In the years since the deployment to Afghanistan, Australia’s predicament has become increasingly challenging closer to home, and further abroad, as complex environmental and geopolitical security challenges overlap and become more acute. Australian policymakers should look to create an incentivised but voluntary scheme for national and community service to bolster national resilience. This chapter makes the case for such a scheme: an Australian universal scheme for national and community service. It argues that given the current threat environment and the frequency and scale of natural disasters, it would be imprudent for the Australian Defence Force to continue on a course that was appropriate in past decades.

In the introduction to his official history of British intelligence in the Second World War, Professor F.H. Hinsley says he has not attempted to cover the war in the Far East, ‘when this was so much the concern of the United States’. The United States, on the other hand, did not hesitate to publicise its signals intelligence victories over the Japanese. The nature of signals intelligence is such that a smaller country, like Australia, can and did make a difference. But because there has been no official history of Australian intelligence in the Second World War, Australia’s achievements have been largely overlooked and are only now beginning to receive recognition.