Tony Abbott wants a Japanese submarine. To repeat: Australia’s Prime Minister really wants a Japanese boat. If Australia hadn’t embarked on a ‘competitive evaluation process’ pitting Japan against France and Germany, this hack would argue …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
This post has been adapted from a recent ASPI panel discussion ‘Australia and Indonesia: getting back on track’. The full video of the event is available here. As a born optimist, I share Benjamin Franklin’s sentiment—misquoted …
Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s 22nd Prime Minister, died in March 2015, at the age of 84. Fraser was Prime Minister from November 1975, to March 1983. This is part of ASPI’s new Strategic Insights paper, Reassessing Malcolm …
The Asia Pacific is going through a vivid and significant rule-making tussle. It’s unusual because rule-making and norm formation usually involve inching through decades. Power hierarchies tend to shift gradually and thus rules, by definition, …
Indonesia recalled its ambassador from Canberra because Australian intelligence eavesdropped on the Indonesian president and his wife. Now Australia recalls its ambassador from Jakarta because Indonesia has executed two Australian drug smugglers. The same diplomatic …
International policy is deeply serious work—vital to nation and people, and deadly in effects. Yet oft times it lurches from furore to fiasco, via farce to straight-out funny. The utter pragmatism of Malcolm Fraser’s embrace …
Malcolm Fraser’s greatest contribution to foreign policy was the new consensus on Asia that he embraced, fostered and cemented. Fraser’s Asia policy drew large elements of continuity from the Whitlam government that Fraser blasted from …
Malcolm Fraser was the last Australian Prime Minister who thought the Commonwealth could be a major instrument of Australian foreign policy. Some of Fraser’s successors—Hawke, Howard and even Gillard—believed the Commonwealth could do useful work …
On 11 September 1980, Malcolm Fraser stood in the House of Representatives to describe the four pillars of Australian foreign policy. The Prime Minister’s statement listed the ‘four essential components of our foreign policy’ in …
Lee Kuan Yew thought he had every right to lecture Australia. After all, he said, Australians were always lecturing Asia. And when LKY gave voice, quite a few amongst the great and good of Oz …
Pinning down great quotes can be an experience as ephemeral and exasperating as hunting the snark. Lee Kuan Yew’s warning that Australia could become ‘the white trash of Asia’ has snark-like qualities. Yet having tracked …
The most remarkable feature of Malcolm Fraser’s lifetime pursuit of Australia’s international interests was his journey from rock-ribbed, alliance-loving realist to green-tinged alliance decrier. Fraser’s eventual rejection of the US alliance as deeply dangerous to …