For states to interfere in other states domestic affairs is nothing new. But hostile authoritarian powers are weaponizing political, economic and societal freedoms to suborn a democracy’s security, prosperity, and institutions, that poses an existential threat. Adversaries are using grey-zone, asymmetric and hybrid activities with the intent of undermining the democratic way of life. They are intent on manipulating electoral outcomes and public discourse to constrain sovereign decision-making. They leverage covert elite capture and overt economic coercion against smaller economies. Subterfuge, subversion and sabotage are proliferating as tools of authoritarian statecraft. Canada and Australia are disproportionately vulnerable: they are conventional middle powers whose membership among the Five Eyes security community, geostrategic importance, deeply diverse diaspora communities and wealth in natural resources makes them a high-value target. Their comparability notwithstanding, Australia and Canada have responded quite differently to foreign interference, to very different effect. Using a most-similar systems design, their comparison lends itself to a quasi-natural experiment in the variation of policy responses to common national security threats.

Join Dr Christian Leuprecht (Queen's University Canada) as he discusses Canadian and Australian approaches to countering foreign interference with commentary from Dr Dominique Dalla Pozza from ANU College of Law. Chaired by Professor Donald Rothwell FAAL.