The Lowy Institute is a leading international think tank that looks at the world from Australia’s perspective.
This channel aggregates audio from across all of our event and podcast channels.
On 23 April at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, James A. Kelly, discussed how American policy towards Asia has changed on recent years. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
At the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 13th February, Dr Malcolm Cook discussed the results of recent elections in South Korea and Taiwan. Malcolm analysed whether South Korean and Taiwan voters are trying to return to the past and what this might mean for Northeast Asia's two most dangerous flashpoints, the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan strait, and Australia's vital interest in Northeast Asian stability. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
At the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 28 November, Professor Michael Wesley, in a presentation entitled 'Planning Australia's future in Asia', examined the major challenges and great opportunities that make it essential that Australia takes seriously the task of foreign policy planning in its regional diplomacy. Professor Michael Wesley is the Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
On 29 May, in a lecture in our Distinguished Speaker Series, Dr Michael Green from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington discussed America's position in Asia and the challenges for the next Administration. The presentation first looked at what the Bush administration's Asia policy is and what the approaching debates are in Washington, and beyond, over this policy, in the run-up to the US elections. Also, the presentation looked at the role of the US-Australia alliance ...
The third Lowy Lecture on 'Australia in the World' was given in Sydney on 19 November by Lord May of Oxford. It deals with one of the most urgent problems we face - the consequence for the international system of the range of environmental challenges facing the planet. Informed by his deep scientific and public policy experience, Lord May's lecture, entitled 'Relations among Nations on a Finite Planet', warns us of the changes that are needed in the way world politics operate as we enter this 'p...
On 18 October at a special Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, three Lowy Institute scholars spoke on the rise of China. Mark Thirlwell, Program Director, International Economy and author of a recent Perspective entitled 'Shaking the world?' talked about China and the world economy. Dr Malcolm Cook, Program Director, Asia and the Pacific and author of 'Regional Australia's China boom' spoke on China's Asia strategy. Dr Michael Fullilove, the Program Director, Global Issues, spoke on China and the United Na...
On 11 October 2006 at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, the Institute launched a Lowy Institute Paper entitled Pitfalls of Papua: Understanding the Conflict and its Place in Australia-Indonesia Relations. The author is Dr Rodd McGibbon, one of Australia's best young Indonesia analysts with a background in government, development aid and academia. The new Lowy Institute Paper boldly addresses these problems by carefully analysing the history of the Papuan conflict in Australia-Indonesia relations and ...
At the Wednesday Lunch on 12 September, Dr Douglas Ramage led the discussion on the progress of Indonesia's political reforms triggered by the collapse of Suharto’s New Order. In the last decade, Indonesian politics have been fundamentally transformed as the world's fourth most populous country has shifted from a one-party, centralised political order to a multi-party democracy with a very significant transfer of funds and power to local governments. He discussed how the political system is chan...
At the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy on 1 August Dr Peter McCawley led the discussion on why Indonesia has largely fallen off the international radar screen in recent years. Despite being the largest country in Southeast Asia, Indonesia receives comparatively little international media coverage beyond stories linked with terrorism and Indonesia is often left out of discussion of East Asia's major countries. Australia's robust public debate about Indonesia and Jakarta-Canberra relations is very much th...
On 6 February at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, John Garnaut, the Beijing-based Asia Economics Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, discussed how the question of how to divide profits from the conversion of rural land is one of the most contentious in China. Beijing is stepping up its pro-peasant, pro-equity rhetoric and yet China's enormous rural-urban wealth gap is getting wider and land disputes appear to be getting worse. John's presentation was entitled 'Peasant...
US President Barack Obama has called himself ‘America’s first Pacific president’. On Monday the Lowy Institute and the United States Studies Centre endeavoured to flesh out this concept. How should we rate his presidency and, in particular, his policies towards the Pacific region? What looming challenges does he face in Asia and the Pacific? Dr Michael Wesley chaired a discussion with three experts: Dr Michael Fullilove, Program Director, Global Issues; Mary Kissel, Editorial Page Editor, The Wa...
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 issues were examined by Julianne Schultz, Editor of the Griffith Review, which has just published its...
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 year in office and the changing global outlook, and Jenny Hayward-Jones, Program Director Myer Foundat...
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 Non-proliferation Policy Education Center. We thank NPEC for bringing the panellists to Australia. P...
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 are now calling the 'evil flowers'. Brigadier Winter's PM interview on the topic is at: http://www.abc...
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 Lawrence’s address focused on the impact of the global recession and how trade and cooperation will play pr...
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 China as a key power determining the future of collective global issues? What are the challenges to...
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 engaged deeply and widely with Australians at every level of the community in every state of the Common...
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 Pacific portion of the report and discussed the policy options available to the region to minimise the imp...
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 engaged deeply and widely with Australians at every level of the community in every state of the Common...
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 economic interests, the Minister spoke about the Government's policies to ensure, through bilateral, regio...
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 growth of state-controlled capital flows, the Beijing consensus, and emerging market-led bailouts of Wall...
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 Negotiations in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with particular responsibility for Australia's par...
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 a number of other democracies and asked whether Australia's laws are a necessary evil, or whether t...
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 reducing future greenhouse emissions. In this speech to the Lowy Institute as part of our Distinguished S...
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 issues, and the bilateral relationship, as well as updating some results from the inaugural Lowy Institu...
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 governance program in PNG. However, elections work very differently in PNG than in Australia. Local...
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 policies (and in particular the facility at Guantanamo Bay) affecting that country’s international ...
