National

'Missing line of defence': RSL head sounds alarm

By Catherine Bouris

Oct 12, 2026

The RSL will weigh into Australia's preparedness for disruption which "is a veterans' issue". -AAP Image

Australia's "missing line of defence", someone empowered to ensure the nation is ready to deal with serious disruption, will be brought into focus by RSL president Peter Tinley.

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Mr Tinley will address the National Press Club on Monday to call for analysis on the issue to be translated into action.

"If Australia is seriously disrupted tomorrow, in a way that reaches our communications, financial system and our public confidence at the same time, there is no single person in the Commonwealth whose job it is to make sure we are ready," Mr Tinley will say.

"Not because anyone has failed. Because the duty of coordination does not exist. This is the missing line of defence. It is a duty nobody holds."

Mr Tinley will outline the three measures in the RSL's national preparedness framework: an act that makes preparing the nation a continuing legal duty, an independent commission to determine which resilience measures are worth the money, and a government adviser whose role it will be to determine whether the country is ready or not.

Pre-empting potential criticisms about his organisation stepping outside its lane, he will argue that national preparedness is a veterans' issue.

"This is the lane. It always has been," he will say.

"How well this country prepares itself is a veterans' issue, because veterans and their families are among the people who pay when it does not."

Acknowledging the work that has been done across sectors in producing analysis, the RSL leader will call for that to be turned into action.

"What we do not have is a standing national function that turns those judgements into preparation, exercises and accountability," he will say.

"A strategy does not become a capability simply because it has been published."

He will credit the government for its National Defence Strategy, released in April, which allocated the work of national preparedness logically while also demonstrating the precise challenge his organisation is seeking to address.

The RSL will also advise the government to ask states and territories to enter into a National Preparedness Compact to collaborate on exercises, planning and reporting.

"I have no anxiety at all about how Australians will behave when the time comes. That is not what worries me. What worries me is what we will have ready for them when they do," Mr Tinley will say.