Lowy Institute

On 24 November a new Australian Government was elected under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, MP, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat with deep expertise in foreign policy. At the Wednesday Lowy Lunch on 5 December a panel of analysts commented on prospective international policy under Mr Rudd's government. The panellists included: Dr Malcolm Cook, Program Director, Asia & the Pacific; Dr Michael Full...

The Lowy Institute Blue Ribbon Panel Report, 'Australia’s diplomatic deficit: reinvesting in our instruments of international policy', is the first major public review of Australia’s diplomatic network in over 20 years. Here, members of the Panel speak at the launch of the report on Wednesday 18 March 2009. The Panel: Jillian Broadbent AO, Professor William Maley AM, Brad Orgill, Professor Peter S...

The global threat from nuclear weapons is growing, yet so too is a new international push for nuclear disarmament. On Wednesday 25 February 2009 at a lecture in the Lowy Institute's Distinguished Speakers Series, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman examined what realistic assessments of the developing state of the international system might mean for current efforts to reduce nuclear dangers. This even...

The annual Lowy Lecture on Australia in the World is the highlight of our events calendar. The 2008 lecture was delivered by Mr Ian Macfarlane AC in Sydney on Wednesday 3 December 2008. In this lecture Mr Macfarlane seeks to answer the question of what is different about this financial crisis from the seven previous crises of the deregulated era spanning the past thirty years, and the lessons we c...

On 7 November 2008, as part of our Distinguished Speaker Series, the Lowy Institute hosted The Grand Chief, Rt. Hon Sir Michael Somare GCMG CH, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea. The title of Sir Michael Somare's lecture was 'Pacific Regional Challenges'. He discussed the urgency with which the Pacific and the world must tackle the challenge of climate change, calling for a global paradigm shift...

What lessons does the Iraq conflict hold for Australia's new Defence White Paper? In the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 3 September, one of Australia's most experienced and distinguished military men drew upon his experience of running a 21st century urban counter-insurgency to talk about how the nature of the Iraq war should feed into the Defence White Paper process. Major Gen (Retd) Andrew James Mol...

The world economy is now characterised by intense international competition for skilled immigrants. At the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 21 May, Professor Peter McDonald considered how Australia can recruit the migrants that it needs and what the potential obstacles may be. Peter McDonald is Professor of Demography and Director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Austra...

The annual Lowy Lecture on Australia in the World is the highlight on our events calendar. The 2006 lecture was delivered by one of Australia’s most respected international strategic thinkers and international security experts, Professor Robert O’Neill AO. In his lecture entitled Prospects and Perspectives for International Security, Professor O’Neill gave perspectives on key international securit...

On 31 October, the Lowy Institute hosted an election debate between the Trade Minister, the Hon. Warren Truss, and the Shadow Trade Minister, the Hon. Simon Crean. Both speakers reaffirmed their belief that the WTO Doha Round could still deliver a global deal and presented their parties' different views on bilateral trade deals, including the ongoing negotiations with Japan and the potential for a...

The Lowy Institute was pleased to present a lecture by the Federal Labor Leader, Kevin Rudd MP, on Thursday 5 July 2007, as part of its Distinguished Speaker Series. The title of Mr Rudd's lecture was 'Fresh ideas for future challenges in foreign policy', downloadable here. In this important lecture, Mr Rudd outlined Labor's approach to Australian foreign policy. He also took questions from the fl...

The Honourable Gordon J. O’Connor, PC, MP, Canada's Minister of National Defence, spoke at the Lowy Institute on 8 September as part of the Institute's Distinguished Speaker Series. Canada and Australia are two nations which enjoy a shared heritage, common interests and a long history of external military commitments. Like Australia, Canada is undergoing a major restructuring and re-equipping of i...

Professor Hans-Henrik Holm addressed the Thursday Lunch at Lowy on the topic of the Danish cartoon media controversy, which occurred when the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad on September 30 2005. Hans-Henrik Holm is Professor of International Relations at the Danish School of Journalism and Aarhus University. He has held several senior academic appointmen...

