30 July 2024 - Ms Amy Hawkins, First Assistant Secretary, Australian National Defense Strategy led a delegation to the Malaysian Institute of Defense and Security (MiDAS) warmly welcomed by Maj Gen Dato' Hj Ya'cob bin Hj Samiran, Chief Executive of MiDAS.

The Chief Executive of MiDAS was pleased to receive the courtesy call at his office, followed by a briefing session on the Australian Government's National Defense Strategy which was delivered by Ms Amy Hawkins.

In the roundtable talk, the sharing on strategic defence thinking pertaining to the Australian Defence Force was shared by the delegation.

The concept of whole-of-nation and whole-of-government is adopted when implementing their national strategic defence matters which is indeed successfully applied as coined from the delegation.

Interestingly, Australia is now increasing their defence budget to 2.6 percent of their GDP because of the application of whole-of-nation concept, whereby the elected members, seconded their motion to increase their defence budget because of uncertain geopolitical and the new challenge to their defence capability from other nations nowadays.

Ms Amy Hawkins also shared that talking to the people to understand why their national defence strategies as such also ease the resistance to not increasing the defence budget. The people know that by upscaling the capability and capacity of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the sovereignty of Australia is guaranteed.

In the end, the sharing by the delegate is immensely important for us to take up for better measures in promoting strategic defence thinking at various levels in our compound, of which can be at the national, government and societal approach.

#Constructive,Comprehensive,ComplementaryDefence
#MidasMalaysia
#MidasUpdate