Category Archives: Asia-Pacific Politics
What a State demands, what a citizen gives, and what Abbott and Hockey simply don’t understand
Recent history and the dreaded ‘age of entitlement’ mantra The rhetoric from the Abbott-Hockey mantra of the ‘age of entitlement’ appears to be getting more manic as a viewing of the ABC’s Parliament Question Time will attest; and as other … Continue reading
Australia’s Abbott government, the Asia-Pacific region and the ‘China Divide’
Prime Minister (PM) Abbott arrived in China after a somewhat successful mission to Japan and South Korea recently, in acquiring trade benefits on some Australian exports. Broadly speaking, his visit to parts of the Asia-Pacific (AP) region has been hailed … Continue reading
The Rise of Pax-Sino and the Asia-Pacific Region
This is a presentation I gave as part of the Cultural Enquiry Research Group (CERG) on the 3rd of March 2014, entitled ‘The Kangaroo, the Eagle and the Dragon: Australia-America-China and the possibility of war in the ‘Asian Century.’ It … Continue reading
Australian Navy ‘strays’ into Indonesian waters
There is much to read in to what has happened recently in the straying of Australian Navy vessels into Indonesian sovereign waters and the ire this has raised in the officials of their government. From a party that espouses ‘sovereignty’ one would think … Continue reading
The Indonesia spy scandal and the future for Australia
Professor White of the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre is right in his article in The Age, on 26 November, 2013: ‘Abbott playing with diplomatic fire in Asia.’ The level of incompetence shown by the Abbott government in dealing with … Continue reading
On the boil: Australia, China and the Western Pacific
There has been much debate, indeed sparring, recently about whether the coming decades will be the ‘Asian Century’ or a renewed ‘American Century’ as has been shown in The Age. With America progressing down the road of a more energy-sustainable … Continue reading
Abbott and the Archipelago
The recent lecturing of the Abbott government to the Indonesian government about what Australia will do about asylum-seeker boats is an affront to Indonesian sovereignty on several levels. Firstly, we (that is Western Europeans) forced the concept of sovereignty on to Asia and for us to … Continue reading
China, the Pacific and the waves it will create for Australia
At the present time for Australia the rise of China is not yet complete, but that is not to say Australians should be complacent to the challenges that its rise will bring. Nothing is more certain however, than as China … Continue reading
There is Trouble in Paradise
According to SBS World News (29, July, 2013) Fiji’s foreign minister ‘launched an acidic broadside against the [Australian] governments plan to send asylum seekers [to] Papua New Guinea’ and further warned that it ‘could alter the social fabric of the … Continue reading
