World Affairs
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TRAVERS McLEOD, PETER HUGHES, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE, STEVEN WONG, TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI. Developing a regional refugee framework.
September has seen a surge of international summits. First came the G20 in Hangzhou, then ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, plus the Pacific Islands Forum in Pohnpei. And, on consecutive days this week, the United Nations in New York hosted a summit on refugees and migrants, followed by US President Barack Obama’s Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 4 of 4.
Australia is currently courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national Continue reading »
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FRANK BRENNAN SJ. The hypocrisy of it all is breath-taking.
As you listen to the self-satisfied, self-congratulatory observations of our Australian representatives at the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants and at the Obama summit, just ask yourself what Messrs Turnbull and Dutton have done to provide a humane solution for the proven refugees on Nauru (and Manus Island), given that after three years the Continue reading »
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ELAINE PEARSON. Australia’s harsh refugee policy is no global model.
This week in New York, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, “Our policy on border protection is the best in the world,” and he’ll be touting the Australian model of offshore refugee detention and resettlement at two refugee summits this week. But Australia’s approach should give world leaders some pause. “I understand the need to protect Continue reading »
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MACK WILLIAMS. Here we go again: Julie Bishop and Duterte!
Foreign Minister Bishop’s not so gentle rebuke of President Duterte that the Philippines as a claimant state should pull its weight in the South China Sea eerily had all the elements of the earlier Australian approach to the acrimonious bilateral debate between Washington and Manila over the closure of the huge US bases in Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 2 of 4.
Australia is currently courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, Continue reading »
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The era of American global dominance is over.
In The World Post of 15 September 2016, Graham E. Fuller spells out ‘the declining American influence. He says that the more Washington attempts to contain or throttle Eurasianism as a genuine rising force, the greater will be the determination of states to become part of this rising Eurasian world. … China is moving Continue reading »
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The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 1 of 4.
Australia is courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, but Continue reading »
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RICHARD RIGBY. Japan steps up military activity in the South China Sea.
The announcement in Washington, in the context of last week’s visit by Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada, of stepped up Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force activities in the South China Sea, including exercises with the US Navy, has to be one of the more ill-judged decisions taken regarding this contested area in recent times. It will Continue reading »
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: On the Irish and other undesirables.
Australia sometimes seems to suffer a mysterious case of multiple-amnesia over immigration. We are a nation built on migrants, but we have forgotten that almost every new wave of immigrants has been resented and resisted by those already here, especially those who were migrants themselves. It started around the 1820s when the convicts hated Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The US pivot to the Pacific is off balance.
President Obama’s rebalance or pivot to the Pacific is struggling. There have been some successes. Ever-loyal Australia signed up to US marines in Darwin and there may be more ‘cooperation’ to come!. There have been new US military agreements with the Philippines and Vietnam. But there have been some important downsides, particularly as China Continue reading »
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China and the South China Sea
Last weekend Geraldine Doogue interviewed Richard Woolcott and Geoff Raby on the recent controversies about Chinese influence in Australia. Richard Woolcott was formerly Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and President of the UN Security Council. Geoff Raby was formerly Australian Ambassador to China. In this interview, both Richard Woolcott and Geoff Continue reading »
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JOHN TULLOH: Vladimir Putin reaches back to the past to define his and Russia’s future.
Tsar Vladimir Putin plots his place in Russian history. It would appear that Vladimir Putin’s current modus operandi is aimed at defining his legacy. Ideally, he would like to be remembered as Vladimir the Great, the most illustrious Russian of his times. As those with the same honorific, Peter and Catherine, did, he is Continue reading »
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NIALL McLAREN. The Dangerous Folly of the “War with China” Scenario.
Nick Deane “reflected on the troubled waters of the South China Sea,” concluding that we need to pay close attention to what our military alliance with the US may drag us into. War between the US and China would necessarily involve us, but not necessarily to our advantage. While for ordinary citizens, such Continue reading »
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ADELE WEBB. He may have insulted Obama, but Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US.
This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken his “bad manners” – having gained global notoriety with his election campaign insults earlier Continue reading »
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Defence & Australian Strategic Policy Institute – Joined at the Hip
Following on John Menadue’s recent item in which he dissected the funding of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the pervasive influence of the ‘Australia/US Defence and Intelligence Complex’ of which ASPI is a part, he questioned whether ASPI as a supposedly independent source of strategic advice could provide the advice necessary to get the Continue reading »
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PATRICK McGORRY. We must settle the refugees before it is too late.
