Lowy Institute

Success in the development and adoption of 'infotronic' technologies is going to be critical to the future of Australia's economic competitiveness and our standard of living. In this Wednesday Lowy Lunch presentation, Hugh Bradlow, Chief Technology Officer for Telstra, looked at the changes in ICT technologies over the next 10 years and the impact that they are likely to have on human behaviour an...

The debate about overseas aid’s effectiveness has until recently been largely confined to policy-makers but, over the past few weeks, the issue has featured prominently in the Australian media. In the Wednesday Lowy Lunch on 4 August, Joel Negin examined the increasingly complex arena of international development assistance, putting the challenges of development assistance into a global context an...

The 41st Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting will be held in Port Vila from 4 August 2010. Australia is the outgoing chair of the Forum. In the lead up to the meeting the Lowy Institute convened a panel of diverse Pacific commentators and experts from government and non-government sectors to discuss key issues of importance for the Pacific at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 28 July. See omnystudio...

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...

Yemen's growing internal crises and linkages to international terrorism have captured the attention of the international community. Yemen's position at the crossroads of international trade and in a region already bedevilled by piracy and instability are further reasons to be interested in that country's future trajectory. On 14 July the Wednesday Lowy Lunch Club heard Philip Eliason speak about Y...

After an extraordinary build-up, the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference spectacularly failed to produce an international response commensurate with the scale of the climate change issue - and there seems little prospect of an agreement in the near term. This Wednesday Lowy Lunch launched a new Lowy Policy Brief that charts an alternative course for delivering an international agreement on climat...

On Friday 16 July, Australia's Defence Minister, Senator John Faulkner, spoke at the Lowy Institute to discuss Australia's commitment and contribution to the ISAF effort in Afghanistan, in the context of Australian strategic objectives, operational developments and the challenge of capacity building. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the Lowy Institute on Tuesday 6 July, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Julia Gillard, gave her first major policy speech as prime minister. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lowy Lecture Series - Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi presentation The Wednesday Lowy Lecture on 14 March 2012 explored the policy challenges posed by Iran's nuclear program with Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi. Dr Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. He has done extensive research on the connections between Iran’s energy companies and its Islamic Revolutionary G...

In an address at the Lowy Institute on 7 February, Professor Ross Garnaut launched his second Update Paper, 'Progress towards effective global action on climate change', which examines international developments in action on climate change since 2008, including the outcomes from Copenhagen and Cancun. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Poll was launched by Lowy Institute Executive Director, Dr Michael Wesley, and was followed by an interactive discussion with panelists, including a Q&A. The discussants were: The Hon. Bob Carr, Laura Tingle and Senator Russell Trood. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Asia's security tensions at sea are back on top of the global strategic agenda with the July 2011 visit to China by US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. The Lowy Institute recently launched a major new publication on this subject. During the launch event in Canberra on 28 June, a presentation by principal author Rory Medcalf was followed by a panel discussion involving th...

On 29 July in Canberra, in the latest in our Food for Thought series, Mark Thirlwell, Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Economy program, looked at our post-GFC world and tried to answer the question, 'Just how much has changed as a result of the global financial crisis?' See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With the US out of Iraq and on its way out of Afghanistan American military strategy may be reverting back to large war scenarios for its future planning. The lecture will consider the basis for this reversion, including a reassessment of the war on terror, frustration with COIN (counter-insurgency) and concerns about China, and ask whether it will be any easier for the US to avoid the lesser cont...

In this lecture under the Lowy Institute's Canberra Food for Thought series, leading nuclear expert Professor Scott Sagan of Stanford University weighs up the achievements and the challenges ahead for the Obama nuclear agenda. This event, moderated by the Lowy Institute's Rory Medcalf, was supported by the Lowy Institute's partnership with the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiat...

On Monday 11 April, Professor Michael Grubb of the University of Cambridge addressed the Lowy Lunch Club on the climate change 'policy triad' of technology, pricing and energy efficiency. Professor Grubb argued for a new framing of the problem aligned with security and geopolitical concerns, and a refreshed approach to international coordination based upon the needs of effective and efficient dome...

Halting biodiversity loss requires rethinking how humans do business with the biosphere. Innovation is needed in accounting of the goods and services nature provides humanity. Dr Aaron Bernstein discussed these issues at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 21 April. Dr Bernstein is on faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Health and Global Environment. See omnystudio.com/listener for pri...

'A Careful War’ was a compelling two-part documentary program which appeared on the ABC’s Four Corners earlier this month. Distinguished reporter Chris Masters undertook a ground-level exploration of one corner of the Afghanistan conflict. Focusing on the work of an Australian mentoring company, the program delivered important and moving perspectives on this complex battlefront from the soldiers w...

In the Food for Thought series in Canberra, Malcolm Cook, Director of the Lowy Institute’s East Asia program, and Hugh White, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute and head of the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, debated what the Asian strategic order will look like in 20 to 30 years time and what that will mean for Australia’s strategic policy options. See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

On the evening of 17 March, the Lowy Institute was very pleased to host a lecture by Professor Wang Gungwu entitled 'US and China: Respect and Equality'. The evolving US-China relationship is now the single most important and complicated major power relationship globally and one of immense importance to Australia. As Professor Wang noted, in a world of hierarchies and league tables, the semblance...

How do China's leaders and political elites view the world? What kind of an international role would they like China to assume? At our Food for Thought on Friday 29 April, the new Director of the Lowy Institute's East Asia Program, Linda Jakobson, discussed these issues. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the Lowy Lecture Series on 20 July, a high-level panel, with Sandy Hollway AO, Jack De Groot and Rowan Callick, considered how well Australia's aid program is placed to respond to evolving development challenges. Annmaree O'Keeffe, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute, chaired the discussion. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Based on research including consultations with 180 officials in ten Asia-Pacific countries over the past six years, this careful and balanced assessment of the strengths and limitations of Asia’s rise, notably the rise of China, along with the strengths and weaknesses of the United States and its ongoing leadership position in the region, demonstrates that neither China nor any other power or coal...

The global context for foreign aid is changing rapidly as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approach their deadline for cutting extreme poverty by half by 2015. The traditional donor club of OECD countries is handing much of the development leadership role to emerging powers such as Brazil, China, India and Korea. At the Lowy Lecture Series on 23 November 2011, John W. McArthur examined tren...

The Lowy Institute was delighted to launch its 2011 Distinguished Speaker Series with a presentation by leading economist, analyst and writer Richard Koo. Drawing on his detailed work on Japan's 'Great Recession', Richard described the lessons Japan's experience holds for the US and world economies, assessed the likely effectiveness of the policy response to date, and gave his views on the prospec...