Australia’s first Statement on Space concedes that the country depends on orbital systems it does not control, then answers that vulnerability with supply chains, launch pads and procurement terms. The blunter question — who has the power to switch those systems off — is still waiting for a policy language to describe it.
In June, a room of lawyers, regulators, defence officials and scholars gathered in Sydney for the 2nd Australia Space Law and Policy Conference. Over a day of discussions, there was one worry that kept surfacing: Australia is vulnerable in space, yet space remains largely absent from its political discourse. Weeks later, on 21 July, the Albanese government released its first ever Statement on Space. The Statement, however, responds to a security concern largely in the register of industrial policy.
It points to how Australia comes to take an unfamiliar security issue seriously. Security vulnerabilities are recognised, then translated into the either industrial and economic policy. Questions regarding sovereign capability effectively become questions of supply chains, commercial development and economic resilience.
Who Holds the Switch?
Over the past century, one of the most influential innovations, in both everyday life and the defence sector, has been the GPS satellite system. For Australia, satellites have also become a vital to its key economic sectors, including mining, shipping and fishing. Currently, no country is self-sufficient in orbit, and Australia less so than most. The central concern today is defining the threshold between manageable strategic reliance and unacceptable dependency. Reliance becomes unacceptable at the point where a capability can be switched off by someone else and Australia has no means to prevent it.
The question does not stop at allied states. While dozens of companies now operate imaging satellites, the market is concentrated; a small number of firms, led by North American providers, hold most of the high-resolution capability and the major government and defence contracts. When the hand on the switch belongs to a company rather than a government, the problem cannot be resolved through alliances or treaties. Instead, it migrates into procurement terms and corporate discretion, where no obvious forum exists. Here the Statement’s ambitions cut against themselves. Deeper integration into global supply chains is an unambiguous economic good, yet it is precisely what multiplies the number of hands near the switch.
The Paradox of Securitisation in Australian Politics
In security studies, securitisation describes the process by which an issue is moved out of the domain of ordinary politics, framed through the discourse of security, and presented as a matter of national survival.
Historically, Australian defence planning treated space through a predominantly administrative or technical lens. It was not until the 2020 Defence Strategic Update that a major shift occurred, formally acknowledging space as a contested operational domain vital to the Australian Defence Force’s operational effectiveness, backed by an AUD $7 billion commitment. Yet as several panellists at the Space Law and Policy Conference observed, this institutional recognition has not translated into broader political prioritisation or adequate public resourcing. Space security continues to struggle for traction in political discourse and remains, as one panel put it, structurally under-invested and taken for granted.
The gap between institutional recognition and public understanding is where the difficulty lies. In democratic politics, securitisation succeeds not simply because officials assert it, but when a broader audience accepts the claim, and that acceptance depends on recognising the danger being described. Without a widely understood experience of space-based disruption, these vulnerabilities remain relatively abstract to the Australian public. There has been no sustained loss of positioning services, no destroyed satellite, no orbital incident that ordinary Australians have experienced as disruption in their daily lives.
The concern, then, is not that space is insufficiently securitised at the institutional level. It is the direction securitisation takes once it enters public politics. Some practitioners, in the conference panel ‘Space Security: Australia and Regional Stability For the Indo-Pacific’, argued for securitising space precisely as a resourcing strategy, a way of lifting it above the ordinary competition for funding. Yet securitisation, once carried to its conclusion, can concentrate decision-making and narrow deliberation, raising legitimate concerns for democratic governance. The paradox is that public consent is required in order to place something beyond the reach of public consent.
What the Statement Chose
Read against this, the Statement illustrates the translation at work.
The Statement calls for an enduring space ecosystem that supports Australia’s economic prosperity and security, and the introduction concedes that this is not only a growth story. Its five focus areas, nonetheless, are commercially oriented, designed to contribute to the productivity, resilience and security of the national economy. Throughout, security appears largely as ‘economic security’, or as a justification for the significance of the space industry.
For example, in Focus Area 1, Trusted Space Services, where the Statement discusses reducing reliance on externally controlled systems in areas where continuity and operational assurance matter most. This is precisely the off-switch problem raised in June. But the Statement renders it as the language of sovereign space services securing trusted supply chains. The vulnerability is a security one, whereas the response is a procurement one.
When the June conference highlighted Australia’s under-estimated geopolitical importance in the Indo-Pacific, the Statement answered with the aim of making the country the region’s preferred destination for launch and return. The Statement’s disclaimer makes the separation explicit, noting that it “complements, but remains distinct from ongoing work… by Australia’s national security, defence, intelligence and law enforcement agencies”. The security conversation is acknowledged, then referred elsewhere.
Beyond the National Emergency
None of this argues that Australia should securitise space to the point of declaring an emergency. It is worth being clear about what that would purchase. Securitised domains can be less transparent and prone to narrowing who gets to decide, layering a democratic problem on top of a strategic one.
The policy question is therefore how Australia can reduce strategically consequential dependencies without pursuing unrealistic self-sufficiency. Two measured paths emerged from the conference, both addressing who holds the switch.
The first is regulatory reform. Where regulation obstructs sovereign capability rather than protecting it, it should be eased. Building domestic capacity in launch, manufacturing and ground infrastructure is one practical way of ensuring Australia retains some control over the capabilities it relies on. Although the Statement describes Australia’s regulatory setting as streamlined and stable, the conference still pressed the case for reform, and the tension is visible within the government’s own documents: the Statement of Expectations issued alongside it directs the Space Agency to accelerate approvals and modernise regulation.
The second concerns the human element. Practitioners named people as the primary vulnerability, and workforce capability recurred throughout the discussions. Australia’s geography is clearly an advantage. As the Statement noted, its “large landmass, southern hemisphere location, clear skies and low-density operating environments… can support access to a range of launch options, overland testing opportunities and mission operations”, moreover, Australia’s research base is strong and globally competitive. But the people who understand, operate and oversee space systems, are the ones whose hands Australia needs on the switch. Educational resources, training and compliance, and interdisciplinary research spanning space engineering, cybersecurity, business, international law and security studies are what sustain a capable next generation and build the resilience that self-sufficiency alone cannot.
Australia’s deficit, on this reading, is not simply one of capability, but also one that is discursive. Australia has the assets but lacks the policy language to connect what it knows about security to the instruments it builds in response. The government will consult on the specific actions under the Statement before releasing them later this year. That interval is a rare opening in which the vocabulary is still being written, and it would be well spent asking who holds the switch.
Yuting (Alina) He is a doctoral researcher in the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. Her doctoral research investigates how livestreaming transforms global security knowledge, practices and power, and the role of (non)human actors in the process of securitisation. Before Sydney, she completed her MPhil at the University of Cambridge, researching gender and digital diplomatic practices. She has contributed to debates on gender, technology and critical approaches to global politics, both within and beyond academia. She was the WIIS-A delegate to the 2nd Australia Space Law and Policy Conference.
This blog is part of a joint series between AIIA and WIIS-A, which aims to elevate the work of female and gender-diverse individuals in the field of international affairs.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
