Australia
India-Australia relations: Positivity might be coming at a cost
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese probably didn’t realise when he stepped into a Hindu temple in Western Sydney last month for a routine photo op during the election campaign that…
Penny Wong dives deep into the audacity of the Oceanic Pacific
From the 1990s to the early 2000s, Oceanic writer and poet ‘Epeli Hau’ofa wrote of challenging the way the world (and even people of Oceania) often viewed Oceania with…
Timor-Leste, China and Australia, and the influence contest
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week concluded a Pacific tour – featuring some diplomatic gains and losses – with a 24-hour visit to Timor-Leste. The visit marks the island…
The Pyongyang problem for the Quad
North Korea at least waited until US President Joe Biden had left Asia before launching another volley of missiles to splash into the sea. American officials had braced for a…
Wong’s Bahasa pitch to Indonesia
Many years back while a journalist with The Age in Melbourne, I interviewed Marty Natalegawa, then Indonesia’s foreign minister. Natalegawa had studied at university in Canberra,…
A flare up in China’s deliberate pattern of aggression
It’s time to be alarmed not just alert. On Sunday, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles revealed a “very dangerous” intercept by a People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s …
Labor should create a “Regional Carbon Bank” for ASEAN and the Pacific
Much of the discussion about climate change policy in Australia has focused on the changes needed by the new Albanese Labor government to align Australia with international goals…
Economic diplomacy: New Labor ministers are facing up to old issues
Made in Australia
When incoming Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wanted to regenerate a tired Japanese government last year, he appointed an economic security minister to chart an…
Knowledge is power: A small investment for a big return
Amid regular expressions of concern about the growing influence of autocratic nations in Asia and strategic competition in the Pacific, Australia should look at investing more in…
Competing with China in the Pacific will backfire
Australia, Pacific Island countries, and their partners, are each considering how to respond to China’s push for a Pacific economic and security pact. Australia, for its part,…