Australia in the World
PNG’s trade ties with China are set to strengthen
Richard Maru, PNG’s trade minister, was startlingly direct at the Australia–Papua New Guinea Business Forum and Trade Expo held in Port Moresby last month. “Enough is enough,” he…
Australia’s lost appeal: Reversing a downward trend for Japanese students
Australia–Japan educational links are on a downward trend. The number of Japanese students in Australia peaked in 2004 at 16,500. That number declined to 9,400 in pandemic…
Lessons from history: Comparing Australia’s response to war crimes with the United States
“It is only recently that this country has given serious attention to the issue of war crimes allegedly committed by our forces,” Special Investigator and former judge Mark…
How Australia can speak up on human rights in India
Writing in The Interpreter last week, Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, made a compelling case for Australian leaders to raise human rights concerns with Indian…
Where has Australia’s foreign policy ambition gone?
Australia was once an international trailblazer. Throughout the Hawke-Keating years, Australia brokered the Paris Peace agreements, co-founded APEC, and drove negotiations on the…
It’s time Australia branded Russia’s Wagner Group a terrorist organisation
The French parliament has recently designated Russia’s Wagner Group, led by Vladimir Putin’s “chef” Yevgenyi Prigozhin, as a terrorist organisation. Paris has called for the wider…
Albanese should raise human rights concerns with Modi
When India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Sydney this week, there should be no empty clichés from Australia’s leaders simply hailing India as “the world’s largest democracy…
AI vs democracy: the battle is already here
The race for Artificial Intelligence dominance is now on. And with the rise of AI has come dire warnings about its impact on governance and humanity at large. But the challenge…
Building a Quad that lasts to the next generation
Despite US President Joe Biden cancelling his trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea amid rancorous debt debates at home, leading to the cancellation of the Quad summit in Sydney,…
First Nations diplomacy can transform Australia’s relationship with Indonesia
In 1994, then-Australian prime minister, Paul Keating famously said that “no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia”. Yet the relationship has also been a rocky one…