The National Security College (NSC) at the Australian National University (ANU) has released a landmark report examining how the Australian public perceives national security, risk, and resilience. The report, part of a broader Community Consultations initiative, draws on three nationally representative surveys spanning November 2024, July 2025, and February 2026, collectively gathering responses from more than 20,000 Australians, as well as eight deliberative focus groups conducted in November 2025, stratified by life stage and gender. The research also incorporates more than 300 meetings, over 480 individual interviews, and 100 written public submissions gathered across more than 40 locations nationwide, making it one of the most comprehensive studies of public security attitudes ever undertaken in Australia. Companion reports cover direct community engagement findings and the perspectives of First Nations peoples in northern Australia, including the Torres Strait.

The report's central finding is that Australians are far from complacent about the risks facing their country. Worry about national security has climbed rapidly and consistently across all three survey waves, rising from 42% in November 2024, to 50% in July 2025, and reaching 64% by February 2026, an increase from a substantial minority to a near two-thirds majority in little more than a year. The proportion of respondents who "strongly agree" they are worried about national security more than doubled over the same period, from 10% to 23%. This shift has been especially pronounced among younger Australians: the 18–24 age cohort moved from 22% to 55% on this measure over just fifteen months, the sharpest change of any demographic group tracked. At the same time, the report notes that concern is unevenly distributed, concentrating more heavily among Australians aged 55 and older, regional and rural communities, lower socioeconomic groups, and the Australian-born, pointing to generational and geographic divergences that recur throughout the study.

Despite this rising anxiety, the report finds that Australians do not necessarily think in terms of "national security" as an abstract policy category. When asked to rank national priorities for the next five years, respondents placed "safe and peaceful communities" well above other options, chosen by 35% as a first preference, rising to 64% when second preferences were included. This far outpaced economic prosperity (26%), democratic rights and freedoms (23%), and the more abstract framing of "strengthening Australia's security" (15%). The authors interpret this as evidence that security policy gains greater public traction when framed around the continuity of everyday life rather than through traditional strategic or defence terminology, a conclusion reinforced by the companion Engagement Report based on direct community consultations.

A striking feature of the report is its finding that public threat perceptions are dominated by non-military concerns. Among fifteen threats rated in the July 2025 survey, the issues perceived as most serious over a ten-year horizon were AI-enabled attacks (77% rating them a major or moderate threat), severe economic crisis (75%), critical supply chain disruption (74%), disinformation (73%), and foreign interference in Australia's politics, government, economy, or society (72%). A subsequent survey conducted in the beginning of this year (2026), found similarly elevated concern about cyber threats (78%), violent extremism targeting specific communities (77%), a world order in which no rules constrain powerful states (73%), and terrorism (72%). Terrorism showed the single sharpest rise of any threat category across the study period, climbing from 55% in November 2024 to 59% in July 2025 and then to 72% by 2026, a shift the report links to the antisemitic attack in Bondi on 14 December 2025, described as the largest mass-casualty terrorist attack in Australia's history. Focus group discussions suggested that Australia's geographic isolation, its alliance with the United States, and the difficulty of imagining a conventional military attack have together kept public attention focused on more pervasive concerns: economic insecurity, cyber-enabled financial crime, algorithmic disinformation, the erosion of social cohesion, and climate change.

This does not mean Australians consider the prospect of war unthinkable. In the July 2025 survey, 68% of respondents considered it more likely than not that Australia would be involved in a military conflict with another country within five years, and most believed such a contingency would carry major (46%) or catastrophic (18%) consequences. A direct foreign military attack on Australian territory was rated the least likely of the fifteen threats surveyed, though still considered probable within five years by 45% of respondents, simultaneously being judged the threat with the highest potential impact: 79% believed such an attack would bring major or catastrophic consequences. This combination of low perceived likelihood but high perceived severity distinguishes direct attack from the broader, more probable threats that dominate everyday public concern.

The report devotes particular attention to what it terms "intersecting shocks." Across nearly every threat category other than direct military attack, more than two-thirds of respondents considered the risk more likely than not to materialise within five years. For six threats in particular: climate change impacts, AI-enabled attacks, disinformation, foreign interference, economic crisis, and critical supply disruption, the proportion considering the threat likely ranged between 85% and 89%. Severe economic crisis emerged as a threat of particular concern, combining very high perceived probability (85%) with substantial anticipated consequences (58% major, 18% catastrophic), leading the authors to flag how Australia might cope with an economic contingency occurring alongside other concurrent security shocks as a pivotal policy question.

