Since a United Nations General Assembly Resolution vote in November 2012, Palestine has had the status of a state within the UN system. It is not a full member state but, like the Holy See, a non-member observer state. Australia – after a heady debate within the Gillard cabinet – abstained on that vote. The State Continue reading »
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China’s power has replaced the United States’ in the eyes of most of our Asian neighbours, according to the latest Lowy Institute Asia Power Snapshot. What are the implications for Australia? The Lowy survey contains interesting findings. Over the last five years, Chinese influence in Southeast Asia has risen at the expense of the US, Continue reading »
In 2016, President Obama visited Hiroshima. He was the first US President to do so since the bombing in 1945. He said that he would not be apologising for the dropping of the bomb and would not try and second-guess President Harry Truman’s decision. A repost from May 27, 2016 The widely accepted moral justification Continue reading »
A few days after coming to power in 1972 Gough Whitlam declared that ‘Australia’s real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines’. More than foreign aid programmes, more than any role the country plays in agreements or alliances, treatment of the Aborigines Continue reading »
Australia’s capacity to protect its sovereignty lies not in accession to US interests but in a broad diplomatic and security effort with our Asian neighbours, writes Paul Keating in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Albanese on 24 January, seven weeks before the San Diego AUKUS announcement and obtained by the Guardian Australia under FOI Continue reading »
Australia’s first Aboriginal-led Royal Commission recently completed a month of public hearings during which Commissioners questioned Victorian government ministers and senior bureaucrats about injustices against First Peoples in the criminal justice and child protection systems. These historic hearings marked the first time an Aboriginal-led Royal Commission has publicly held to account the authorities that have Continue reading »
In charting the way ahead for Australia-China relations, Canberra needs to present the risks posed by increasing Chinese military power in realistic rather than hawkish terms, writes Colin Heseltine. Building the case for Australia to significantly upgrade its defence force structure and capability, including the expensive acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, is a challenge for the Continue reading »
US primacy is being replaced by two orders led by Washington and Beijing. Canberra’s job is to make the US understand what has happened. One meeting fell over last week, but another one stood up. Joe Biden’s dash back to Washington to deal with the debt ceiling is not the end of the Quad, and Continue reading »
Stan Grant is always intelligent, insightful and provocative. He demonstrated this in his extraordinary farewell piece last Monday night on the ABC’s Q+A. I have enormous respect for Stan Grant. Always intelligent, thoughtful and provocative, he has been an important contributor to intellectual life in Australia. His strength has been to move discussions on from Continue reading »
By recognising that the question of NATO enlargement is at the centre of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that. George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Governments work relentlessly to distort public Continue reading »