August Speaker - John Blackburn, AO

John is a higly respected expert on National Resilience and is highly sought after for the quality of his analysis and critical commentary.    This little appreciated aspect of National Security challenges is now at the forefront of the National Security and Defence dialogue, and is critical to the success of a Whole of Nation approach to meet the future risks to Australia's Security as articulated in the DSR.    

• JB served a total of 43 years in the RAAF finishing his full time career as the Deputy Chief in 2008 before working as a Reservist for Geoff Brown on RAAF Plan Jericho, for Mel Hupfeld (then Head Force Design Design) on Integrated Air and Missile Defence and finally for Peter Quinn (then Head Force Integration) on Plan Aurora, the failed attempt to take Plan Jericho joint.
• In the 15 years since he was DCAF, JB worked as a Defence and National Security consultant in his own company, spent four years on the ASPI Council, was Chair of the Kokoda Foundation, Deputy Chair of the Williams Foundation, was a co-founder of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group with ADM Chris Barrie, Neil Greet and Ian Dunlop, and co-founder of the Institute for Integrated Economic Research - Australia, which he now chairs.
• For the past four years JB has led a National Resilience Project which has seen around 250 domain experts participate in a series of workshops and reports which led to the publication of the report titled “Australia - A Complacent Nation, our reactions are too little, too late and too short sighted.”