Australian policymakers occasionally describe Australia as a "middle power": a middle-ranking state, whose policy tends to favour multilateralism, liberal values, and a rules-based international order. Australian security policy, however, is basically geopolitical and realist in character. As a state, Australia has always looked to a geopolitically "great and powerful friend," in order to obtain necessary assistance in terms of defending Australian territory. Until the fall of Singapore, in 1942, when a substantial British military contingent, which included Australian soldiers, capitulated to the Japanese, that powerful friend was the United Kingdom. The latter country is still relatively important for Australia, but from the early 1950s onwards, the real "powerful friend" has been the United States. The Australian military alliance with the United States is codified in the ANZUS Treaty, from 1951. The defence doctrines that have dominated Australian security policy have also been based on geopolitical assumptions. Historically, Australian doctrine can essentially be divided into two models: the doctrine of Forward Defence, which governed Australian strategic thought from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, and the Defence of Australia doctrine, which has been the dominant paradigm from the mid-1970s onwards (with some exceptions during the Howard government, 1996- 2007). The basic thrust of the Forward Defence doctrine was to contribute to the international operations performed by the United Kingdom, and later the United States, in areas and regions quite distant from the Australian continent. The Defence of Australia doctrine shifted the focus of Australian security and defence policy to a defensive posture based on the direct defence of the Australian continent and its adjacent sea and air space. This has also entailed a defence force that was supposed to be able to defend Australia on its own, in a self-reliant way. The current centre-right coalition under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which gained power after the 2013 elections, might, however, alter Australian policy in a rather substantial way, likely in a return to some form of a Forward Defence policy. A new White Paper, which will present the Abbott government's defence and security policy, will be published during the autumn of 2015, but its contours are already discernible. In brief, the Abbott policies contain: 1) an even stronger alliance with the United States, including an increasing military integration with US forces in all relevant areas, and a firm belief in US extended deterrence capability; 2) a certain dismissal of the Defence of Australia doctrine and the concept of self-reliance; 3) a closer defence and security policy relationship with Japan, including the possibility of a major purchase of Japanese submarines; 4) a view of China as both a potential severe threat and the major trading partner. The Abbott government, however, will most likely consider that the strategic and geopolitical dimensions of this view are more important than the economic dimension; 5) a clearly changed view of Russia; that country is now indisputably regarded as an increasing threat, and is considered, along with China to be a "revisionist power"; 6) a relation to NATO, through the Enhanced Opportunities Programme (EOP), which it considers to be important, although primarily as an issue of interoperability; 7) a goal of increasing the defence budget to 2% of GDP over a ten-year period. From a Swedish perspective, several of the security and defence policy issues that used to be very different in Sweden and Australia, respectively, are now highly similar. These regard the size and structure of their defence establishments, their development of threat perceptions, the dependence, in military terms, on the United States, and their common membership of NATO's Enhanced Opportunities Program. Also, since Australia is a relatively like-minded country in a region of increasing interest for Sweden, from a Swedish perspective it is important to keep track of Australia's developments in the security and defence fields.