The Australia Institute’s Allan Behm, another former senior defence official, is among those who think ASPI has strayed far from its original mandate. Howard’s aim, he says, was to create “a freestanding and independent commentator on mainstream national defence issues” that would hold defence officials like him accountable. It would make sure their advice “was subject to appropriate scrutiny by other people who knew as much as we did or indeed knew better than we did.”

White, who is now emeritus professor of strategic studies at ANU, believes a founding principle of the institute — that there should be no “ASPI view” — has also been eroded. Over time, the institute developed a single, hardline view on how Australia should respond to the biggest foreign policy and strategic challenge for a long time, the rise of China.

“Very little of what ASPI has published, except some material on its blog, has seriously contested what you might call the Canberra orthodoxy on those big questions,” White tells me. “And that’s a failure of ASPI to fulfil its true function.”

“Maybe that’s unfair,” he adds after a pause. “Where ASPI has criticised the prevailing orthodoxy and government policy it has criticised it solely on the grounds it hasn’t gone far enough.”