Australia's future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world
The Australian Government is committed to restoring Australia's place as a nation of creative middle power diplomacy - both in our region and in broader international forums. Australia has the potential to be a significant force for good in our region and on the world stage, including through our diplomatic efforts, increased contribution to efforts to reduce extreme poverty and fostering stability and peace in our region.
The Australian Government is acutely aware of the new range of security, economic and foreign policy challenges across our international operating environment. The Government is conscious of the need for creative, long term responses to these challenges.
The Australia 2020 Summit will examine:
- How Australia best protects its national security interests in the face of an increasingly complex threat spectrum, including terrorism, bio-security and other threats to human security - as well as the adequacy of existing institutional arrangements for dealing with the threat spectrum into the future
- How Australia should maximise its cooperation with its long-standing ally the United States
- How Australia engages with China and India in the coming decades as both play an increasingly important economic and political role
- How Australia can make the greatest contribution both within and outside the framework of the United Nations in addressing the challenge of extreme poverty
- The long-term adequacy of Australia's existing foreign language capabilities to meet increasingly complex challenges presented by the globalisation.
Use this online forum to contribute your ideas to the Summit.
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Comments
Think Locally and Act Locally
Surely the priority for our security policy is to focus on our region and spend money creating stability in the pacific rather than fighting on distant shores. We should focus on nation building not on all guns blazing style security. Our peacekeepers have done a great job in places like East Timor and the Solomon Islands, we need to build on this work throughout the rest of the region.
At the same time religious extremism is a serious issue throughout the region, and dealing with that will take diplomacy, not guns, so maybe we should be redirecting our military expenditure towards Asian and Religious studies courses at University.
Terrorism and US
Hoping for a different future for Australia, I allow myself to think that becoming a truly independent and democratic nation is still possible for all of us.
Contrarily to the highly praised rhetoric disseminated by the main stream media, we are still a constitutional Monarchy and not a Democracy. The last authority resides in the Queen of England, not in the Australian People. This fact has had deep consequences for Australian " foreign policy".
We have always followed what our masters in London tell us to do.
Austrlian troops are participating in atrocities in joint ventures wiht the US and the UK aimed at plundering resources from the Third World. Namely: the oil of Iraq and the biggest gas reserves in the world which are located in Afghanistan. Pathetically, many Australians happily joined the mercenaries of Blackwater for a profit. We can only imagine the wonders of their achievements since the " free australian media" avoids the topic systematically.
Australian troops have taken part in a massive operation of terror aimed at the civilian population of Iraq cooperating with the US and the UK in the killing of hundred of thousands of iraquis. A shameless crime.Their horrors and desperation rarely bother our tranquility while relishing a shiraz at a well provided dinner table.
Unfortunately, Australia believes in the use of violence to achieve political and economic ends. Whether we like it or not, Australia is a violent nation that, willingly and eagerly, has joined the rapacious US-UK policies in the abuse of the weak, the poor and the defenceless.
The persue of this ignoble behaviour is a major threat to our internal peace and security,now and in the future.
I dream of an independent Republic of Australia, truly committed to the human rights of every human being on the planet. A country of principles and ideals rather than a source of mercenaries for hire when a profit can be made. This is our challenge for the years to come.
Australian documentaries can make a difference
Let’s finance Australian independent documentaries filmed overseas, eg about human rights and other serious international issues on the world stage – these films make an important mark overseas, but too often these topics are ineligible for funding from Australian media and arts bodies because they’re not filmed on Australian shores or about Australia itself.
Australia is part of a changing world, where an international focus is paramount. To forge a successful career most of our artists need to exhibit and create in the international arena as well. If we want Australia to reach the forefront of the world creative stage, our art and our artists should have a global vision, and a global outlook in the themes we give life to. Lets assist that in our funding focus too.
To give a very topical example; I recently filmed an independent Australian documentary undercover in Zimbabwe about the serious brutality of Robert Mugabe’s regime, at great risk to my own safety as I would have landed in prison or in hospital if my endeavours had been discovered. The doc was filmed from the hip and funded purely from my hip pocket too, because as far as I’m aware there is little finance available from the ABC, SBS or funding bodies for Oz docos that aren’t filmed in and about Australia.
The only thing ‘Australian’ about some of my films is that I have an Australian passport - They are about topics far further afield. But nonetheless because I (as producer) am Australian my films are proudly classed as Australian productions, and are representative of the Australian film industry at countless film festivals overseas.
For decades the focus of funding has been ‘Australian made’, and rightly so– but why has that been limited to projects made purely on Australian shores? Let’s fund more work filmed, painted, recorded or written by Australians overseas – it’s a fantastic way to make a difference, to contribute to global debates and SHOW THAT AUSTRALIA CARES.
