What is Your New Year's Resolution for Australian Foreign Policy?

01 Jan 2016

AIIA Fellows responding to the burning question of the week

Expert Panel-Fellows of the AIIA
Hilary Charlesworth FAIIA-Professor, ANU; Director of Centre for International Governance and Justice	Jocelyn Chey AM FAIIA-Visiting Professor, University of Sydney; former Consul-General in Hong Kong	James Cotton FAIIA-Emeritus Professor at the University of NSW	Rawdon Dalrymple AO FAIIA-Former Visiting Professor, University of Sydney; Chairman of ASEAN Focus Group Ltd	Graeme Dobell FAIIA-Journalist Fellow, Australian Strategic Policy Institute	Erika Feller FAIIA-Former UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection	Janet Hunt FAIIA-Former Head of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid
James Ingram AO FAIIA-Former Diplomat and Head of the UN World Food Program	John McCarthy AO FAIIA-Former Ambassador to Japan, Indonesia, the United States, Thailand, Mexico and Vietnam	Geoffrey Miller AO FAIIA-Former Australian Ambassador to Japan; former Director-General of the Office of National Assessments	Robert O’Neill FAIIA– Former Chichele Professor of the History of War, Oxford University	Garry Woodard FAIIA-Former Diplomat and Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne	Richard Woolcott AC FAIIA-Former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade	Samina Yasmeen AM FAIIA-Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University of Western Australia

Question: What is your New Year’s resolution for Australian foreign policy?

James Ingram AO FAIIA

Real, as distinct from rhetorical, movement toward an independent Australian foreign policy.

John McCarthy AO FAIIA

Less emphasis on the Middle East, more on our region.

Garry

Woodard

FAIIA

Study Sun Tzu.

Jocelyn

Chey AM

FAIIA

Revise our stance on the Palestine issue.

Rawdon

Dalrymple

AO FAIIA

Vote in favour of sensible US policy in the ME but cease to become entangled in it.

Erika Feller FAIIA

To be a more engaged and fairer player when it comes to the two key global challenges of mass refugee flows and climate change.

Graeme Dobell FAIIA

The same resolution as always – how Asia (economically epochal, strategically tectonic) will keep changing and growing and Australia’s place in it all?Plus, the rider to the resolution: keep a bit of bandwidth for the vital role Australia must play, should play, needs to play, in its arc of responsibility, the South Pacific.

Robert O’Neill

FAIIA

We need to make a stronger effort to develop friendly relations in our own region, particularly with Indonesia, in the coming year. Our two counties should not have been withdrawing ambassadors from each other. We have some leeway to make up!

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