The milk run from Canberra to RAAF Richmond left on Fridays. In the early 1990s, the US Air Force C-141 Starlifter aircraft from Hawaii always visited the RAAF airbase near the Blue Mountains on a …
During the festive season of 1978, in an underground corner of the Pentagon, a group of Defense Intelligence Agency analysts was burning the midnight oil. For some months, they’d been monitoring the deployment of Chinese …
In my previous post, I explained how separatist attempts throughout Indonesia’s history have led to Indonesian sensitivities over Papuan separatism today. We take every opportunity to earnestly reassure the Indonesian side of our unwavering support …
One issue, above all others, starkly differentiates the jobs of Indonesian President and Australian Prime Minister. When our Prime Minister wakes each morning, the first question she asks isn’t: “Do I still have a whole …
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 …
In my last post, I argued that critics of Indonesian military (TNI) reform are taking too narrow a view of its progress. For most critics, the primary yardstick for measuring the success of TNI’s reform agenda …
One of the routines of 1950s American stand-up comedian Henny Youngman was to have his sidekick ask: ‘So, Henny, how’s your wife?’ Youngman would face the audience, roll his eyes to the roof and fire …