Australia
Behrouz Boochani: Still in limbo
Although Behrouz Boochani has never set foot on the Australian mainland, his is a familiar name in the country, a link to the men on Manus Island subject to Australia’s offshore…
Shock therapy: why Australia needs a political jolt
In recent years, the world has witnessed a number of “black swan” events – surprises with massive implications for the particular countries involved and also the international…
Stepping up in the Pacific at the expense of Pakistani women and girls
Since coming into office in 2013, the Coalition has cut aid by 17% in nominal terms and 27% adjusting for inflation. More cuts are in the pipeline, and by 2021 aid will have been…
When our security makes the neighbours feel vulnerable
As every university student learns in their first-year international relations course, there is no global cop, no enforcer to make sure every country plays by the rules. It’s…
China, media freedom in the Pacific, and the great Australian silence
The refusal of the Vanuatu government to allow high-profile Vanuatu-based journalist to fly home on Saturday has given a sharper edge to concerns about a wider trend of attacks on…
Book review: The chance to actually change the climate
Book Review: Ross Garnaut, Superpower: Australia’s Low-Carbon Opportunity, La Trobe University Press, 2019)
If anyone in Australia deserves the somewhat overused epithets of …
Australia and immigration: Lessons from Reagan’s 1986 US amnesty law
Last week, as the world’s attention fixed on the United States Capitol and the presidential impeachment inquiry, across the road in the US Supreme Court, another hugely…
Surviving hell
I grew up in Kerala, southern India, where the monsoons are born. Reared on an island in the middle of Ashtamudi Lake, I was surrounded by water. A family of fishermen and women,…
Chart of the week: Australia’s “fear and greed” with China
When then–Prime Minister Tony Abbott was asked by Angela Merkel about Australia’s relations with China, he summed it up, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, in two words: “Fear and greed”…
In conversation: Weak parties, hollow politics, and democratic danger
This is an edited and abridged transcript of the launch of Sam Roggeveen’s new Lowy Institute Paper Our Very Own Brexit, held last week at the National Gallery of Victoria in…