Australia in the World

For Myanmar, the onset of Covid-19 has sparked a renewed crackdown in Rakhine and Chin states. These developments may not capture widespread attention – particularly as relations with China become increasingly fraught – yet they cannot be ignored, and must be recognised as a serious

Health v growth The language of lockdown has certainly undergone a change, from Prime Minister Scott Morrison advocating six months of hibernation only a month ago to now warning the country cannot stay under the doona much longer. But it is no surprise the government's rhetoric has shifted to

While the Canberra political establishment has been sparring with China’s Foreign Ministry – and with Australian billionaires – much of the corporate elite has begun puzzling how to slipstream China’s post–Covid-19 economic recovery. Optimists hope that Beijing will summon a massive

There are many reasons the world needs an independent inquiry into the origins of the novel coronavirus. After all, the pandemic has infected nearly three million people and taken around 200,000 lives worldwide, at latest count. And the world should push for one at the appropriate time. Properly and

One of the (many) astounding things that have come out of the Covid-19 crisis is just how fragile are Australia’s connections with the outside world. The government’s role in guaranteeing Australia’s communications, whether digitally or by sea or air, is one of the things that we will need to

Back then it was less a date and more an aspiration. This week, 12 years ago, a thousand of the nation’s best and brightest gathered in Canberra for newly-elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit. The goal was to harness ideas to shape a long-term strategy for the nation to 2020

Of all the regions in the world, the twin health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have the potential to hit the Pacific the hardest. Pacific Island nations supported Australia during our bushfire crisis, sending members of their defence forces and making donations to communities

The Morrison government needs to urgently consider how it might best help Indonesia manage the economic risks posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Indonesia faces a perilous outlook. The government is struggling badly to control the virus. Making matters far worse, Indonesia has also been among

World beating When the Australian government asserted control over all new foreign investment two weeks ago in response to Covid-19, the move was sugar-coated with the reassurance the country was still open for business. But with Prime Minister Scott Morrison now declaring his

As Covid-19 spreads around the globe, it is precipitating a series of other shocks, one of which is a crisis in human movement. Australia, as one of the key migrant-receiving nations globally, is particularly affected. The migration crisis currently unfolding in Australia is primarily one of

What do the East Timorese defence force, “clean coal”, women’s empowerment, and Kevin Rudd’s first-term government have in common? The answer is the year 2020. Back when 2020 felt like a halcyon time far-far away, this was the year that, respectively, the Government of Timor-Leste, the

China syndrome Former Trump administration economic adviser Kevin Hassett had a backhanded compliment for Australia amid this week’s financial market turmoil when he described it as a closely watched proxy for the Chinese economy. Complaining that Chinese data on the recovery from coronavirus

The title alone is enough to make senior members of Australia’s intelligence community shudder. And fair enough – Australia’s intelligence agencies are a well-reviewed community; there have been three over the past decade (in 2011, 2017 and another due this year). Senior figures including

A report published in 2019 by the Lowy Institute, Foreign territory: Women in international relations, found that there is a severe gender imbalance in the workforces of the departments and organisations that make up Australia’s international relations sector. The report found a distressingly low

Parts of India’s national capital have been rocked by the worst communal violence in decades, leaving more than 40 dead. The violence took place just as Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Birmingham led a large trade delegation to the country, with talk in the lead-up to the visit about the

Clayton Christensen’s 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma provides a series of compelling examples of companies ignoring or dismissing the disruptive potential of immature technologies until it’s too late, only for their upstart competitors to consign them to the dustbin of

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation focused on ensuring reliable, clean, and affordable energy for its 30 member states. To achieve this aim, member states are required to hold oil stockpiles, allowing states to coordinate a collective response to major

The rise of Asia and growing superpower competition pose serious challenges for countries such as Australia and Israel, and they should face them together. On the one hand, Asia’s economic dynamism offers access to new and growing markets; on the other hand, changing regional dynamics in Asia have

Australia’s definition of the “Indo-Pacific” currently includes much of the Pacific Ocean as well as the eastern Indian Ocean, but excludes the western Indian Ocean. This is no longer a sensible or useful way of defining our region. Australian policymakers need to include the island states of

Since mid-2019, I have often been asked about fires, which is somewhat odd, as I teach Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, and my research mainly involves issues of global governance and developing countries. But as a Brazilian living in Sydney, I’ve been

To have experienced one catastrophe could be regarded as fortunate. To go through a second could be, as Oscar Wilde would have it, careless. Having survived a bushfire emergency, the likes we’ve not witnessed before, only three months ago, I’m now writing this watching a thunderstorm break

It’s hard to overstate the devastation of the Australian bushfires of 2019–20. More than 30 people have been killed, communities devastated, millions of hectares of forest destroyed, and more than a billion animals have lost their lives. Some fires are still burning. Inevitably, the