Australia in the World

Bob Hawke’s approach to Asia when prime minister is oft overshadowed by the economic and social policy reforms of his government and the Keating years that followed. This likely reflects Australia’s economically focused political dialogue and the lack of rhetorical architecture surrounding his

Watch enough sport in Australia and the so-called “Americanisation” of culture is readily apparent. In Australian rules football, where contract arrangements increasingly follow the example of US sports, commentators often slip from referring to resting players on the bench or the pine to being

To start, I think it’s pretty likely that Labor will win on Saturday, meaning a change of government in Australia. So my comments will be based on that assumption. In broad terms, a Labor government is not going to present any major challenges to the US alliance and its central role in

For American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, the test of a great intellect was the ability to “hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” By this measure, Australian foreign policy has been very smart for decades. Australian leaders have long used a duality to describe and guide our

The Pacific has undergone a foreign policy renaissance of sorts, with politicians and policymakers falling over themselves to proclaim their commitment to the region and its vital importance to Australia. Leaders of both major parties have been increasingly speaking about the region, while starting

The Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor has noted the absence of China discussion in Australia’s current election campaign, a state of affairs which prompted his colleague Sam Roggeveen to observe that “Bipartisanship on China is becoming a form of collusion”. Given that the

To mark Mother’s Day on Sunday, The Interpreter invited contributors to write about their mothers who shaped world politics or were shaped by it. Too often the “immigration debate” focuses on numbers, questions of infrastructure and congestion, and at its worst a sense of threat to “

Governments in Australia are judged, in part, by their handling of the relationship with China. And while foreign policy has barely featured in Australia’s election campaign, the Chinese government is watching our election with interest and intent. An early release of this year’s Lowy

Are the boats back? Once again a reliable fear of “uncontrolled” immigration has been invoked in an Australian federal election. This time current Prime Minister Scott Morrison has framed “border control” as a question of “congestion-busting” in major cities – and instead of the usual

Adaptation to climate change was for a long time considered as an abstract issue for the future, something that would need to be worked out later by someone else. Adaptation, in short, is a process of preparing to live with a changing climate where most of our definitions of typical weather and

This week, diplomats from Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will gather in Malaysia for the 31st ASEAN-Australian Forum. Even with the Australian government so keenly focused on the upcoming federal election, the meeting is an opportunity to discuss ASEAN’s role in tackling

The Lowy Institute collects valuable data on how Australians view Asia, but equally important is how Asians see Australia, even if at times it makes for uncomfortable reading. Australia’s future depends crucially on the decisions Asians make: for example, on where to study, visit, live, buy and

In an odd quirk of timing, this year Australia and India’s elections will run in parallel. On 11 April, Scott Morrison made the trip to Canberra’s Government House and the official campaign finally began. On the same day, Indian voters began to go to the polls in the first of seven phases of

In the darkest days of John Howard’s pre-Lazarus life, before the triple by-pass and successful political resurrection, one of the many ways he was disparaged as being unfit to be prime minister was the argument that he simply did not have the presence or the bearing to represent Australia

On a cool May afternoon in Canberra seven years ago, then foreign minister Bob Carr was hot with indignation about the case of Julian Assange. The family and supporters of the Wikileaks founder had complained long and loud that Australia was not doing enough to help one of its citizens facing legal

Investment: smaller is bigger There was a time when Asian investment in Australia was all about getting access to scarce resources and if Australia really punched above its weight in regional affairs, it was due to its lucky endowment of iron ore, coal and gas. The debate about how we best exert

The fall of the so-called ISIS caliphate and resultant outflow of fighters’ families into temporary refugee camps highlights the plight of Australian women and their children who are seeking to return to Australia. In many cases the children have been born overseas to Australian mothers who

Picture this. At 68.5 million people, it’s the 23rd largest population on earth. There is no healthcare system. Going to school is often illegal. There is no social welfare. Its people have no democratic representation. Many are malnourished, poorly housed and have little access to basic

One country town, two people. One of them a hero who added to the legacy of the uncomplicated stoicism and selflessness that Australians popularly associate with “the bush”, and the other someone who betrayed it. Last week two people from the small Riverland town of Loxton in South Australia (

Each way bet Australian businesses are simultaneously becoming more dependent on China and traditional Anglo markets just when the country’s foreign policy thrust is to diversify links to major emerging nations such as India and Indonesia. This at a time a new survey of business attitudes to

“Foreign policy alignment” was the political “abracadabra” used to explain how the late 2013 integration of what was then AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would deliver better outcomes. DFAT would have direct control over Australian aid and by virtue of that,

Just a few kilometres separate Papua New Guinea and Australia at their closest point. But when it comes to migration procedures, people on both sides of the Torres Strait can sometimes feel like the countries may as well be on separate planets. Visas remain a constant obstacle to building a

Pity MIKTA. Not so long ago, Canberra had high hopes for this obscure grouping of countries ­– Mexico, Indonesia, (South) Korea, Turkey, and Australia. Former foreign minister Julie Bishop was a particular fan of this caucus of middle powers within the G20, a gathering separate from the

A murderous terrorist attack by an Australian white supremacist on two mosques in New Zealand does not, at first sight, look like a bilateral issue for Jakarta and Canberra. But Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, called in Gary Quinlan, the Australian ambassador in Jakarta, on Monday