Key points
- Australia is a highly attractive place to invest, with a sophisticated economy and strong institutions supported by an effective regulatory and governance framework.
- We are entering a very different economic era from the one we’ve known and Australia is not immune to global developments and disruption.
- If we want our economic prosperity to continue, we need to be ambitious and collaborative. Australia has a choice: innovate or stagnate.
Good morning and welcome to the 28th ASIC Annual Forum.
Thank you Uncle Tony, who's just left the room, for a very warm and, if I may say so, humorous Welcome to Country. It was very, very thoughtful.
I would also like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and their ongoing connection to and custodianship of the lands on which we meet today, and to pay my respects to elders past and present.
I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be present today.
There are too many distinguished guests here today to individually acknowledge everyone, but I do want to thank the many ASIC people who have made the Forum possible. I also want to acknowledge ASIC's Commissioners who are here today: Deputy Chair Sarah Court, Kate O’Rourke, Alan Kirkland, and Simone Constant.
And of course, a particular welcome to Mike Burgess, Director-General of Security for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO, who will officially launch today's program and is perfectly placed to speak to our Forum theme ‘Australia in a Dynamic World’.
At an event earlier this year, I said that we were living in ‘tumultuous times’ and indeed that feels even more the case today.
We are entering a very different economic era from the one that we've known. We face a more fragmented world order where trust has broken down between major powers and world trade policy uncertainty is at a record high[1]. The head of the International Monetary Fund recently warned the world to ‘buckle up’[2].
At the National Press Club last week, I spoke about the shifts occurring across global financial markets and increased competition for capital and investment. And how Australia must put in place the foundations and guardrails now for the markets we want in the future.
This includes public and private sector collaboration to accelerate innovation in our country.
Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and tokenisation are reshaping the financial services landscape, providing significant opportunity for business and investors.
But new technology also poses new challenges.
For example, in a tokenised world where capital moves instantly across borders and traditional gatekeepers are gone, what happens if something goes wrong?
And when quantum computing can decrypt algorithms, that once took 200 years to break, in a matter of minutes, how do we keep global payments and transactions secure[3]?
I said last week Australia has a choice: innovate or stagnate.
While I was talking about our financial markets, this is a choice that applies to a whole range of issues that will ensure Australia maintains a strategic place in the world.
And that's why we're here today and tomorrow. To explore what that choice looks like in practice. How it applies to so much that is important to what we all do every day.
As we engage in these discussions during the coming days, it's worth remembering our starting point.
Australia is a highly attractive place to invest. We're regarded as a sophisticated economy with strong institutions and a stable rule of law, supported by an effective regulatory and governance framework.
This means we're in a better starting position than most, but it doesn't make us immune from global developments and disruption.
If we want our economic prosperity to continue, we need to be ambitious and collaborative in our thinking and our approach. We need to seize opportunities before us.
Of course, we have to be mindful of risks that undermine confidence - whether they relate to conduct, capital, economic cycles, geopolitical instability, or trade.
There will always be risk, there will always be disruption, and somewhere there will always be a crisis.
This is the premise of Robert Kaplan's recent book, Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis[4]. Kaplan argues that today's interconnected world will cause even more conflict writing that, ‘Isolation is the past: full immersion in a chaotic world is the inevitable future’.
Geography has been shrunk by technology, he says. But we're not defeated by technology - however, the world is now smaller and, in his words, ‘more anxious, more claustrophobic, more interconnected than ever before’[5].
Australia is not immune.
Our first speaker today is someone who knows this well.
It's my very great pleasure to introduce him: Director-General of Security for ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess.
[Audience applause]
I haven't finished yet… I’ve got to say some nice things about him first.
Before being appointed as Director-General in 2019, Mr Burgess spent the better part of three decades code making and code breaking, working across cyber security, counter-terrorism and counter-espionage.
This work has taken him from the Defence Signals Directorate - now the Australian Signals Directorate - to Chief Information Security Officer at Telstra, to work as an independent cyber security consultant, and then back to the ASD.
In last week's Lowy Lecture, he addressed some of the possible risks and disruptors to Australia's continued strength, stability and prosperity. Today, he will be expanding on that by highlighting the current risks in Australia and abroad, and what they mean for business and what businesses can do to help mitigate these risks.
This promises to be a dynamic opening to two days of what I hope will be followed by lively discussion. In Mr Burgess's words when he was out doing some unpaid advertising for today's address: ‘Strap in!’
[1] Yeaman, Luke. Fasten your seatbelt: making sense of the new economic era, Global Economics and Markets Research, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 23 October 2025, Fasten your seatbelt: making sense of a new economic era
[2] Stewart, Heather. IMF chief warns ‘uncertainty is the new normal’ in global economy, The Guardian, 9 October 2025, IMF chief warns ‘uncertainty is the new normal’ in global economy | International Monetary Fund (IMF) | The Guardian
[3] Eyers, James. Bullock warns of scary quantum computing threat, Australian Financial Review, 24 October 2025, Michele Bullock: RBA governor warns banks about quantum computing data threat
[4] Kaplan, R (2025). Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis. Hurst Publishers (UK) and Random House (US).
[5] Kaplan, Robert. A New US Grand Strategy: A World in Permanent Crisis, interview by James Lindsay, Council on Foreign Relations, 11 February 2025, A New U.S. Grand Strategy: A World in Permanent Crisis, With Robert Kaplan | Council on Foreign Relations
