Australian Perspective

Acting Director for the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program, Annmaree O’Keeffe, spoke at the Club de Madrid’s Asia Pacific Forum held in Tahiti on July 7 2012. Her address looked at the increased level of aid being invested in the Pacific and asked the question whether this was a competition

Executive Director Michael Wesley's keynote speech to the Griffith University-Peking University Australia-China Emerging Leaders Dialogue Canberra, 23 May 2012

Final submissions in Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Inquiry into Australia's overseas representation were published by the Committee on 8 May 2012.  In their final submissions, Alex Oliver and Fergus Hanson answer further questions from

Research Fellows Fergus Hanson and Alex Oliver, together with Andrew Shearer as co-author of the 2011 report Diplomatic Disrepair: Rebuilding Australia’s international policy infrastructure, appeared on Friday 17 February 2012 at the hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs

In an opinion piece in The Australian, Anthony Bubalo, Program Director West Asia, writes that any US military confrontation with Iran in the Gulf would quickly underline the need for Australia to view its ties in the region in a similar way.The Australian, 1 February 2012, p. 10

In an opinion piece in The Jakarta Globe, Lowy Institute Visiting Fellow Hugh White writes on the role of the Australia-US alliance in the Asian Century.Jakarta Globe, 21 February 2012 

In an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald, Dr Dave McRae, Research Fellow in the East Asia program at the Lowy Institute, writes that the Australian government must signal its opposition to all executions in Indonesia, even when it is unpopular at home.Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March 2012, p.

In an opinion piece in The Australian Financial Review, Lowy Institute Professorial Fellow Warwick McKibbin writes that the Australian government must act to reduce the carbon price or face the economic fallout.Australian Financial Review, 7 March 2012, p. 63

The application of the death penalty by Australia's Southeast Asian neighbours recurrently strains bilateral relations.  Lowy Institute Research Fellow Dr Dave McRae examines Indonesia's stance on the death penalty and the prospects for abolition in Australia's key regional neighbour. 

In this article for the website China-US Focus, the Lowy Institute’s Rory Medcalf takes a sceptical look at claims that President Obama’s visit to Australia was part of a strategy to 'contain' China’s rise. Click here to access the full article

In a post on Cogitasia, a leading blog hosted by the US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr Malcolm Cook (Dean of International Studies at Flinders University) and the Institute’s Director of Studies Andrew Shearer highlight how and why the progressive Asia policy

On the day of US President Barack Obama’s visit to Darwin, Australia in November 2011, Andrew Shearer writes in the Wall Street Journal about the Obama/Gillard announcement of plans to base US marines in Darwin, and examines the controversy surrounding this significant expansion of America’s

In this opinion piece in The Australian, the Lowy Institute's Rory Medcalf argues that Australia has an opportunity to work closely with the United States as it makes a three-fold strategic pivot: from the Middle East to Asia, from an Asia-Pacific to an Indo-Pacific concept, and towards more

In an opinion piece in The Age, Lowy Institute Visiting Fellow Hugh White writes that young Australians in their thousands should be sent to Asia to learn the languages.The Age, 8 November 2011, p. 13

In an opinion piece in The Age, Lowy Institute Visiting Fellow Hugh White writes that Australia's big mining companies need to take a stand on geopolitical hazards.The Age, 25 October 2011, p. 11

On Tuesday 11 October 2011, as part of the Lowy Institute's Distinguished Speaker Series, Mr Peter Baxter, Director General of AusAID, discussed Australia's aid program and the critical role of development aid in an increasingly interconnected global community. Mr Baxter answered the critics of the

In this op-ed in The Australian, the Lowy Institute’s Rory Medcalf, convener of the Australia-India Roundtable, teams with leading Indian foreign policy commentator Raja Mohan to propose a way forward in Australia-India relations. Australia should sell uranium to India and India needs to get

In an opinion piece in The Australian, Lowy Institute Research Associate Ashley Townshend and Shashank Joshi, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London, write that the Varyag, China's first aircraft carrier, is on a course to national pride.The Australian, 6 September 2011,

Thursday 1st September marks a major milestone in Australia’s foreign policy history: it is 60 years since the signing of the historic ANZUS security treaty at the height of the Cold War. To mark this major event, the Lowy Institute for International Policy is hosting a range of events and

Alex Sloan interviewed Andrew Shearer in Canberra on the state of Australia's diplomatic network, following yesterday's release of Diplomatic Disrepair: rebuilding Australia's international policy infrastructure. Andrew argues that more than two decades of neglect of the Department of Foreign

This comprehensive 2011 study revisits the influential 2009 Lowy Institute report Australia’s Diplomatic Deficit, and warns that Australia’s chronically underfunded and overstretched overseas diplomatic network risks Australia’s global security and standing. Despite some positive developments

With ANZUS nearing its 60th anniversary, Andrew Shearer addressed the current debate about how Australia should respond to shifting power in Asia and the future of the alliance in a more uncertain world at the Lowy Lecture Series on 17 August 2011

This report, commissioned by Qantas, examines the major strategic, economic and social trends that will shape Asia over the next decades. It describes three major trends: a profound realignment in the relationship between societies’ size and wealth; a deepening integration between Asia’s sub-

At the Lowy Lecture Series on 20 July, a high-level panel, with Sandy Hollway AO, Jack De Groot and Rowan Callick, considered how well Australia's aid program is placed to respond to evolving development challenges. Annmaree O'Keeffe, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute, chaired the discussion