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 »
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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 »
In Asian Media this week: Big economies talk about rules-based order. Plus: empire strikes back in Imran Khan showdown; hot Asian summers will add to climate change; US return to Philippines sparks sex abuse fears; Gandhi bests Modi in latest test; post-poll scenarios after progressive victory in Thailand. The G7 is meeting this weekend in Continue reading »
Prominent Chinese community leader, Dr Anthony “Tony” Pun died last night in Sydney, aged 77. In 1989 he came to public prominence when he lobbied then prime minister Bob Hawke to allow Chinese students to remain in Australia, in the wake of the crackdown on Chinese student protests that led to the Tiananmen Square incident. Continue reading »
The Australian Government has announced a four-decades long deal to acquire American and British nuclear-powered submarines, at an indicative cost of $268 billion to $368 billion. This is an extraordinary timeframe and an extraordinary cost. The assumptions on which the deal has been constructed are ill-defined, and many of the assertions made to justify the Continue reading »