Australia and the South Pacific need to talk. The immediate conversation is about the duelling trips to the islands by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and Australia’s new foreign minister, Penny Wong. Starting with Fiji, …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Australia has a new government and the climate war draws to a close. The voters have delivered a realignment of politics as well as power. Labor has crept back into office with a historically low …
As a Chinese navy ship nosed around Australia’s northwest coast, China sailed to the centre of the formal foreign policy debate. The ship got more attention from the press than the National Press Club face-off …
Australia’s polity grapples with the need to remake and rebuild our media voice in the South Pacific. One of the missing bits of our Pacific step-up is the lack of much vision—or understanding—of Australia’s role …
In this afternoon’s defence debate at the National Press Club, much of the Labor–Liberal consensus was as firm as ever: more money for the military, build nuclear submarines, worry about China. Both sides concur on …
A senior Asian diplomat quips that China’s leadership fears the numbers two, three, four, five and seven. The superstition is the way the numbers are stacking up. China agonises over the bilateral alliances represented by …
In Canberra’s great China debate, the panda huggers dominated the dragon slayers for the first 15 years of this century. Lots of happy huggers drowned out those who feared that the dragon danger would trump …
When an Australian jumps out of a taxi and prepares to make a dash across New York’s 5th Avenue, the habit of a lifetime is to look the wrong way for the traffic. Australia drives …
Fiji will soon vote on Frank Bainimarama, the military supremo who slowly morphed into an elected leader. The man who has driven and dominated Fiji’s politics since 2000 had urgent heart surgery in Australia in …
‘Tonight, as we gather, war rages in Europe. The global pandemic is not over. Devastating floods have battered our communities. We live in uncertain times.’ — Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, budget speech, 29 March 2022 The …
The debate about whether we’re in a new cold war has a decisive, brutal answer. For Europe, the lines of cold war 2.0 are drawn, no matter how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ends. NATO doubles …
As Australia must close the gap between its First Nations peoples and other Australians, so it must open the door to Melanesians. The two needs are distinct and separate. Yet they share elements of necessity …