Papers, articles and speeches
Michael's published work and speeches since leaving the Australian Border Force, and selected addresses as Commissioner. Full texts are provided where the material is his own; Commissioner-era speeches link to the official record.
Papers and published writing
Beyond the Checkpoint: Managing Australia's Border as a Strategic Economic and National Security Asset
Australia's border is more than a line of defence: it is a strategic national asset that underpins sovereignty, economic wellbeing and international connection. This peer-reviewed paper argues that as economic and national security converge at the border, Australia must treat it as a sovereign capability — modernising governance, systems and partnerships through a federated, AI-enabled architecture that delivers both assurance and throughput. It sets out nine recommendations, including a National Border Strategy, an Expert Advisory Board, a National Border Visibility Platform and annual border resilience exercises.
Modern Border Management: Leveraging AI Systems for Strategic Advantage
Border management is at an inflection point: the fragmentation of the global order is expanding the border mandate just as AI systems become capable of handling complexity at scale. Traditional inspection-and-declaration models cannot meet demands that now span security, trade facilitation, regulatory compliance, hybrid-threat detection and economic security. The paper shows how AI-enabled, federated systems can tighten the border "OODA loop" — building real-time value-chain maps, orchestrating risk across jurisdictions, and enabling coordinated action between agencies and trusted private actors without compromising sovereignty.
I ran Border Force. This is what Taylor's migration plan needs to work
The migration debate rewards announcements, but the distance between an announcement and operational reality is where border and migration initiatives come unstuck. Drawing on Operation Sovereign Borders, the NZYQ decision and the history of section 501 cancellations, the piece argues that policy, law and the systems that deliver them must be designed together — and tests the Opposition's screening and enforcement proposals against that standard. Only migration policy designed for the system that has to deliver it will survive contact with it.
Speeches since leaving the ABF
Beyond the Platform: Engineering Trust Across Digital and Physical Systems
Opening with the ANU's No Worries? survey — public concern about national security rising from 42 to 64 per cent in fifteen months, with cyber, scams and AI-enabled attacks at the top — this keynote treats the border as a trust-and-safety platform of a different kind. It asks whether the old bargain between security and friction, or safety and growth, still holds, and argues that digital architecture can break the trade-off: shared visibility, verifiable trust and regulatory-grade AI across physical and digital systems.
Enhancing Port–Defence Partnerships for Regional Resilience
Chaired the conference session with Vice Admiral Matt Buckley, Chief of Navy, and Geraint Evans, CEO of the UK Major Ports Group, on how Australia's ports and the Royal Australian Navy can build the trust, preparedness and partnership needed for regional resilience — balancing the dual demands of security and the continued operation of the supply chains the region depends on, in light of the 2026 National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program.
The Global Trade Briefing
Trade policy has become statecraft and compliance has moved from the shop floor to the boardroom. Tariffs, sanctions and export controls are routine instruments of national power; forced-labour bans, carbon border adjustment, due-diligence law and digital product passports are fusing the trade and human-rights agendas. The common question underneath all of it: can you prove what your product is, where it came from, and who touched it? The answer is digital, verifiable trust — and the same infrastructure that satisfies these regimes is the infrastructure that defeats illicit trade. Ethical trade is becoming the licence to trade.
The Expanding Crypto Nexus in National Security and Financial Crime
Illicit crypto flows reached a record US$158 billion in 2025, and Australian crypto entities processed A$71 billion in the year to February 2026. Starting with the human cost — trafficked scam-centre workers in Southeast Asia and their Australian victims — the address traces how crypto has layered a faster, cheaper settlement layer over long-standing laundering channels into Australia, and why the seam between what can be seen on-chain and what police, customs and border agencies see off-chain is where the next breakthrough, or failure, will come.
Adaptive Policy for Adaptive Systems
Policy frameworks built for a world of relative stability are now trying to govern complex, adaptive systems — and the gap between policy intent and operational reality shows up in what the system can't see, what it can see but can't act on at scale, and what it isn't designed to recognise. Using the border as the case study, the keynote makes the case for rules-as-code, policy simulation and "digital policy twins", so that policy is tested before it is deployed into systems that can no longer afford to learn by failure.
Beyond the Checkpoint: Borders as Strategic National Assets
Delivered a month after the ANU paper was published, this keynote sets out the strategic context — deglobalisation, US–China competition, weaponised supply chains and converging state and criminal threats — and what it means for border technology. It argues for a border that is digital by design, federated in architecture, AI-enabled in operation and trusted by the public, and challenges government, vendors and operators to seize the window before Brisbane 2032 as Australia did before Sydney 2000.
Value Chains as the New Trade Intelligence
Joined Altana's annual summit of trade, government and technology leaders in New York, alongside former US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and executives from Maersk, UPS and Kuehne+Nagel. On the panel moderated by Scott Friedman, Altana's VP Government Affairs and a former DHS Assistant Secretary, discussed how multi-tier value-chain visibility is becoming the new trade intelligence for governments and businesses navigating tariffs, sanctions and supply-chain risk.
Insurance, Fraud and Organised Crime at the Border
Delivered two days after stepping down as Commissioner, this address examines the intersection of insurance fraud, border management and transnational organised crime. Drawing on cases including the "spirits in, beer out" duty-refund carousel fraud, it argues that siloed working is no longer sustainable and proposes five actions: map knowledge and data ready for AI, remove legislative barriers to sharing, build on existing cross-sector coordination centres, create a global industry centre, and confront the trusted-insider threat.
As Commissioner of the Australian Border Force
The border as a strategic asset: a valedictory
A valedictory address closing 44 years in policing, national security and border management — from the miners' strikes and the Baltic Exchange bombing to MH17 and the pandemic. Two themes: why Australia must treat its border as a strategic and economic asset and invest in it accordingly, and why teams, technology and culture will decide whether the ABF can meet rising demands with finite resources. "The border is not a distant line that only matters to a select few. It is a living, breathing system that touches every aspect of our lives."
Maritime Strategy Perspectives
Nearly a trillion dollars in two-way trade crosses Australia's border each year and 99 per cent of international data traffic travels by subsea cable — civil maritime security is vital to every Australian. The speech surveys the strategic picture and poses three questions for the decade ahead: whether civil maritime security needs a different strategic approach, whether its planning, governance and funding architecture is fit for purpose, and whether the operating model of the last 20 years can serve the next 20.
Navigating Today's VUCA Environment — The Australian Border Force Experience
A personal account of crisis leadership across a 44-year career — the 1980s miners' strikes, the 1992 Baltic Exchange bombing, the MH17 response in Ukraine and closing then reopening Australia's border during the pandemic — with four observations: every crisis is novel, every crisis is about people, speed of tailored response matters, and the multi-dimensional "polycrisis" demands new thinking. It closes on readiness for AI: assembling data, preparing people and reinforcing trust now.
Investing in the Border as a Strategic Asset
"I want to change the way that you think, and the way that governments think, about international borders." Australia's border adds up to nearly a trillion dollars a year in revenue, visitor spending and trade, yet critical systems were dated and paper-based, 200 regulations and 145 systems across 29 agencies cost $431 million a year in duplication alone, and Australia's trading-across-borders ranking had fallen from 25th to 106th. The speech set out the ABF's three-pillar vision — a trusted trans-Tasman trade lane, digitalisation and partnership — and called for border revenue to be reinvested in border modernisation. Reported on the front page of The Australian the following day.