Foreign Affairs

What happened?
With the strange exception of the Walkley Award judges, many people and media organisations revised their assessment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over the past 12 months.

Assange shot to prominence last year with the explosive release of secret government documents from around the world, many of which revealed stories which were wholly in the public interest. They ranged from high level diplomatic assessments of foreign governments, to the more titillating but fascinating snippets of info which shed light on the personalities of world leaders. In the domestic setting we learned some interesting facts about our own government.

We learned that, as Prime Minister, the Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd was of the view that Australia and its chief ally the US should prepare for the possibility of a war against China.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #15 Publish and be damned" »

Kevin Rudd jet setting around the world partying with some of the world’s most powerful people might look like fun. It might even look like a waste of our tax dollars. Then again, it’s his job as foreign minister.

Suck it up, people. You might not like the guy but he’s got a job to do and he’s doing it. So what’s the problem?

Today The Daily Telegraph delivered a damning report of Kevin Rudd clocking up over $1 million on travel in his first nine months as foreign minister. Some will say it’s his revenge against Gillard knifing him in the back, making a big note of himself around the world. That’s rubbish.

Continue reading "Who gives a flying buck about Kevin 747’s expenses?" »

Three days ago we saw a reaffirmation of the long-standing strong relationship between Israel and the United States with the visit of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington DC and his second speech to the Joint Session of Congress.

Australia counts both the Unites States and Israel as close friends and allies.

The Prime Minister’s speech to Congress could not come at a more critical time for the Middle East and for the world.

Continue reading "Netanyahu and the Middle East’s epic battle" »

He’s jokey, he’s hokey, he’s contrite, he’s frank. He’s Kevin Rudd and he’s trying to convince you he has learned his lesson.

KR #2 last night used an ABC political chat show, Q&A, to suddenly start talking about some of those events of the past 12 months which are still shaping and plaguing the ALP and the government.

Rudd did so with a beguiling combination of Dad Jokes and aw-shucks language (in which Zimbabwe becomes Zim and Americans were Yanks, factional leaders were thugsters).

Continue reading "Chilled out Rudd is sticking the elbow in" »

It’s been a tough few weeks for Julia Gillard. She was accused of pre-election lying over carbon pricing, demonised at a comical fringe-dwelling rally, and conservative radio hosts competed over who can be most disrespectful towards her.

Gillard’s incompetence at foreign affairs is another area of criticism that’s becoming louder every overseas visit she makes. She was widely criticised for not advocating strongly enough the government’s support for the no-fly zone over Libya, and her first visit to America was eminently forgettable, including an unnecessarily emotional and ham-laden address to Congress.

The consensus is that Gillard is an international lightweight incapable of advocating the government’s position. But what Gillard’s critics fail to understand is that her weakness in foreign affairs is inconsequential.

Continue reading "Punch: It’s no biggie if Julia doesn’t like foreign affairs" »

Julia Gillard is not the first Australian Prime Minister to come to office with no experience of or interest in international relations. Unlike most, however, she appears disturbingly reluctant to learn.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with a Prime Minister admitting that she has no particular passion for foreign affairs, limited interest doesn’t excuse a lack of competence.

Sadly, Prime Minister Gillard’s performance to date has been marred by a series of embarrassing incidents, of which the obsequious performance before the United States Congress and her persistence with the refugee processing centre in Timor Leste against the manifest objections of Timor Leste’s government are just the most recent examples.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: Get out there and spruik us, Julia!" »

The situation in Libya is constantly changing. For the latest updates see news.com.au.

It is hard to agree with the Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd on many things these days, but his efforts to effect a no-fly zone over Libya three weeks ago struck a controversial, but important, note. A pity, then, that the usual international politics surrounding the Western alliance and the United Nations bogged down the process to the point that the rebels in Libya were on their last legs when the UN Security Council vote was taken on the matter.

Centre after centre of opposition were lost to Gaddafi’s reorganised forces, and his family-led offensives bit into what seemed like a promising revolutionary movement late last month.

The Colonel is a seasoned campaigner both within Libya itself, and in global politics. Ronald Reagan tried to take him out by a surprise missile attack on his palace in 1986. The missiles didn’t harm him, but were said to have killed an adopted daughter and some other members of his extended household. He reportedly took to spending his nights in shifting tents from then on, blending traditional culture (he was born in a tent) with forms of security which have been most effective.

Continue reading "Rudd was talking some sense on Gaddafi" »

One step forward, one step back. Elation, tempered by frustration.

These are the yin and yang senses in the Gillard camp as the PM flies back to Australia today following what should have been an unqualified triumph: a full White House reception extending to a schools visit, an address to a joint sitting of the US Congress, and meetings with all the key figures including the United Nations, General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon.