In this article in the SMH, Patrick McGorry, the President of the Society for Mental Health Research, says; The time has come, before it is too late, to re-settle these fellow human beings and not just the children, but all of those who qualify as genuine refugees and who deserve a second chance for life. Continue reading »
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TONY KEVIN. ‘Putin meets Turnbull’: an interesting encounter at Hangzhou.
Chris Ullmann’s ABC News report on main outcomes for Australia of the Hangzhou G20 Summit led with an account of an impromptu ‘encounter’ between Malcolm Turnbull and Vladimir Putin. Maybe they bumped into one another in the hotel lift or corridors? We don’t know which side initiated this conversation, but it could be a Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The new compradors in the China Australia relationship.
In this blog on 14 October last year I wrote. Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Continue reading »
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SPENCER ZIFCAK. Freedom of Speech and the Racial Discrimination Act
Within days of the July election result having finally been announced, forces within the Conservative faction of the Liberal-National party moved to re-open the debate on reform to S.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). Section 18C makes it a civil offence to insult, offend, humiliate or intimidate a person on the grounds of Continue reading »
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It’s Time to Close Australia’s Abusive Detention Regime
In the last few years, there have been countless official reports that have exposed abuses and recommended the closure of centres on Nauru and Manus Island. November 2014, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention uncovered numerous reported incidents of assaults, sexual assaults and self-harm involving children; March 2015, Continue reading »
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NICK DEANE. Reflecting on Troubled Waters. South China Sea
The dispute in the South China Sea should not, legitimately, involve Australia. We are only involved because we have such close military ties with the United States. War between the US and China is not inevitable, but dangerous, military escalation is taking place. If hostilities break out, the war will be on our doorstep. Continue reading »
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WALTER HAMILTON. What’s in it for Putin?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pursuing a ‘fresh approach’ with Russia’s Vladimir Putin for resolving the territorial dispute that has prevented the two countries signing a peace treaty since World War Two. It is easy to see what Abe might hope to gain from a settlement, but no breakthrough can be expected unless Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Undermining Malcolm Turnbull.
The baying pack of coalition backbenchers demanding the abolition, or at least the dilution, of the Racial Discrimination Act may be sincere crusaders for free speech. On the other hand they may be motivated by a desire to attack small-l liberals, of whom one is (or at least was) their own leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Continue reading »
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JULIA BAIRD. Australia’s Gulag Archipelago.
In Dante’s view, the unfortunate souls who dwell in purgatory may suffer excruciating pain, but the promise of their final destination is clear: paradise. Those who languish on the remote, tiny islands — Manus and Nauru — that host Australia’s offshore immigration detention centers are not so lucky. Continue reading »
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RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Do we need a White Paper on Australia’s foreign policy?
A White Paper could be useful if it is agreed to by the key ministers of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, and Immigration and Border Protection ; and consistently applied by the Cabinet. A major problem which I see is that we seem to be in a period of fairly intense political and bureaucratic infighting over Continue reading »
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ROSS BURNS. Looking for an end-game in Syria.
Newspaper commentary on the Syria conflict has long struggled to provide new insights into the conflict. However, in an analysis published over the weekend in the New York Times, Max Fisher, adopted the novel approach of asking academic experts to comment on how other civil wars came to an end to see if any Continue reading »
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MEREDITH BURGMANN. ASIO and dirty secrets.
In commenting this week, Meredith Burgmann said that ‘my view is that the stories in my book (Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files. New South Wales Publishing, Sydney 2014) collectively represent ASIO as being improper, incompetent, irrelevant, inappropriate and intrusive.’ The following are extracts from her book. Continue reading »
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TONY KEVIN. A successful reawakening of serious Russian studies in Australia ?
Doctor Dorothy Horsfield of Australian National University is to be congratulated for her vision and hard work in mounting the first serious academic Russian studies conference in Australia for many years, ‘Putin’s Russia in the Wake of the Cold War’, on 24-26 August, under the auspices of the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre Continue reading »
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. A Foreign Affairs White Paper. What is there to inquire about?
We have just had a Federal election, so now the inquiry season has begun. The government already has a Royal Commission inquiring into the detention of children in the Northern Territory, it wants a plebiscite on gay marriage, the inquiry into institutional child abuse is still running, and the Opposition wants one on the Continue reading »