Contestability at 25: Hugh White & Justin Bassi on ASPI's founding and Australia’s strategic future

This Saturday marks ASPI's 25th birthday – the date the institute began operations in 2001. To mark it, STW is joined by Hugh White, ASPI's founding executive director, and Justin Bassi, its current executive director, for an in-depth conversation about how the institute came to be and what it's for.Hugh recalls the establishment of ASPI by the Howard government – including a fateful plane trip with Howard's first defence minister Ian McLachlan – and a first few weeks that turned out rather differently from what he was expecting. He discusses ASPI's early impact and the experience of publicly challenging the 2003 Iraq invasion to which Howard had committed Australian troops.Hugh and Justin discuss how a think tank should balance the issues of the day against the over-the-horizon questions no one is asking yet, in traditional defence and in emerging areas such as critical technologies. They talk about how deep into the fundamentals of strategic policy a think tank should probe, the importance of challenging orthodoxy, and the US alliance, AUKUS and the state of Australia's strategic policy debate. Despite their different views of the world, their evident respect for one another shows that healthy, robust debate is very much possible in 2026.For more on the bipartisan commitment to contestability, look out for a piece this weekend jointly authored by John Howard and Kim Beazley.