But for the still new-at-the-job Julia Gillard, struggling to stamp her authority on the prime ministership at home and abroad, Kevin Rudd, the man she displaced last June, remains a fly in the ointment.

Continue reading "Gillard is still struggling to clip Rudd’s wings" »

Most of us at some stage or another have received an invitation to a school reunion. Although I would hate to admit how long it has been since I left high school.

Even more sobering was an email I received inviting me to a reunion for the class of 1981 diplomatic cadets joining the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It is worth thinking about how much the world has turned on its head over the last 30 years.

Continue reading "The world has changed a lot, except the threat of violence" »

The loneliest man in the Labor Party never stops talking to people.

You would be financially wrecked if you had the telephone bill of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd who is dialing around the international dateline.

He listed his calls yesterday - over the past few days he has spoken to the UN Secretary General, the US Secretary of State, the US Deputy Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, and the heads of the IMF and the World Bank.

Continue reading "KRudd. Lonely. Bitter. Savage. And quite chatty." »

Most Australians have a vague awareness of the countries of the Pacific. Given their significance to our national interest these countries should get a better run in our public discourse.

But when it comes to taking the pulse on awareness about the territories of the Pacific the result is a very flat line. Ask a friend what they know of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and I’ll guarantee you’ll be met with a blank stare and furrowed brow.

Yet the territories of the Pacific contain some important economic opportunities for Australia. They are also the world’s sovereignty laboratory.

Continue reading "Some enchanted evening, we’ll acknowledge Sth Pacific" »

Over the past fortnight Kevin Rudd has monitored two major Australian issues from vantage points which don’t seem perfect for the task.

When Australians were reported to be trapped and in danger in Egypt, he was in Switzerland. When a massive cyclone hit his home state, he was in Lichtenstein.

Today, he will be back in the country for the first time in those two weeks, arriving just before the resumption of Parliament for the year.

Continue reading "Kevin 707: Rudd’s travel starts to raise eyebrows" »

Kevin Rudd might be egotistical, self-serving, mistake prone and a control freak but he is perfectly suited to the foreign ministry.

Although Rudd demanded the foreign affairs portfolio at the barrel of a gun, it’s a win-win situation for him and Australia. Rudd gets to travel the world and prepare for a post-political career and the country gets can rest assured that its biggest political liability has one of the least influential portfolios in government.

Rudd cannot do damage as Australia’s chief diplomat because diplomacy is the most overrated profession since travel agents. International relations is not about the high politics of the diplomatic elite; rather, it is about globalisation and interactions between individuals and firms operating within a global market.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd is in exactly the right place" »

On a crisp night in Jerusalem just over a week ago, Kevin Rudd hosted drinks for a small bunch of journalists at the famed King David Hotel.

The globe-trotting Foreign Minister had jetted into Israel from Egypt, punctuating the whistle-stop visit with meetings with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.

As he sat nursing a whiskey - neat, on the rocks - Rudd was jovial enough but could barely keep his eyes open. He looked like he needed a week’s worth of sleep.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd’s still flying solo" »

So Kevin Rudd’s been musing about the Chinese and how we might need to be ready to “deploy force” if efforts to integrate the PRC into the rest of the world go horribly wrong.

We established long ago the former PM has a tendency to get a bit carried away in discussions with other world leaders. Remember how he allegedly got off the phone from George W Bush and regaled his dinner guests with the cracking yarn that the then-US president didn’t know what the G20 was.

Or how in Copenhagen he went off about how the Chinese were trying to “rat-f**k us”. And who can forget his nickname for the UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon - “Spanky Banky”.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd’s bravado is actually a bit of a worry" »

The relationship between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard was bound to be a fragile one. But it now looks like the Prime Minister has grounded her Foreign Minister, potentially damaging our international relations.

Kevin Rudd should have been in Brussels this past week with Julia Gillard.

The Prime Minister was in town for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), a gathering of forty leaders from the two continents which Rudd lobbied hard to have Australia become a member of as Prime Minister. The leaders (or their deputies) of major and middle powers like China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea attended with their Foreign Ministers. But Rudd was nowhere to be seen.

Continue reading "Why wasn’t Rudd in Brussels with the PM?" »

The flooding in Pakistan was an unavoidable natural disaster. The measures we take now will decide if we can avoid an ongoing humanitarian disaster.

Last Thursday I visited Pakistan to inspect the flood damage and the Australian response in Kot Addu, near Multan in the Southern Punjab.

The UN High-Level Meeting on Pakistan today met to discuss the adequacy, or inadequacy, of the international response. This meeting has one challenge – to prevent a natural disaster becoming a humanitarian calamity that could have been avoided.

