Dr. Troy Lee-Brown1, A/Prof Paul Maginn1
1University of Western Australia, Australia
Biography:
Dr. Troy Lee-Brown is a Research Fellow with UWA Defence & Security, with expertise in regional security, maritime security and international relations with a focus on the Indo-Pacific. A/Prof Paul Maginn is the Director of the UWA Public Policy Institute and co-ordinator of the Administration and Governance stream of the Masters of Public Policy at UWA.
Paul Maginn is Director of the UWA Public Policy Institute having previously been the Program Co-Ordinator of the BSc and Masters of Urban and Regional Planning (2007-2020) and the Master of Public Policy (Admin/Governance) (2022-2023). He is the co-editor/author of 10 books and 5 special issues in international journals. Paul’s research focuses on the intersection of people, place, policy and politics in areas including strategic spatial planning, Australian/global suburbanisms, the sex industry, multiculturalism and urban/housing policy.
Abstract:
With projects of national significance, governments and other entities, chiefly private sector corporations, seek and require social licence in order to legitimise their projects and practices. However, within the realms of national security questions abound as to whether social license is genuinely sought and earned, especially from local communities directly affected by proposals that are rhetorically framed as in the ‘interests of national security’, to protect national sovereignty, and/or when elected governments, irrespective of their political persuasion, assert that they have a mandate to make adopt national security policies and thus evade the norms of securing social licence for contentious proposals.
In recent times, some experts have contended that developing and maintaining a social licence for Australian nuclear- powered submarines under the recently signed AUKUS program between Australia, the US and the UK will underpin the initial and ongoing success of the program.
Drawing on a mix of textual data sources – policy documents, media statements by government officials/departments, and, media reporting on AUKUS, this paper seeks to make sense of the policy discourses and objectives in relation to: (i) the definition and meaning of social licence within the scholarly and policy literature at large; (ii) the framing of social licence by government; and, (iii) the nature and extent of social licence assumed and/or pursued by government. This research will also enable the building of a social licence model in which to apply associated quantitative and qualitative data in future stages of the research project.