Writer
Gareth Evans
Gareth Evans was Australia’s foreign minister from 1988-96. He is a distinguished honorary professor at the ANU.
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Best of 2024: AUKUS: The worst defence and foreign policy decision our country has made
Defence Minister Marles’s love for the the US is so dewy-eyed as to defy parody. Foreign Minister Wong is far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of over-commitment to America’s view of itself, but has been unwilling to rock the boat. Continue reading »
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Celebrating Race Mathews
In this era of totally leader-focused election campaigning, and presidential prime ministers, it is not surprising that political biographers tend to focus almost exclusively just on those who make it to the very top. But, while it might not be a truth universally acknowledged, the reality is that whether parties actually win office, and the Continue reading »
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Sheridan wrong on Wong
Greg Sheridan is doubtless now too long in the tooth to change his journalistic ways. But it really is time that he recognised the force of that immortal observation by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Francis Bacon, that ‘Speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love’. Continue reading »
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Defending nation’s sovereignty is not the act of an ‘appeaser’
Could the Alexander Downer who accuses me and Paul Keating of appeasement possibly be the same Alexander Downer who recently wrote in The Australian that if he had a vote in the US Presidential election it would be for Donald Trump? The same Donald Trump whose willingness to accommodate Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine makes Continue reading »
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Independence too big a price for AUKUS fantasy
Paul Keating, Bob Carr and I seem to have jangled a few security establishment nerves with our critique of the AUKUS submarine deal as having profound negative implications for Australia’s security and sovereignty. Continue reading »
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Remembering Pete Steedman
Legendary student agitator, Oz-era editor, Hawke-era Parliamentarian, union official, music industry executive and all-purpose provocateur, Pete Steedman died aged 82 on 10 July 2024 after a long battle with cancer. This is one of a number of speeches given at a memorial celebration of his life at the Melbourne Trades Hall on 7 September 2024. Continue reading »
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AUKUS: The worst defence and foreign policy decision our country has made
Defence Minister Marles’s love for the the US is so dewy-eyed as to defy parody. Foreign Minister Wong is far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of over-commitment to America’s view of itself, but has been unwilling to rock the boat. Continue reading »
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The urgency of Palestinian statehood
It is time for Israel to recognize the force of the rapidly growing international movement to recognize Palestinian statehood, not as the final outcome of a political settlement but as a path to achieving it. Continue reading »
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Détente: Towards a balance of power between the USA and China
Former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, other former Cabinet Ministers, former State Premiers, a Nobel Laureate, diplomats, writers, academics and human rights advocates are among 50 Australians supporting an appeal to establish détente between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. Continue reading »
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We must do everything in our power to build a comprehensive new détente between the US and China
We, and our fellow 50 Australian signatories, believe that it is time for the United States and China to enter into a comprehensive new détente, formally pledging to treat each other as mutually respectful equals, to resolve differences peacefully and to work together to advance global and regional goods like nuclear arms control, the mitigation Continue reading »
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Détente: Towards a balance of power between the USA and China
Former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, other former Cabinet Ministers, former State Premiers, a Nobel Laureate, diplomats, writers, academics and human rights advocates are among 50 Australians supporting an appeal to establish détente between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. Continue reading »
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Why Australia can’t rely on the US to save it from China
While there is a measure of agreement among Australian policymakers, and those who influence them, about the severity of regional security challenges we will face in the years ahead, serious divisions persist between Government and Opposition, within the wider think tank, academic and media policy community, and to some extent within the Albanese Government. They Continue reading »
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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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Culture and Religion, Defence and Security, Government, International relations, Politics, Religion and Faith, Top 5
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 »
