Author: Justin Li, ICE
Australia has a new foreign minister, Bob Carr, a former premier of New South Wales and a senior figure in Australian Labor politics, after the resignation of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from the post in his spectacularly unsuccessful bid to challenge the current prime minister, Julia Gillard.
In an unusual route to the post, Mr Carr is coming from outside federal Australian Parliament to take up a Senate seat by appointment after the resignation of one of Gillard’s supporters, as is the convention for filling mid-term vacancies in the Australian Senate. Read more…
Author: Stephen Howes, ANU
The outgoing Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd was an energetic advocate for the aid program and its expansion.
Whoever is the new Foreign Minister will have his or her work cut out to deliver the targeted doubling of Australia’s aid budget (formally, an increase to 0.5 per cent of GNI) by 2015. Read more…
Author: Anthony J. McMichael, ANU
Over the next half a century and beyond, two major, contrasting shifts in population health will affect the social and economic burdens of disease and the causes of premature death in the Asian region.
Pervasive and disruptive population-health developments could also affect the movement of people, social stability and geopolitical security. These projected shifts will have major implications for Australia. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
The idea that the world has entered the Asian century has wide and credible currency.
Its foundation, of course, lies in the rise of Chinese and Indian economic power and the integration of the East Asian economy that has accompanied China’s spectacular growth. Read more…
Author: Hugh White, ANU
Four months ago, as Australia’s parliamentarians rose to give President Barack Obama a standing ovation, it seemed they had already decided how best to navigate the profound strategic changes that must inevitably flow from the shift in relative economic weight from West to East.
Obama laid out in the starkest terms yet his determination that America will resist China’s challenge to US leadership in Asia, using all the elements of its power — including military force — to perpetuate a future for Asia framed by American values and interests. Read more…
Author: Geoff Wade, ISEAS, Singapore
That US engagement with East Asia has grown in recent years is news to none.
But as the dust settles following President Obama’s announcement of the imminent stationing of US marine forces in northern Australia, it is perhaps time to assess what this development might augur for the broader East Asian region in the longer term. Read more…
Authors: Prema-chandra Athukorala, ANU; and Archanun Kohpaiboon, Thammasat University
The proliferation of FTAs over the past two decades has sparked a debate in Australian and international policy forums about their implications for the operation of the global trading system and ways of mitigating likely discriminatory effects on both partners and non-signatory countries.
An examination of the impact of the Australia–Thailand free trade agreement (TAFTA) of January 2005 on trade between the two countries provides valuable input into this debate. Read more…
Authors: Malcolm Bosworth and Greg Cutbush, ANU Enterprise
Like all good fairytales, APEC was formed ‘once upon a time’ to promote trade and investment in the Asia Pacific.
Members like Australia, New Zealand and Japan fought hard to ensure it would not become a myopic trade bloc that discriminated against and sought to divert economic activity away from others. Read more…
Author: John Warhurst, ANU
The debate as to whether Australia should become a republic or remain a constitutional monarchy is at a paradoxical stage.
A majority of leading Australians in the private and public sectors support the change from a constitutional monarchy under the British crown to an Australian head of state. But many citizens remain undecided, after rejecting this constitutional change by 55 per cent to 45 per cent at a national referendum in 1999. Read more…
Author: Amritha Thiyagarajan, UNSW
Australia has been involved for a number of years in helping developing countries adapt to the devastating effects of climate change.
But while Australia’s recently passed carbon tax has stimulated much debate, there is little to no scrutiny of how Australian money is being allocated throughout adaptation projects at a grassroots level. Read more…
Author: Ding Dou, Peking University
Resources and energy are vital to the ongoing China–Australia economic relationship.
China is now Australia’s largest trading partner and Canberra has repeatedly emphasised the importance of Australian resources to the relationship, while also noting the broader significance of such ties for both countries. But there will be mixed implications for the two sides going into the future. Read more…
Author: Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide
Australia benefits substantially from the growth of the Chinese economy at this stage of China’s development.
China is now Australia’s most important trading partner and is an important driver of the growth of Australian resources exports. Read more…
Author: Brad Glosserman, CSIS, Washington DC
‘No, thanks’.
That, in summary, is Hugh White’s response to the recent announcement that the US would be sending marines on permanent rotation to Darwin.
White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, one of Asia’s most distinguished strategists, and a former Australian deputy secretary of defence. And he has been making the case for strategic reorientation in Canberra for a couple of years now. Read more…
Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU
Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, would have been more politically comfortable had she left the issue of uranium sales to India rusting in the ‘parking lot’.
The pressing question is therefore: why visit the issue now? Read more…
Author: Hugh White, ANU
As China’s power grows, the Asia we have known is passing into history, and a new and very different Asia is taking shape.
Barack Obama’s visit is a key moment in that transformation, because he is coming here to promote America’s view of how the new Asia should work. Read more…
