Election Interpreter 2013

Part 1 of this profile of Labor's prospective new defence minister Mike Kelly MP and shadow Defence Minister Senator David Johnston appeared yesterday. For men who will have responsibility for administering war if their party is elected tomorrow, neither David Johnston nor Mike Kelly want to talk

Yesterday afternoon, less than two days before Australia goes to the polls, the Liberal-National Coalition released its official foreign policy statement (the Labor Party is yet to release one). A few small observations about the document, followed by one big point: The statement has the clear

The Liberal-National Coalition's decision to cut growth in foreign aid spending by $4.5 billion over the forward estimates has created a last-minute election debate about Australia's foreign aid commitments. Foreign Minister Bob Carr is yet to announce (at time of writing) the details of the Labor

Michael Green is Senior Vice President for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a Professor at Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute. It is always reassuring to see the protagonists in Australian federal elections stand united in

Danielle Rajendram is a Lowy Institute research associate. Her work focuses on Indian foreign and domestic policy, India-China relations and Asian security. In an attempt to bolster his Asia credentials, Tony Abbott has identified Indonesia, China, Japan and South Korea as his first overseas

Senator Bob Carr is the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Earlier in the campaign, The Interpreter carried a piece from Shadow Foreign Minister Julie Bishop making the Coalition's case. I debated Julie Bishop at the Lowy Institute recently. One thing is clear: under a Coalition government, Australia'

Andrew West is an ABC Radio National presenter, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, and author of Bob Carr: A Self-Made Man.  In part 1 of this essay, I said that Bob Carr always had a reflexive commitment to Australia's alliance with the US, but that if he saw himself as anything, it was

At a different time, Tony Abbott's cowboys-and-Indians reductionism of the Syria crisis ('It's not goodies versus baddies, it's baddies versus baddies') might have played right into Labor's characterisation of the Opposition Leader as a man not ready to lead Australia into the world. But

In case anyone needed reminding, 2013 is an election year and the 2013 Lowy Institute Poll included an election-related question, asking Australian adults which of the two major political parties they thought 'would do a better job of handling' each of eight significant foreign policy issues. If

It sounds as if neither party landed a knockout blow at the debate held in Canberra yesterday between Shadow Defence Minister Senator David Johnston and Minister for Defence Materiel Mike Kelly. The hosts, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, had the peculiar challenge of presenting an

After three-and-a-half weeks of campaigning in which foreign and national security policy barely got a look in, it's now getting hard to keep up with Prime Minister Rudd's announcements and pronouncements. Let's recap: On Tuesday at the Lowy Institute, the PM announced that the Navy's major east

Dr Khalid Koser is a Lowy Institute Non-Resident Fellow and Deputy Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Recent Government and Opposition policy announcements on asylum seekers defy conventional analysis because it is impossible to predict whether they will work. First, each is

Rear Admiral (ret'd) James Goldrick AO, CSC is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute. The Prime Minister's announcement at the Lowy Institute yesterday of a 'Future Navy' Task Force is a curious mixture of logic and opportunism. There is a clear need to look at the long-term set-up of ship

Lowy Institute Senior Nonresident Fellow Alan Dupont attended Prime Minister Rudd's speech today, and in this short interview Alan echoes some of James Brown's concerns about the cost of Rudd's proposal to move the navy's main east coast base from Sydney to Brisbane. Dupont has also detected what he

Prime Minister Rudd has just left the Lowy Institute after making the first major foreign and national security policy speech of this campaign by either party. We'll post a transcript as soon as we get it (UPDATE: audio now available), but meantime, you might have heard already of one major

Alison Broinowski, a Senate candidate for the WikiLeaks Party, responds to Raoul Heinrichs' profile piece of last week: Raoul Heinrichs and I had a comradely discussion before he posted this piece. I am surprised by what he has written, though I should have realised that nothing I said would

Stephanie Do Carmo is a multimedia intern at the Lowy Institute. On Wednesday 7 August the Lowy Institute hosted a foreign policy debate between Minister for Foreign Affairs Senator Bob Carr and the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop. Below is a recap of the debate as it unfolded

The campaign has provided very little news fodder for defence and foreign policy wonks (and no, last week's announcement from Minister for Defence Science and Personnel Warren Snowden about improved health care for Defence families, while worthy, does not really count). This morning's news is a

Hugh White's typically perceptive column on Tony Abbott argues that the old Howard slogan about Australia not having to choose between the US and China never really reflected Howard's diplomacy and has in any case been made redundant by the economic growth and growing assertiveness of China. Abbott

Robert Ayson is a Visiting Fellow with the ANU's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, on research leave from the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. One of the delights of a sabbatical in Canberra as spring struggles to replace winter is the chance to watch a

Julie Bishop is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Interpreter has also asked Foreign Minister Bob Carr to submit an article making Labor's case. The Coalition's foreign policy is designed to protect and project our reputation as a strong and prosperous nation and our values as an open

Short posts from Lowy Institute experts on what they regard as the most important international policy issue of this campaign. See the Election Interpreter 2013 archive for the whole series. When it does emerge as a campaign issue, both parties compete to show who has more ownership of

Australian elections are won or lost on domestic issues, but it is not quite true that the world outside was absent from the leaders' debate last night. First, the so-called 'boats' issue – how to deter growing numbers of asylum seekers arriving by sea – is on many counts an international

The ABC's Jane Hutcheon, a former foreign correspondent and now host of ABC News 24's One Plus One, asked some probing questions of Foreign Minister Bob Carr and his shadow Julie Bishop during Wednesday night's foreign policy debate. Here she is with the Lowy Institute's Rory Medcalf, who was also a