Australia in the World

Dr Richard Grant is Executive Director of the Asia:NZ Foundation. He was previously New Zealand\'s Ambassador to Germany and to France, and High Commissioner to the UK and to Singapore. Readers of The Economist of 18 February would have seen the reference to the similar size

Before the \'What people think I do\' meme completely exhausts itself, here are the Gillard and Rudd versions, courtesy of the SMH\'s The Pulse

The US is hastening out of two wars and rethinking its defence interests in Asia, while Australia realigns the alliance and moves more military might to the north and west of the continent. With all that in flux, two ex-Defence Secretaries, Ric Smith and Allan Hawke, are well placed to produce one

Before the political firestorm consumes every ounce of oxygen in Canberra, let\'s consider Kevin Rudd\'s foreign policy performance. As Foreign Minister, his work rate was prodigious. The ambition nearly as high. The self-confidence and the sense of conviction never flagged. The intensity was

Well, Sam is absolutely right, of course, to say that a key issue was not addressed either by the published \'Overview\' of the Government\'s Intelligence Review, or by my op-ed about it: do we spend too much on intelligence overall?  It is an important question, because it is quite

On the top tier of Defence Department reports, where White Papers reside, there are also a few reviews that reshape the way Defence thinks, plans and builds. Defence does reviews by the dozens. Those that rise to the level of lasting blueprint are rare. The canny pair of warhorses, Ric Smith and

Last week I blogged about how I had been misrepresented by China\'s Global Times newspaper. So it was fascinating and pleasing to see this follow-up article yesterday, written by the junior Global Times editor who had handled the original story. One observer suggests this apology is quite a

\'There you are, sir. Will that be cash or credit?\' (Photo by Flickr user Royal Australian Navy.) For some, the international aid program should be a matter of pure altruism, driven solely by the development objectives of poor countries. Commercial objectives, furthering the interests of

The Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community is thin gruel. A hungry critique of the report prepared by Robert Cornall and Rufus Black would be that it tastes more like an insider\'s review than an independent inquiry. Yes, complaints about the food value of the

Papua New Guinea has just paid an economic price for its political instability, with Standard and Poor\'s downgrading its credit rating from B- to B-. The short-lived military mutiny created headlines around the world. It was enough to convince the ratings agency that there was now increased

Yesterday\'s military mutiny in Papua New Guinea ended peacefully, with no civil unrest or loss of life. The mutiny, carried out by retired Colonel Yaura Sasa, was instigated by Sir Michael Somare\'s camp in an attempt to have Somare re-installed as Prime Minister. The

Henry Ergas has a sensible rebuttal in today\'s Australian of last week\'s piece by Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith arguing that a nuclear-propelled submarine option would erode Australia\'s defence self-reliance. Ergas points out, quite rightly, that the criteria of defence self-

Stephen Grenville seems to have misunderstood the purpose of my post on American and Chinese power and the Gillard Government\'s \'Asian Century\' White Paper. I certainly did not intend to downplay Asia\'s importance. Even further from my mind was reopening what John Howard aptly calls

ASPI\'s analysts have compared the cost of the future submarine project to the planned National Broadband Network (NBN). The NBN debate has been public and vociferous. The Government and Opposition\'s dueling policies are detailed and their champions conduct near-constant briefings to all who will

Andrew Shearer represents a long tradition in Australian diplomacy, of viewing Asia through the prism of our relationship with the US. No serious commentator is suggesting that Australia should focus on Asia to the exclusion (or even downgrading) of our US relationship; everyone agrees that keeping

Of course it\'s good to see the Foreign Minister deliver his \'wake up to Indonesia\' call to Australian businesses to seize the opportunities in Southeast Asia\'s fastest growing economy. But while the Minister is urging businesses to act, his Department\'s Travel Advisory is telling them not to

In the links last week I highlighted a survey of US international relations (IR) scholars. One question particularly leapt out: \'Which of the following best describes your approach to the study of IR?\'. While a colleague has noted that you\'ll never hear the word \'constructivism\' inside the

Dr Khalid Koser is Head of the New Issues in Security Program at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and a non-resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. While I\'m pleased that the lunchtime talk I delivered last week at the Lowy Institute has been cited in the past few days, I deeply

John Ballard, a Visiting Fellow at ANU, writes: Andrew Farran isn\'t aware of the fact that PNG, unlike almost all other post-colonial regimes, produced a home-grown constitution. The Constitutional Planning Committee and first Somare Government worked on this over a period of two-and-

Three reader ripostes on our uranium debate. Below, Jasmin Craufurd-Hill and Michael Angwin. But first, Peter Burnett: Lowy Institute staff seem to get very defensive when people criticise their role, as in the recent policy debate over nuclear issues (a similar trait was

We\'ve been getting inquiries from the media and the political world about yesterday\'s presentation by Dr Khalid Koser on Australia\'s unauthorised boat arrival problem, and for good reason. You can listen to the full presentation here. Koser is a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute 

John Carlson is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute and the former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office. One of the objections to supplying uranium to India is that it will free up India\'s own uranium for its nuclear weapons program. This argument is