Wendy Dent
Writer/Producer/Director
wendydentfilms@gmail.com
www.wendydent.com
Understanding Asia's daily concerns
Despite Australia becoming increasingly enmeshed with the Asian world - whether economically, politically or culturally - we are experiencing a serious decline in the numbers of young Australians studying the region's languages, as well as its history and thought patterns.
This leaves us with a growing information gap, and one that has little to do with major events. If an aircraft crashes in Indonesia, a bridge collapses in Vietnam, or floods devastate much of China, it's more than likely you'll see it on the nightly TV news. You'll also find coverage in the following day's newspapers. But the things that regularly impact on the lives of our Asian neighbours - in the way that interest rates, mortgage payments and skyrocketing rents do with us - receive scant, if any, attention here. You might see some analysis in a specialist journal, but that's about all. Most Australians, for example, would have no idea how a shortage of onions and potatoes in northern India can impact on the life of a citizen there.
Australians, whether locally born or from overseas, who are fluent in regional languages, can already access much of this information via the excellent news services provided by say, SBS TV and radio. But that's a relatively small part of our population.
One way to fill in this knowledge gap is for SBS TV or ABC TV to run a thirty-minute, government-funded segment that reports on such ongoing developments in Asia as reported by the region's own evening news bulletins. The footage could be run in the original language and subtitled in English. At least we'd know more about what's going on in our Asian neighbours' lives when we sit down with them to talk. If we're not going to bother learning their language, maybe this is the next best thing we can do.
Australia should be proud of its record
Australia should be proud that it helped the coalition of the willing free the long suffering Iraqi people from the evil tyranny of Saddam Hussain. Those like Federico Durkheim who lament this liberation and would rather Iraq was still enslaved by that mass murdering tyrant are, among the "Iraqui" people at least, a small minority.
He mourns the human cost involved as we all do, but far from the millions often proclaimed by "anti war" activists an inquiry by the Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group (IFHS), involving collaboration between national and regional ministers in Iraq and the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that in fact 151,000 (between 104,000 and 220,000) people died from violence in Iraq between March 2003 and June 2006. Nearly all of these people fell victim to the breathtaking brutality of the terrorists whom the Coalition and Iraqi forces still battle for the sake of the people of Iraq. It is these mosque and pet market bombing terrorists who Mr Durkheim would, presumably, wish to see come to power in Iraq, rather than their democratically elected representatives.
Despite all the carping which preceded it in the press, the recent 'surge' has proved extremely successful in reducing this appalling terrorist toll. To surrender Iraq to the imperialists of the Caliphate, Baathist dead enders and sectarian Muslim militias who have murdered so many in their attempts to destroy the country would be perverse act of betrayal not only to the people of Iraq but also to the brave soldiers from the USA and elsewhere who have died in the cause of freedom.
If the USA and the UK merely wanted Iraq's oil they could have simply lifted sanctions, as France, China and Russian wanted and bought as much as they wanted for a fraction of the cost of this war. In fact Iraq's oil is sold on the world market for the benefit of Iraq, while the USA obtains the vast bulk of its oil from Latin America, Canada and its own large oil fields. The legitimacy of all of Mr Durkheim's arguments can in fact be measured by the quality of the 'facts' he uses to establish them. His claim that Afghanistan contains the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, for example, is simply risible as that country ranks 54th in proven reserves, having under 100 billion m ³ compared to a world total of 165,843.265 billion m ³. Russia alone has 47,570 billion m ³, nearly 500 times Afghanistan’s reserves. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
Mr Durkheim's memory of the horrors of 9/11 has obviously faded but his assumption that the people of Afghanistan would be better off under the murderous Taliban regime which gave haven to Al Qaeda and ruthlessly oppressed all who stood in its way is equally mistaken. He may long for a return to the days of women accused of adultery being executed in football stadiums but the Afghan people do not. Once again it should be remembered that international forces from many countries are protecting both Iraq and Afghanistan under UN mandates at the express request of the democratically elected governments of those nations.
Mr Durkheim's love for democracy is no less fickle at home however. The Australian people rejected republicanism in a referendum in 1999, shouldn't the people's will, rather than Mr Durkheim's take precedence here? The idea that Australia takes 'orders' from Britain because the Queen is its head of state is simply ridiculous but among so many other falsehoods one must take it as par for the course.
Australia was right to fight in the First and Second World Wars. It was right to fight in Vietnam, a battle lost in a war against tyranny which was ultimately won and it is right to support democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us hope the Mr Rudd supports the fight against terrorism in Iraq and does not abandon the Iraqi people to the bombers and beheaders to appease those who proclaim their love for freedom but betray it with every word.
STOP FOLLOWING THE USA
The USA is finally paying.
We do not want to end up in the same situation.