Thirty years ago, a South Pacific radio chief hit me with the greatest jest-cum-compliment I ever received working for the ABC’s international service, Radio Australia. The joke about the role and reach of radio still …
Australia is witnessing an explosion of blind spot exposures, as important institutions are blindsided by their own shortcomings. The blind spot eruption reveals big organisations with incomplete vision, unable to see key elements of what …
Last week, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop launched Australia’s first-ever review of soft power. It’s a bold move, flagging a new reality that Australia must engage more strategically through official and public diplomacy if it is …
While Heisenberg proclaims the uncertainty principle, a public service inquiry operates on the certainty principle. Not for government, Heisenberg’s quantum insight about the impossibility of simultaneously measuring position and momentum; nor the observer effect—that to …
Australia was grasping for soft power long before the term ‘soft power’ was invented. Here’s an official example from 32 years ago: Countries still achieve their international objectives by threat, bribe or persuasion. Australia has …