Media
Australia’s one step forward, two steps back in the Pacific
BY JOANNE WALLIS In 2016, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed Australia’s commitment to a ‘step-change’ in its engagement with the Pacific Islands. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper...
Security in 'Society 5.0'
BY CHRISTOPHER HOBSON and TOBIAS BURGERS As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s time in power has continued, the policy initiatives for addressing Japan’s major structural challenges have proliferated. Most...
Of Cricket, Sandpaper and “Shadow Values”: What Australia’s Aid Program Says About Who We Are and Our Ability to Weather the Next Foreign Policy Crisis
BY BENJAMIN DAY When it comes to Australia’s foreign aid spending, the Cameron Bancroft and Steven Smith ball tampering incident provides an illustrative analogy of the disconnect between our...
Do Proposed Reforms of the World Health Organization Go Far Enough?
BY JEREMY YOUDE Amid widespread criticism of its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa five years ago, the World Health Organization took stock of what went wrong. In a report released in...
Trust in short supply when there are no shared values
BY PAUL DIBB This article originally appeared in The Australian on 23 Jan 2019. In the Australian debate about the priority to be given to the economic relationship with China versus the national...
Thailand should lead ASEAN with a migrant worker agenda
BY RUJI AUETHAVORNPIPAT Thailand will assume the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2019 after the ASEAN Summit in Singapore this month. This is in keeping with Thailand’s hopes to regain its place of regional...
Debating South Korea’s mandatory military service
BY JEFFREY ROBERTSON An exemption from military service for a football star has brought global attention to a simmering social issue. By now, most people in South Korea know the national team’s...
Government sincerity on migrant rights faces fishing pact test
BY RUJI AUETHAVORNIPIPAT It has been one year since Thailand’s last debacle on migrant worker policy. Yet, Thailand finds itself once again at the crossroads where domestic constituents are...
Getting realistic about the South Pacific
BY JAMES BATLEY Advocates of stronger and more effective Australian engagement in the South Pacific face a couple of entrenched structural challenges. First, the region is hardly critical to...
As RAMSI's costly Solomon Islands rescue mission ends, its gains may vanish swiftly
On Friday, one of Australia’s most significant, and expensive, foreign policy forays of recent times will come to an end. Over the last 14 years, more than $3 billion was spent on a tiny...
