The Lowy Institute

At the Wednesday Lowy lunch on 1 July, Dr Michael Wesley, the new Executive Director of the Lowy Institute, talked about the challenges ahead for Australia and the Lowy Institute. The world after the Global Financial Crisis will be a world which asks some very searching questions of Australia's foreign policy makers, businesspeople, and citizens. How should Australia respond to the new position of China as a key power determining the future of collective global issues? What are the challenges to Australia’s economy as posed by an increasingly knowledge-intensive and Asia-centric global economy? Michael Wesley discussed these and other issues, and in doing so, outlined his vision for the Lowy Institute over the next five years.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Tuesday 23 September, as part of the Lowy Institute's Distinguished Speaker Series, Dr Phil Burgess, outgoing General Managing Director, Public Policy and Communications and Special Adviser to the CEO at Telstra, shared some parting observations about our 'lucky country' and its prospects in a globalised world, based on his experience as a senior executive in Australia, during which time he engaged deeply and widely with Australians at every level of the community in every state of the Commonwealth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With much of the developed world in recession, Asia's economies are suffering as exports crumble, capital flows reverse, and business and consumer confidence deteriorates. The ADB's Senior Economist Donghyun Park addressed these issues within the context of the Asian Development Outlook 2009, ADB's flagship economic publication. ADB Country Economist Craig Sugden presented highlights of the Pacific portion of the report and discussed the policy options available to the region to minimise the impacts of the global economic crisis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Tuesday 23 September, as part of the Lowy Institute's Distinguished Speaker Series, Dr Phil Burgess, outgoing General Managing Director, Public Policy and Communications and Special Adviser to the CEO at Telstra, shared some parting observations about our 'lucky country' and its prospects in a globalised world, based on his experience as a senior executive in Australia, during which time he engaged deeply and widely with Australians at every level of the community in every state of the Commonwealth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Friday, 18 July the Lowy Institute was honoured to host a speech in our Distinguished Speaker Series by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Stephen Smith MP. The focus of the Minister's presentation was on the Government's thinking about Australia's evolving engagement in our region. Recognising that the Asia-Pacific will always be critically important to Australia's strategic and economic interests, the Minister spoke about the Government's policies to ensure, through bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation, that we are collectively well placed to advance our common interests and respond to the challenges ahead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first global economy ended in fire and destruction with World War One. A new global economy was born with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Key features included the explosive growth of private capital flows, the Washington Consensus, and the IMF as crisis manager.A new, new global economy may now be emerging from the rubble of the subprime crisis. To date, key features include the explosive growth of state-controlled capital flows, the Beijing consensus, and emerging market-led bailouts of Wall Street.In the latest in our Wednesday Lunch at Lowy series, Mark Thirlwell, Director of the Institute's International Economy program, described how the international economic order hasn't turned out quite the way the West thought it would.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 17 October at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Visiting Fellow Professor Hugh White examined the wider implications for Australia's foreign policy of the emphasis put on helping Australians in trouble while travelling overseas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 10 October at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Christopher Langman discussed the current state of play in the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations. He considered some of the factors that have made the current negotiations so complex and difficult, and outlined the potential implications for the multilateral trading system.Christopher Langman is currently the head of the Office of Trade Negotiations in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with particular responsibility for Australia's participation in the WTO. Earlier, he was Australia's Special Negotiator for Agriculture and before that the Ambassador for the Environment. He has served at the Australian missions in Geneva, Washington and Buenos Aires.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A substantial number of anti-terrorism laws have been adopted in Australia and overseas since 9/11. While such laws have been seldom used in Australia, their passage and occasional use have provoked extraordinary political and legal controversy, as illustrated by the recent case of Dr Mohammed Haneef. On 15 August at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Dr Ben Saul compared Australia's response to that of a number of other democracies and asked whether Australia's laws are a necessary evil, or whether they signal the twilight of the rule of law. Dr Ben Saul is Director of the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law at the Faculty of Law, The University of Sydney.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The issue of climate change has achieved a remarkable prominence over the past six months, and the need for a comprehensive global response to addressing the risks posed by climate change is now widely accepted. Australia's role at the upcoming APEC meeting in Sydney and in subsequent post-Kyoto negotiations in Bali in December will be important in setting a global framework for managing and reducing future greenhouse emissions. In this speech to the Lowy Institute as part of our Distinguished Speaker Series, Peter Garrett asked whether Australia will remain an outlier nation, or join the growing movement for change to a low carbon economy and a safer world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 1 November at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Professor Alan Dupont, the Michael Hintze Chair of International Security at the University of Sydney, explored the implications of North Korea's nuclear weapons program for global and regional security following Pyongyang’s provocative nuclear test on 9 October.