Government focuses on strategic shaping as DFAT drops soft-power review

Until the last decade, Australia was the pre-eminent international media voice in the South Pacific, but we’re falling behind our allies and competitors.

Treading softly in power diplomacy

Museums have emerged as new and effective actors of cultural soft power, including institutions in countries like China and Russia whose interests and actions seem diametrically opposed to the West.

The hard edge of soft power

The original Colombo Plan gave students from Asia and the Pacific a chance to study in Australia, and now a New Colombo Plan is sending Australians abroad to learn from our regional neighbours.

The strength of soft power

Soft power is a slow-growing asset, as much the product of a society as the possession of a government. But, as a twittering US president shows, destroying trust and burning a nation’s soft power can be done with awful speed.

Finding Australia’s soft power

Australia must engage neighbouring nations more strategically through official and public diplomacy if it is to remain a ‘persuasive voice’ in its own region.