Australia
Economic diplomacy: Nation building at home and abroad
Broader security
Australia’s ministers for home affairs and their immigration or border protection predecessors in recent years have tended to be associated with rhetoric about…
The right tools for a coherent regional response to forced migration
It has been five years since 700,000 Rohingya – half of them children – were driven from their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, in what the US government has deemed genocide…
Why engaging Asia matters even more
The political philosopher Edmund Burke once observed that society was a contract across generations linking the past, present and future. Something similar can be said about…
Should democracies ever lie?
Should liberal democracies ever tell lies?
That’s one of the questions raised by reports that Facebook and Twitter have recently taken down a web of accounts, originating in…
Penny Wong on “30 minutes with the PM” and Australia’s global interest
Foreign Minister Penny Wong was asked last week about the new Interpreter series “30 minutes with the PM”, which has invited some of the less well-known ambassadors and high…
Norway’s 30 minutes with the PM
Did you know Norway and Australia share a land border? Well, technically it’s not a recognised border, of the formally demarcated variety. Nor is the ground all that solid. Frozen…
Economic diplomacy: No free lunches for national security
Phones or thrones
Here’s an interesting context for considering whether the Australian government struck the right balance in development aid last year by spending more money…
There must be a better way: Australia’s diplomatic appointments
It’s strange that it takes controversy around a sub-national trade envoy to drive public scrutiny of Australia’s diplomatic appointments. While former politicians and advisers…
PNG’s troubled election should be a wake-up call for Australia
It has been a difficult election period for Papua New Guinea. Outbreaks of violence in the nation’s capital Port Moresby and other parts of the country have disrupted voting and…
US abortion bans unleash state-sanctioned violence against women
The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade has unleashed a frenzy of misogynistic lawmaking, with abortion bans now enacted or soon to be enacted in more than half US…