The Lowy Institute

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 the exception and not the rule. Dr Peter McCawley is the former Dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute and the former head of the Australian National University's Indonesia Project. He has worked on Indonesia and international development issues for close to four decades.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 land disputes, viewed through the bars of a small town police station.'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Wall Street Journal Asia; and Dr Geoffrey Garrett, Chief Executive Officer, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 newest edition, Food Chain. She was joined by Mark Thirlwell, Director of the Global Issues Program at the Lowy Institute, and Annmaree O’Keeffe, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute, who have both written on these twin challenges to food security.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Foundation Melanesia Program, reviewed prospects for the Pacific, with a particular focus on Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbour, and Fiji.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Photo: Professor Gareth Evans spoke at the workshop dinner on the Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 'Eliminating nuclear threats: a practical agenda for global policymakers', which he co-authored with Yoriko Kawaguchi.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.net.au/pm/content/2009/s2740062.htm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 prominent roles in the recovery.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Australia’s economy as posed by an increasingly knowledge-intensive and Asia-centric global economy? Michael Wesley discussed these and other issues, and in doing so, outlined his vision for the Lowy Institute over the next five years.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Commonwealth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 impacts of the global economic crisis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Commonwealth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, regional and multilateral cooperation, that we are collectively well placed to advance our common interests and respond to the challenges ahead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Street.In the latest in our Wednesday Lunch at Lowy series, Mark Thirlwell, Director of the Institute's International Economy program, described how the international economic order hasn't turned out quite the way the West thought it would.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 participation in the WTO. Earlier, he was Australia's Special Negotiator for Agriculture and before that the Ambassador for the Environment. He has served at the Australian missions in Geneva, Washington and Buenos Aires.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 they signal the twilight of the rule of law. Dr Ben Saul is Director of the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law at the Faculty of Law, The University of Sydney.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Speaker Series, Peter Garrett asked whether Australia will remain an outlier nation, or join the growing movement for change to a low carbon economy and a safer world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Institute Poll in 2005.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.