While here in Australia, the debate about climate change grinds through the technicalities (which I am still trying to chew my way through), things are happening overseas. At the G8 summit, the commnique on the environment and climate change contained far stronger language than the last one. Read more »
I’ve often said that the best source for public opinion research around is the Australian Election Study. Some preliminary data has been released [link to pdf] by researchers Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark, presented in graphical form. The purpose of the paper is to enable assessments of changes in public opinion over time, with some of the questions forming a time series going back to 1969. Read more »
Kim mentioned the PM’s new nuclear disarmament commission yesterday. I figured some context might be in order. Read more »
I’m watching ABC tv news at the moment, and there’s a classic instance of the sort of thing I was complaining about in a previous post. A story by Greg Jennett on Kevin Rudd’s trip to Japan was introduced and framed with the claim that it’s “an open secret” that the Japanese government was deeply unhappy with Rudd’s supposed focus on China. Read more »
You might remember that the government recently gave Gareth Evans a new job - to lead a commission on nuclear disarmament. In that context, I happened to pick up (for the trans-Pacific plane ride) little Quarterly Essay-style book on nuclear disarmament by Hans Blix, the man who spent 2002-3 being conspicuously and inconveniently correct on the topic of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Read more »
Greg Sheridan, Serious Foreign Policy Expert:
I ran into Beazley at this year’s Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Washington, DC. The dialogue, founded by Melbourne businessman, Phil Scanlan, is the most important initiative in private diplomacy in Australian history.
As well as reminding us of the important circles in which he moves, Greg pulls out some of his greatest hits: Read more »
I read Greg Sheridan’s latest drivel yesterday and had it earmarked for blogging, but it was so baffling that I didn’t know where to begin.
Thankfully, Sean at the Road to Surfdom and the commenters on his article have taken care of the job. Read more »
It’s interesting to see Kevin Rudd again use an overseas trip for a major announcement - the initiation by Australia of an international commission to feed into the review process in 2010 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Rudd made the announcement after he’d been to Hiroshima, a destination that few Western leaders have visited. Read more »
There’s been some comment here on a previous thread about why Australia’s withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq has stimulated so little debate - either in the media or in the blogosphere. My comment on why that might be so is here, and I’d add that the rather narrow concept of the political in Australian public discourse tends to mean that issues which are “politically neutralised” are quickly forgotten. Read more »
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