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 4 October at Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Lowy Institute Research Associate Ivan Cook presented the results of the Lowy Institute Poll 2006. The Lowy Institute Poll is a series of annual public opinion surveys focused on international policy issues. This year we conducted surveys simultaneously in Australia and Indonesia, polling both publics on questions of foreign and security policy, global issues, and the bilateral relationship, as well as updating some results from the inaugural Lowy Institute Poll in 2005.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 27 June, at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Dr Abby McLeod discussed how, on 30 June, Papua New Guinea goes to the polls after the Sir Michael Somare government became the first government in PNG history to serve its first term. Australia, as PNG's largest source of aid and its former colonial power, is a keen observer of PNG elections, and electoral reform has been a key focus of Australia's good governance program in PNG. However, elections work very differently in PNG than in Australia. Local values and practices mean that PNG's political system continues to produce results that surprise, and often worry, many in Australia and complicate Australia-PNG relations. This election is likely to be no different.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On 13 June, at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, award-winning journalist Leigh Sales addressed the difficult case of David Hicks and its implications for the global war on terror.Now that Mr Hicks is back in an Australian prison, what lessons should we take from the drawn-out saga? What has this case taught us about how the US and its allies are fighting the war on terror? How are America’s detention policies (and in particular the facility at Guantanamo Bay) affecting that country’s international standing? How is US public diplomacy faring? And what does the Hicks case say about the state of the US-Australia alliance?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the last thirty years, China has emerged as a major political and economic power on the international stage, and the pace of this growth has been astonishing. Though China's presence in the global arena continues to grow rapidly, the most remarkable part of this country's transformation has been largely left untold – the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. In THE PARTY: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers former Financial Times China bureau chief Richard McGregor delves into the hidden world of the Communist Party, revealing how this ruling organisation works and how it has contributed to China's rise as a global superpower and rival to the United States.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a part of its Public Lecture Series, the Lowy Institute for International Policy was pleased to host an address by Professor Akio Takahara from Tokyo University. The Japan-China relationship is one of the longest, deepest, and most important great power relationships in the world and the last decade has been a turbulent one. China’s increasing regional and global influence is keenly felt in Japan as it is fundamentally changing Japan’s strategic and economic environments and questioning Japan’s future role in East Asia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Liu Xiaobo, one of the most celebrated public intellectuals in China, was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for incitement to subversion. Diplomats and human rights activists have joined in condemning the sentence on grounds both of its lack of legal validity and its severity. A groundswell of international sentiment has begun to build, reversing the tendency in recent years to avoid confronting China on its human rights record. The international concern is closely paralleled by concern in China’s domestic intellectual circles. On Thursday, 4 March, the Lowy Institute hosted an in-conversation event with two prominent Sinologists, David Kelly and Feng Chongyi, who joined Michael Wesley to discuss the significance and implications of this event for China’s internal politics and Australia-China relations.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the Lowy Institute's first Food for Thought lecture in Melbourne, on 23 March, International Security Program Director Rory Medcalf explored how the dangers of nuclear-armed confrontation between states might be minimised in the Asian century. He focused on relations among the United States, China, India and Pakistan, considered Japan’s difficult position, and touched upon whether a middle power like Australia could make a difference.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on 20 January was observed intently by billions of people around the world. One of the unusual aspects of Obama's candidacy for president was that he is such a gifted writer and speaker, a fact which has already led to comparisons with Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Among the crowd in front of the US Capitol on the day of the inauguration was the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove. Michael provided a first-hand account of the day's events via video-conference at an event at the Lowy Institute on 23 January.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gordon Brown recently succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister of Great Britain. Several months ago the Lowy Institute hosted a leading British commentator speaking on the likely shape of British foreign policy under Gordon Brown's leadership. On Friday 16 February Tom Bentley spoke to the Lowy Lunch series on the topic: 'Gordon’s world: Remaking Britain's foreign policy after Blair'. Tom was director of Demos, one of Britain's leading independent think tanks, from 1999 to 2006. He is currently Executive Director for Policy and Cabinet in the Victorian Premier's Department and Director of Applied Learning at ANZSOG, the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.