Lowy Institute

The world faces two creeping threats to its food supplies. On the one hand, expanding populations and the changing diets that accompany growing wealth have put greater strain on lagging gains in food production. On the other hand, climate change and environmental degradation are slowly contaminating food supplies and eroding agricultural productivity. At the Wednesday Lunch on 24 February, these i...

On 3 February, at the first Wednesday Lunch at Lowy for 2010, three Lowy Institute scholars discussed where the world and our region are headed after a tumultuous year in 2009. Will things be calmer or more uncertain? Mark Thirlwell, Program Director International Economy, assessed the post-GFC global economy. Michael Fullilove, Program Director Global Issues, looked at President Obama’s second ye...

Share on emailShare on printAt Lunch at Lowy on 16 February an exceptional panel of visiting international experts and policy practitioners from India, Pakistan, China and the USA discussed the risks of nuclear competition between the nuclear armed states in South West Asia and China. The panellists are in Sydney for a workshop on Asia's nuclear future, co-hosted by the Institute and the US-based...

In Afghanistan, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are now the number one killer of coalition forces, and the 2009 campaigning season is seeing a record number of IED attacks. At this week's Wednesday Lowy Lunch, the Commander of Australia’s Counter-IED Task Force, Brigadier Phil Winter, described how Australia and its partners in Afghanistan are dealing with the lethal harvest of what Afghans ar...

t the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 10 June, Professor Robert Lawrence of Harvard University spoke on the global financial crisis and international trade. At precisely the time when coordinated global action is required to meet the GFC, there are worrying signs in the US and other leading economies of new forms of protectionism stemming from government stimulus and bailout packages. Professor Lawrenc...

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...

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 eng...

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 Pacifi...

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 eng...

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 econom...

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 growt...

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 Negotiation...

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...

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 reduc...

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 issu...

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...

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...

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 Wo...

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 Jap...

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 confro...

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 powe...

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...

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 direct...