policy was ‘sovereignty in a desert’. Instead, he measured sovereignty by the yardstick of ‘real choices’ and argued that ‘alliances and partners expand that space’ by acting as a force multiplier. In this framing, it is clear to see how Australia’s focus on building alliances and strategic partnerships, from our nearest neighbour in Papua New Guinea to the far end of the globe in Europe, is increasing Australia’s power and strategic options.
During the panel on industrial resilience and Australia’s freedom to act, Steven Thorpe, managing director at national security support company OMNI Executive, further posed the question, ‘What is it that we truly want to control in a time of need?’ This goes to the heart of the current debate over industry policy, resilience, and dependence on the United States. In response, analysts have tried to assess the impact of dependence, risk and benefits associated with each alliance, capability investment and force posture decision. While the 2026 Defence Strategy and accompanying strategic documents outline sovereign priorities and self-reliance, they don’t specify how degrees of independence are calibrated. Greater clarity on what informs the government’s assessment of the impact on Australian sovereignty could improve public trust and informed debate.
Treating sovereignty, defined as independent political agency, as an end in itself provides a useful lens for Australia’s strategic decision making. By looking at it in this way, we see that Australia, as a smaller power, benefits from an international order that respects sovereignty. But that order is increasingly unstable, and Australia will need to invest consciously in its own sovereignty. Public confidence could improve through clearer government communication on the calculations being made to maintain and strengthen Australia’s agency.
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