Despite the economic downturn following the global financial crisis, the United States remains Australia’s most significant commercial partner, taking into account the value and diversity of our two-way investment and trade flows. On Tuesday 18 May at a panel discussion on the prospects and trends in the commercial relationship between Australia and the United States, The Honourable Anthony Byrne...

The Wednesday Lowy Lunch this week was on Tuesday and it launched the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Outlook Paper #13, 'Standing Together, In Single File', by the Lowy Institute’s Program Director East Asia, Dr Malcolm Cook. Malcolm was joined by Dr Brendan Taylor to discuss the paper. Brendan is a lecturer at the School of International, Political and Strategic Studies at ANU. Dr Andrew Butcher,...

The Mekong River basins are one of the most important and dynamic areas in the world for the battle between economic development’s demands for energy and environmental and social sustainability. As world attention shifts to the pending global climate change negotiations in far-off Copenhagen, the ongoing damming of the Mekong River and plans by the riparian states to build new dams threaten the li...

One if the biggest questions facing Asia, and Australia, is how is the global financial crisis affecting China and will the Chinese government's policy responses be effective. The front and opinion pages of Australia's broadsheets have been full of stories and editorials on this topic. At the Wednesday Lowy Lunch on 25 March 2009, Professor Leong Liew looked beyond these headlines and discussed th...

The Lowy Institute was pleased to host the second ‘headland’ speech by the Hon. Tony Abbott MHR, Leader of the Opposition, on Friday 23 April. The speech covered Coalition views on foreign affairs and defence. Tony Abbott was elected Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party on 1 December 2009. He was previously Leader of the House and a senior Cabinet Minister in the Howard Government, se...

On the occasion of the publication of his political memoirs, the Lowy Institute was pleased to welcome former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser for a conversation on Australian foreign policy. From the Vietnam War to the Afghanistan War, from international law to the treatment of refugees, Mr Fraser discussed the meaning of liberalism in the global context. He was joined on stage by Michael Wesley, th...

Monday, 9 November, 2009 was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To mark this anniversary, the Lowy Institute engaged three prominent commentators on the significance of the end of the Cold War. Lowy Institute Executive Director, Michael Wesley, moderated a conversation between veteran strategic analyst Owen Harries, Amnesty International Director Claire Mallinson, and Westpac int...

The 2009 Lowy Lecture on Australia in the World was delivered on 18 November by Mr Marius Kloppers, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of BHP Billiton Ltd. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Rudd Government has announced major reforms to our university system in order to ensure that Australia can meet challenges of the next century. At the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 29th July, Professor Ian Chubb argued that it is imperative for Australia that we lift our sights and rebuild our capacity to perform alongside the world’s best in those fields of education and research. He argued the...

In the 2009 Australia-India Strategic Lecture, delivered at the Lowy Institute on 11 May, Ambassador Chinmaya Gharekhan examined India’s dangerous neighbourhood, and in particular the deep security challenges posed by the situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He presented a sobering picture of the prospects for these countries, and the implications for India and other countries threatened by jih...

The Lowy Institute, in cooperation with the Sydney Democracy Forum, explored the state of West Asian democracy in a panel discussion held on Tuesday 2 October, 2007 at the Institute. The session compared and contrasted two different ends of the democratic spectrum in the region. It assessed the state of the region and the world’s largest democracy, India, and it explored democratic prospects in Eg...

The Symposium, Strengthening the Global and Regional Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, co-sponsored by Pacific Friends of the Global Fund, AusAID and the Lowy Institute for International Policy, was held at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on 24 February 2009. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 2008 Australia-India Strategic Lecture was presented at the Lowy Institute on 25 March 2008 by Ambassador Lalit Mansingh. The title of his lecture was 'The promise and the limits of the India-US relationship: What it means for Asia and the world'. The partnership between India and the United States has been a central part of the story of India's changing place in the world in recent years, and...