Dr Brendan Walker-Munro

On 5 November, Australia’s Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong announced in a joint press statement with the Indian Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar that the Australian National University (ANU) had been awarded a grant to lead a project under the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technologies Partnership (AICCTP). Co-leader of the grant is InKlude Labs in Bengaluru. Researchers involved in the work also come from the Takshashila Institution, Social Cyber Institute, Arizona State University, Southern Cross University, Blended Learning International and RMIT University.
This project promotes rigorous ethical approaches to technology assessments of critical emerging technologies that impact peace and stability. It seeks to strengthen consensus among key stakeholders in Australia and India regarding the importance of a process for technology assessments that can be undertaken jointly with each other. Such activity would represent an important diplomatic innovation in bilateral relations for addressing the challenges posed by rapid technological advances and the evolving geopolitical landscape. The project aims to create a self-organising community of practice (CoP) inclusive of both countries, ensuring its sustainability after the project's conclusion and potentially extending its influence on a wider multilateral scale. To support these goals, the project will create an open-access curriculum for the professional education of government officials and stakeholders responsible for assessing critical and emerging technologies. Delivered over a year, the project is led by a multi-disciplinary team of senior researchers and professional educators from Australia and India who have expertise in technology, industry, economics, geopolitics, and public policy. This initiative is funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) as part of the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technologies Partnership (AICCTP). For more information, videos and written product, see https://www.socialcyber.co/australia-india-tech-assessments.

This report summarises and compares Commonwealth and state and territory definitions of ‘act of terrorism’ and ‘terrorist act’. The report also lists many laws that rely on these definitions. This report was commissioned by the INSLM Office and prepared by Brendan Walker-Munro (Southern Cross University). This report was prepared in April 2025 and laws may have changed after this report was prepared.

The Perth USAsia Centre’s IndoPacific Analysis Briefs seek to provide perceptive and contemporary insights from across the region. The series features leading analysts from Asia, Australia and the US to deliver up-to-the-minute assessments on issues of national and regional importance. This series will shine a light on the issues that remain critically important to Australia and the Indo-Pacific at a time when global events may otherwise dominate the news cycle.

The AUKUS deal could be something of a poisoned chalice for the university and higher education research sector in Australia and more broadly, the Indo-Pacific. On the one hand, the country has been given a huge opportunity to undertake more research into disruptive and emerging technologies that AUKUS forecasts, like quantum computing and sensing, hypersonics, cryptography, autonomous weapons – the list is long and attractive. At the same time, engagement with these research fields brings universities into more frequent and closer contact with the government and its intelligence services, military, and law enforcement agencies – often to the discomfort of both sides.

Since 2018, the Australian Government has made serious strides in countering espionage and foreign interference, including introducing policy and legislative reforms aimed at protecting the research and university sector. That was necessary. Foreign states have actively targeted Australia’s research ecosystem—seeking to influence research agendas, extract sensitive information and exploit institutional vulnerabilities. However, the threat landscape hasn’t remained static. It has evolved—and rapidly.

Seven years on, adversaries are no longer simply stealing data or cultivating informal relationships. Today, we’re seeing deliberate efforts to insert malicious insiders, target researchers through transnational repression, exploit data and cyber vulnerabilities, and manipulate legal frameworks through lawfare. Those methods are more sophisticated, more targeted and more integrated than ever before. Responding to them requires more than a continuation of current practice—it demands a fundamental shift in mindset. Security must now be built on persistent adaptation and shared responsibility, not one-off compliance measures.

On 15-16 February 2023, the Netherlands and Korean governments co-hosted a summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military (REAIM) in The Hague. Attracting over 1800 attendees, the Summit was the first of its kind in terms of scale, scope and ambition. Against the background of a decade of slow-moving debates in Geneva, the REAIM Summit seemed to send two signals: First, the current international and multidisciplinary attention on autonomy used in defence technology may need to be turned to the broader issue of AI in the military. Second, that the Group of Government Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems CCW GGE on LAWS), meeting under the auspices of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons since 2017, may be on its last legs.