Australia in the World

For almost 20 years, I have been working for, and on behalf of, the Australian government in the Pacific. And, like many of my Pacific Islander friends and colleagues, I was not shocked by the Solomon Islands security pact with China and the apparent blindsiding of Australia. Nick Warner, the former

There was barely concealed panic in Australia when news broke that China had struck a security agreement with Solomon Islands. What if this is really a basing deal that allows China to station military aircraft or warships permanently? Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s emphatic denial on

Make or break Trade matters haven’t made much of an impact in Australia’s election campaign, not surprisingly overshadowed by Solomon Islands in the foreign affairs debate and now interest rate rises in the domestic debate. The Labor Opposition stepped up the rhetoric at its campaign launch

Energy security has been a global issue for some time, but only recently has it struck Australians as a day-to-day problem. Price hikes at the bowser and the shortage of AdBlue for diesel engines that preceded its fivefold price increase are constant reminders that energy security is not just the

Solomon Islands has signed a security pact with China and set off a flurry of foreign policy chatter in Australia and the region. Understandably, the focus of the discussion is on why this has happened, what this means, what to do next, and of course, because Australia is in the midst of an election

Australia’s election campaign has been consumed by the Solomon-China security pact in recent days. Labor has cried “Pacific stuff up”, mocking the Coalition government’s Pacific Step-up policy to strengthen neighbourhood ties. In turn, the Coalition has seized on past comments about foreign

The Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (AIECTA) signed on 2 April marks a first for India in terms of liberalisation of “substantially all” trade and timeline of negotiations. India has often been blamed for prolonging trade negotiations with its rigid stance on tariff

Canberra is significantly boosting the cyber capabilities of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) – the government agency responsible for signals intelligence, support to military operations, cyber warfare and information security. Project Redspice, announced in March, will increase ASD’s

Prime Minister Scott Morrison might have officially fired the starter’s pistol for Australia’s election campaign on Sunday, but the ritual belies reality. This race has been underway for months. Indeed, democracies across the world hear a common complaint that vote-conscious politicians never

Australia is home to more than 1.2 million Chinese-Australians, some five per cent of the Australian population. Their experiences are as diverse as their views: many were born in Australia, with lineages that span generations of Australian history. Others have migrated more recently from China,

Maritime scholars and practitioners often wrestle with the question of what a “desirable” architecture for maritime security should be, and how must it be properly implemented? The issue is complex, because although security is best delivered in collective and cooperative settings, there is

The 2022 federal budget was handed down on Tuesday night, and it appeared mostly bad news for Australian foreign policy. Amid all the talk of an international order deteriorating before our very eyes, government will reduce spending on diplomacy and overseas aid by as much as 19 per cent in the

The revelation in the past 24 hours about a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Honiara and Beijing regarding security related issues has sparked international headlines and worried response from Canberra. Australia’s Defence Minister Peter Dutton has said “we would be concerned

In The Interpreter last month, Bec Strating and Joanne Wallis weighed into the debate about Australia’s “strategic personality” and how it should change to respond more effectively to the security challenges the country now faces. If Canberra’s policymakers wanted a personality to

There can be little doubt that the conduct of Australian trade policy will become more complex and challenging for the foreseeable future. Two trends are salient. First, with the deterioration in global geopolitical circumstances, trade policy and foreign and strategic policy have increasingly

Moscow’s latest invasion of Ukraine has turned Vladimir Putin’s Russia into a pariah state, essentially overnight, and seen the country saddled with an unprecedented international sanction regime. The long-term implications of freezing cooperation and dialogue with Russia are significant –

The declaration of a national emergency in response to unprecedented flooding in eastern Australia, and the deployment of 7,000 Australian Defence Force troops across the states of New South Wales and Queensland, has reignited debate in the community about how Australia should best respond to more

Like it or not, the Australian cricket team are some of the nation’s most conspicuous representatives on the world stage. And right now, both the women’s and men’s teams have the opportunity to achieve historic successes. That’s good news for Australian soft power. Australia’s cricket

With the postwar global order facing its most profound set of challenges in almost 80 years, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has highlighted  the importance of “using all the elements of statecraft to shape the world we want to see”. Labor’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, appears

At the heart of a feminist approach to foreign policy is a commitment to non-violence. Not because the framework is unmoored from the realities of the world we live in, but because a feminist approach does not simply accept the world as it finds it, but rather seeks to unpack the drivers of the

My grandfather Kopel Harkowitz was born in Lismore, which is experiencing the worst floods in more than a century. In 1880, when the last big wet hit the Northern Rivers, his father, (my great grandfather) Israel Harkowitz, was proprietor of the Lismore General Store and fortunately also had a

Australia’s focus on building the India relationship has led to the relative neglect of other important Indian Ocean states. This has left a hole in its Indo Pacific strategy. Last month, Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced a raft of new Australian initiatives in the northeast Indian Ocean

“If you’ve looked on the TV into Vladimir Putin’s eyes – he is one tough son of a gun and I don’t think that he cares about what we think.” Such was the verdict by one Australian federal MP. But this wasn’t in reaction to news in recent hours about Russian troops swarming across

Wooing the neighbours The Morrison government has committed almost $700 million to new non-Covid initiatives in Southeast Asia over the past two years, seeking to rebuild regional ties largely in response to uncertainty about China. While that spending wasn’t specifically aimed at boosting