Writer
Gareth Evans
Gareth Evans was a Cabinet Minister throughout the Hawke-Keating Governments of 1983-96. He was subsequently President of the International Crisis Group (2000-09) and Chancellor of the Australian National University (2010-19)
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A compelling voice for rethinking Australia’s national security
Sam Roggeveen’s Echidna Strategy rightly challenges Australia to act as a diplomatic powerhouse, not a military one. Continue reading »
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The case for recognising Palestine
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. Continue reading »
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Remembering Bruce Grant: An advocate of Australian self-reliant defence capability
Bruce Grant, who died in August at the great age of 97, made an extraordinary contribution, as a writer and thinker, to Australia’s understanding of itself as a nation, and our place in the world. His richly well-lived life – with its multiple incarnations as journalist, author, university lecturer, diplomat and ministerial adviser – was Continue reading »
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Remarks on the Australia-China divide at the AsiaLink launch of Happy Together, by David Walker and Li Yao.
The juxtaposition and interweaving of life stories from Australia and China make for endlessly fascinating reading. Continue reading »
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Talking up war over Taiwan flouts reason, fact, judgment and Australia’s national interest
It is never wise, in foreign affairs and defence policymaking, for emotion to trump reason, for politics to trump objectivity, or for sensitive judgment calls on major national interest issues to be made before they have to be. Talking up, as so many now are, the prospect of war with China — with Taiwan as Continue reading »
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Why the Hawke-Keating government remains the gold standard
You don’t have to be partisan or nostalgic to lament the quality of political leadership in Australia. The mediocrity of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison coalition governments, the chronic underperformance of the manifestly more talented Rudd-Gillard Labor governments, and the inability of either side of politics to achieve anything like the creativity and sustained effectiveness of the Hawke-Keating Continue reading »
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Vale Andrew Mack
The many Australian friends and colleagues of Professor Andrew Mack will be deeply saddened to learn he passed away in Vancouver on 20 January 2021 after a year of serious illness. Continue reading »
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A Letter to President Biden: Rebuilding US credibility
You will be acutely aware that, after the ravages of the Trump years, you have a big healing job ahead of you, not only at home but abroad. Continue reading »
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Australia and China: Getting out of the hole
The Scottish Independent Labour Party leader in the 1930s, Jimmy Maxton, summed up the challenge of political leadership as well as anybody ever has: “If you can’t ride two bloody horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the bloody circus”. Continue reading »
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Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki (The Interpreter 5 August 2020)
Existing nuclear arms control deals are dead or dying, but that should not be an excuse to give up disarmament hopes. Continue reading »
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Lessons from the Cambodian genocide: 45 years on
Learning the biggest lesson of all from the Cambodian genocide – the need to make Responsibility to Protect (R2P) genuinely effective – means above all mobilizing the political will to make something actually happen when it must. Continue reading »
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Pressing the pause button on Sinophobia
China is an authoritarian state, and an increasingly assertive one. But there are ways of expressing our concern that are not counterproductive to our national interests. Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS supports Pearls and Irritations
Pearls and Irritations is perfectly named: lots of immensely thoughtful, insightful and often entertaining pieces mixed up with sometimes wildly contrarian, over-the-top or just plain nutty ones. But always stimulating, provocative and necessary daily reading. Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. Cambodia’s Coronavirus Excuse for Human Rights Abuse
Cambodia is not the only country to declare a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the legislation passed last week by Hun Sen’s government – like that in Orban’s Hungary – should be ringing alarm bells for anyone anywhere concerned with the erosion of human rights and democracy. Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. How not to conduct Australian foreign Policy: Suez 1956
Dr Robert Bowker’s new monograph, Australia, Menzies and Suez: Australian Policy-making on the Middle East Before, During and After the Suez Crisis (Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, 2019), leaves me in awe of his stamina and capacity to absorb punishment. Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. Emotion, reason and nuclear disarmament
I first came to Hiroshima in 1964 as a twenty-year old student, and it was one of the most formative experiences of my life. Nothing had quite prepared me for the experience of standing at the epicentre of that first nuclear bomb strike, and being overwhelmed by the almost indescribable horror of what had occurred Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. Breaking through the bamboo ceiling: Asian-Australians in the Asian Century.
Asian-Australians are an underappreciated and underutilized national resource as we face the challenges and opportunities of the Asian century. The 2012 White Paper, and everyone else, agrees that we dramatically need to lift our ‘Asian capability’ – defined by the Diversity Council of Australia as meaning ‘individuals’ ability to interact effectively in Asian countries and Continue reading »
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Asian Australians: Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling (2019 Asialink Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop Lecture, Sydney, 13 March 2019)
The award of this year’s Weary Dunlop Asialink medal to one of our most distinguished Asian-Australians seems to me an opportune moment to revisit the question of whether we as a nation are making the most – in terms of both our external relations and our internal national development – of the vast store of Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. Australia in the world: it’s time to punch our weight.
In this lecture, Gareth Evans calls for “Less America … More self-reliance … More Asia … More global engagement”. See below, extracts from Gareth Evans’ Tom Uren Memorial Lecture delivered in Balmain 2 December 2018. Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. How we should manage Donald Trump’s meltdown world (Repost from 22/6/2018)
The assumptions that have sustained and underpinned Australian security and economic policy for decades are in meltdown. The post-Second World War global order – an open, rules-based system underpinned by a robust network of security alliances, and by effective multilateral institutions in which rules could be agreed and norms reinforced – is the only one Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. How we should manage Donald Trump’s meltdown world (AFR 20/6/2018)
The assumptions that have sustained and underpinned Australian security and economic policy for decades are in meltdown. The post-Second World War global order – an open, rules-based system underpinned by a robust network of security alliances, and by effective multilateral institutions in which rules could be agreed and norms reinforced – is the only one Continue reading »
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GARETH EVANS. Trump’s US has abdicated global leadership- A REPOST from June 20 2017
Following his presentation at the EU-Australia Senior and Emerging Leaders’ Forum last week, ANU Chancellor and former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans spoke with Melissa Conley Tyler, Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Evans said that by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and progressively shunning its allies, the US has finally abdicated its global leadership Continue reading »