A consistent and striking preparedness gap runs through the report. Across all fifteen threats surveyed, fewer than one in five respondents rated Australia as "very" or "fully" prepared. Confidence was lowest for AI-enabled attacks, at just 4%, and rarely exceeded 10% for most other threats. On two-thirds of the threats surveyed, more than half of respondents rated the nation as "not prepared at all" or only "slightly prepared."

Confidence was higher only for threats where Australia has recent lived experience, for example, pandemics, terrorism, and biosecurity incidents. Focus group participants drew a clear distinction here: they saw resilience in community spirit as strong, but resilience in institutional capability as inadequate and under-resourced.

The report also documents a deep communication and trust challenge. While security agencies were generally described in focus groups as credible and professional, politicians and media were more often viewed as exploiting security issues for political advantage. A majority of respondents (53%) in the July 2025 survey believed government shares too little (41%) or far too little (12%) information about security threats, with only 4% feeling over-informed. Focus groups revealed three distinct public postures toward disclosure: those who see transparency as fundamental to democratic accountability, those who worry that greater openness could cause public panic and thus prefer agencies to manage information carefully, and those with deep systemic distrust who believe government habitually obfuscates. The report notes that concern over disinformation, foreign interference, and AI-enabled attacks forms a closely related cluster in the public mind, with many focus group participants and consultation interviewees calling for media literacy education as a security countermeasure against a "polluted information ecosystem" they associate with polarisation and extremism.

A further significant finding concerns gender. Despite comparable underlying understanding, there is a large self-perception gap: 46% of men consider themselves knowledgeable about national security issues, compared with just 23% of women, and only 34% of all respondents said they would know where to find relevant information. The report attributes this gap not to any actual difference in competence, but to the historically exclusionary way in which national security has been framed and practised. Notably, women in the surveys tended to perceive security threats as more serious, more likely, and more consequential across multiple categories, including climate change, terrorism, AI-enabled attacks, economic crisis, natural disasters, and biosecurity risks, even as they underestimated their own expertise relative to men.

Finally, the report finds grounds for cautious optimism regarding civic responsibility. While younger and middle-aged Australians often reported feeling overwhelmed or powerless in the face of systemic threats, with some disengaging from news altogether as a coping mechanism, broader survey data suggests strong latent civic engagement. In the survey conducted in February of this year, after the Bondi attack, 71% of respondents agreed that "all Australians can do more to make our communities peaceful and safe," including 32% who agreed strongly, with only 8% disagreeing.

The NSC's findings show a public that is clear-eyed about the risks ahead. Australians see security threats as real, interconnected, and likely to intensify. They harbour serious doubts about the nation's preparedness to meet them. And despite pockets of disengagement, they remain broadly open to more information and greater civic participation.

Professor Rory Medcalf and Tim Wilford frame this as both a warning and an opening. They suggest that the Australian public is ready for a harder conversation about national security than policymakers may have assumed. The challenge now is whether government can meet that readiness with the transparency and clarity Australians are asking for.

The report's significance extends well beyond Australia's shores. As a close US ally and a key Indo-Pacific security partner, Australia's domestic threat perceptions offer a useful indicator for how democratic publics across the region are absorbing an increasingly volatile strategic environment, one shaped by intensifying US-China rivalry, grey-zone coercion, and disinformation campaigns that rarely respect national borders. For regional policymakers, the report's core finding that public anxiety is rising faster than public confidence in institutional preparedness carries an implicit warning: without sustained, credible communication, governments risk a widening gap between what citizens fear and what they believe their states can do about it.

More broadly, the report offers a useful comparative case for any democracy grappling with how to build public resilience against coercion, disinformation, and diffuse, intersecting security threats. Its emphasis on transparent, trust-building communication, rather than top-down messaging, is a lesson with clear relevance well beyond Australia's own borders.

Read the full report: https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience

Related reports:

Voices from across Australia: Community Consultations Engagement Report
A qualitative companion to the survey findings, drawing on nearly 500 interviews and group discussions across every state and territory, plus 100 written public submissions. It finds that Australians understand national security primarily through the lens of everyday life, reliable infrastructure, trusted institutions, and social cohesion rather than traditional threats like invasion or espionage.

First Nations' Perspectives on National Security
Authored by Pascale Taplin, the report captures the views of 63 First Nations participants from northern Australia and the Torres Strait. It finds that most of participants see national and community security as closely linked, and identifies sovereignty, land connection, border realities, and fragile trust in government as key themes shaping their attitudes.