Yesterday I described how a series of important security-related public policy documents had been effectively ‘tabled’ in public before the Parliament had seen them. In the case of the National Security Statement, it never made …
Tag Archive for: "foreign policy"
This year will mark 25 years since then Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans delivered a landmark address (PDF) to an Australia–Indonesia business group in Bali, in which he first raised the importance of ‘building ballast’ into …
There is reason to be pleased with the defence outcomes of the 2 plus 2 meeting just concluded in Jakarta. For once delivered without hype, the meeting’s communiqué points to solid progress in building a …
The Australian public service has two modes for offering its famed frank and fearless advice to ministers. One method is ‘stand ready’. The much rarer, high risk approach is ‘cop this’. In stand ready mode, …
If we learn more from losses than wins, then the Canberra system has much to gain from examining its lousy performance in the processes that took Australia to war in Vietnam and Iraq. For Australia, …