Continue reading "What I saw in Pakistan, and why the world must help" »

I’m sure I am not alone in saying that every time I see Kevin Rudd on the television these days I hear Metallica playing Enter Sandman in the background and expect him to jump on a Harley and blow away a Columbian drug lord with a sawn-off.

Or maybe he just has a certain look in his eye.

The sad truth is that there have been no winners in this agonisingly protracted and policy-free election campaign. No winners except Kevin, that is.

Continue reading "One lesson from the election: Don’t mess with Kevin" »

During the recent election campaign, any significant attention to our place in the world and foreign policy was lost amongst the cacophony of discussion of the environment, climate change, the economy, broadband internet and Speedos.

With the exception of the boat people drama, both major parties seemed strangely silent on the topic of Australia’s interaction with the outside world. ‘Moving Australia Forward’ probably didn’t extend to dumping the entire country somewhere in the North Atlantic, but that’s about as much attention as it got.

Continue reading "Ambassador for the Australian mentality" »

With foreign policy barely rating a mention in the election campaign, the strongest indication we will have of the eventual winner’s view on the world is where they decide to go first.

Like most elections this campaign wasn’t fought on foreign policy.

Even with the tragic deaths of three soldiers in Afghanistan it was a passing topic. Tony Abbott did promise to dump Australia’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council and appoint a Minister for International Development. But the closest we got to a genuine debate on our place in the world was one about which island country to our north to send asylum seekers.

Continue reading "The foreign affairs guessing game: first stop for the PM?" »

Elections are rarely fought on matters of foreign policy, but Julia Gillard has a rare opportunity to dominate the scene through some simple manoeuvring.

In a few weeks time the Pacific Islands Forum will meet in Vanuatu. The annual talkfest brings together leaders of fourteen states in the region with a handful of other observers.

It seems unlikely on current posturing that the Prime Minister will attend the gathering. Even Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is doubtful saying he will make a decision closer to the date and assesses his attendance on a “case-by-case” basis. Something Alexander Downer, who attended both the 1998 and 2007 forums when they clashed with the election campaign, has rightly called an insult to the region. If the Prime Minister is really as tactful a politician as many think she will attend the forum.

Continue reading "The path to a foreign policy coup for Gillard" »

As speculation mounts that ousted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will become the new Foreign Minister, is there a better role out there for him in the world?

Kevin Rudd was known for appointing politicians of both sides to important positions overseas.

He shipped former Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson off to Brussels as an Ambassador when he was discarded as Opposition Leader. At the same time Kim Beazley who he knocked off as leader was predictably sent packing for the plum job in Washington.

Continue reading "What in the world can Kevin Rudd do now?" »

It doesn’t wash that high profile Western Australian politician Stephen Smith would be happy to forego the plum foreign affairs portfolio to make way for Kevin Rudd.

For a start, Mr Smith’s high profile in his home state and the capital Perth is critical to the party improving its electoral appeal in the west, and a demotion to a lesser portfolio would not sit well with the Liberal-leaning punters.

Taking any parochial state-based political thinking out of the equation, there’s also the national interest to think of.

Continue reading "Why Rudd should not be the Foreign Minister" »

EAST Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has taken in recent weeks to heavily bagging Australia, including a strange speech in which he, seemingly apropos of nothing, dug deep into the past and said Australia had selfishly cost the lives of 60,000 East Timorese by coming to Timor to “wage war” against the Japanese in World War II.

Gusmao has also been claiming Australian interference in its sovereign rights. Australia is studying the rhetoric closely, with good reason. As Gusmao slams Australia, his country’s biggest aid donor, Gusmao has allowed China for the first time to gain a small de facto military foothold in East Timor.

China now has naval training crews operating out of Dili aboard two gunboats which East Timor bought from China, and which were formally handed over last week. Gusmao’s attacks on Australia, and his newfound military cooperation with China, are seen as related.

Continue reading "Watching East Timor as China gets a military toehold" »

The old saying is true, you do have to watch the quiet ones. Derided by his former leader Mark Latham as a “rooster”, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith showed this week that he is a particularly lethal fighting rooster as he methodically dismantled his shadow, Julie Bishop, over the forged passport scandal.

The expulsion of the Israeli diplomat and the subsequent argument over whether Canberra had gone too far has been discussed at some length on The Punch and elsewhere.

All I will say about it here is that it was not an issue (and would probably never have become an issue) which was the subject of animated discussion in shopping centre food courts around Australia.

Continue reading "Libs carved up by a lethal fighting rooster" »

Are you scared about the world’s future?  Worried that so many things could go wrong?  One of the smartest people I know says let’s keep it in perspective:

The future is not to be seen as something preordained, something already existing and impatiently waiting in the wings for its turn on the stage of history.  The future does not exist; it is not something there to be discovered, like an island or a mountain.  It is something which has still to be made. And how it is made, and what it will become, will depend on people like you, here and throughout the world.

