We exist to further the cause of Australia's national preparedness, come crisis or conflict.
Between 2024 and 2026, the Australian National University's National Security College asked more than 20,000 Australians how ready the country is for the decade ahead. It ran through fifteen different threats, from floods and fuel shocks to cyber attacks and foreign powers. The answer was the same for every one of them. Fewer than one in five felt prepared.
A flood cuts the one road into town, and within days the shelves are bare. The country can't make enough diesel fuel, so the nation's farmers wait on ships that might not be coming. We don't fix these problems by waiting for trouble to arrive, but by building the foundation now.
Countries such as Sweden, Finland and Taiwan treat defence as the work of a whole society, not the armed forces alone. Australia has no national body responsible for that wider preparedness. The forces and emergency services each do their job; nobody's job is to make sure the country as a whole is ready.
The Essington Institute does that work, at three levels.
We catalyse the plans, stockpiles and coordination a country needs to keep running under pressure, ahead of any mandate to do so. Decisions made and rehearsed before the crisis arrives, and the will to hold to them once it does rather than improvise.
We bring Australia's sovereign manufacturers together as one system government can call on at scale. We help them war-game their operations for disruption, prove their equipment with real operators, and send them abroad to learn from countries doing this work under fire.
We build the practical preparedness of ordinary families and communities in the calm, so it's there in the emergency. It is what separates a hard week from a disaster when the shelves empty.
If that work is yours, whether in government, in industry, or in the community that has to hold together when things go wrong, we'd like to hear from you.
We launch publicly in 2026. Register and you will hear about it first, including our delegation to Ukraine and the first of our household guides.