The speaker was my friend Owen Harries.  The occasion was a function at Sydney University where he received the highest honour possible, the Doctor of Letters.  It recognised his contribution to the intellectual life of Australia and the US over more than fifty years.

Continue reading "Well read-head: predicting the future a recipe for stress" »

The Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to visit Australia in early March and will be addressing both houses of Parliament.

It’s not that common to have a foreign leader address the Australian Parliament but it will be repeated later in March when the US President Barack Obama is expected to do the same.

Australia-Indonesia relations are always complex. At the leadership and government level they remain strong as the Howard Government had left them, despite frustrations in official Indonesian ranks over the Rudd Government’s handling of the Oceanic Viking saga and the ongoing issue of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers that remain in limbo off a West Java port.

Continue reading "Our role in defending democracy in Indonesia" »

Last week saw an unusual event in Australian politics: backbench members of Parliament from both sides took a foreign affairs initiative, independent of their party leaderships. Sixty Members and Senators – Labor, Liberal, Green and independent – signed a letter which was presented to the Malaysian High Commissioner protesting against the current trial of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of “sodomy.”

The letter was signed by, among others, Laurie Ferguson, Malcolm Turnbull, Greg Hunt, Bob Brown, Nick Xenophon, Duncan Kerr, Deputy Speaker Anna Burke, Jennie George, Gary Gray and Mark Dreyfus QC.

It followed a speech which I gave in the House of Representatives on 3 February, in which I drew the House’s attention to the 2nd Sodomy trial in Kuala Lumpur of Anwar Ibrahim.

Continue reading "Why MPs protested over the Anwar trial" »

He is the Elvis memorabilia collecting international law expert who is now Obama’s man in Australia. New US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich spoke to The Punch’s Leo Shanahan at his residence in Canberra last week about his relationship with Barack Obama, climate change, Afghanistan and his most prized possessions.

As a talented lawyer, Clinton administration advisor and long-time friend of Barack Obama Jeffrey Bleich knew he wanted an opportunity to serve in the Obama’s White House, but initially neither Bleich nor the President could decide on a job title or what it was he would be doing.

“So I asked the President what I would be doing and he said ‘well let’s just call it Special Counsel to the President.’ So I became special counsel to the President.” 

Continue reading "A Punch chat with Obama’s man in Oz Jeffrey Bleich" »

A couple of weeks ago I had a night to kill in a foreign capital and took myself to see “This Is It”. The film starts with the dancers speaking about the amazing opportunity of performing on stage with Michael Jackson.

One began by announcing he was Australian. Out of country and a little homesick, my patriotic heart leapt. To my amazement, the rest of the audience greeted his declaration with warmth and cheers suggestive of collective ownership.

It reminded me how much Kiwis and Aussies love to own each others successes. Take Russell Crowe, Crowded House and Phar Lap - all dinky-di Australians.

Continue reading "Ah, New Zealand, we love you like one of us" »

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wrote an essay for the world’s top foreign policy publication Foreign Affairs but it was rejected by the magazine’s editorial board.

The Punch can today reveal that Mr Rudd penned an essay last summer concerning his idea for an Asia-Pacific Union along with his paper on the global financial crisis. But Foreign Affairs magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations chose not to run the piece.

Foreign Affairs editor, James F. Hoge Jr., told The Punch that Mr Rudd had intended the piece to coincide with Mr Rudd’s trip to the United States in March of this year but there were “timing problems” between the magazine’s publication and Mr Rudd’s visit.

Mr Hoge said that there was also “overlap” between the essay’s topic and similar articles recently published in Foreign Affairs.

But he described Mr Rudd as a “thoughtful statesman”.

Continue reading "Rudd’s secret spiked essay for Foreign Affairs journal" »

ONE of the best columns of the year to date was this week’s hilarious, bang-on rant by former foreign minister Alexander Downer, who used his regular spot in Adelaide’s The Advertiser to get 11 years’ worth of fury off his chest about our more half-witted countrymen and women who get into scrapes overseas.

Under the pithy headline “Idiot Aussies: Grow up and take responsibility”, Downer condensed more than a decade’s worth of rage into a searing piece which dealt with everything from the taxpayer-funded exodus from Lebanon, to claims of Canberra’s neglect of convicted drug dealers such as the Bali Nine, and Schapelle Corby, who stars in the above YouTube video urging her release.

Downer used as his starting point Melbourne’s so-called “Beer Mat Mum” who, having been jailed for stealing a Singha-sodden terry-towelling mat from some Thai dive bar, is surely just as compelling a bogan pin-up as the chk-chk-boom girl.

Continue reading "Saving Australians from their own overseas stupidity" »