Australia Archive

Last month, officials from Indonesia and Australia met in Sydney, where they agreed to increase counterterrorism cooperation and information-sharing in response to the growing threat from the so-called Islamic State. In an email interview, Greta Nabbs-Keller, the manager of Indonesia programs at the University of Queensland’s international development unit, discusses the current state of Australia-Indonesia relations. WPR: How have ties with Indonesia evolved under the administration of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and to what extent have the two sides been able to move past recent tensions over Australia’s asylum policy and Indonesia’s execution of Australian drug smugglers? Greta Nabbs-Keller: […]

Every American policy analyst who has passed through the doors of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney in recent months asks a version of the same rhetorical question about Australian politics: What are you Aussies complaining about? We get fewer British visitors at Lowy than Americans, but I imagine they are thinking the same thing. They have a point. From their perspective, Australia looks prosperous—with unemployment below 6 percent, continuous economic growth for the past 24 years, and a generous social safety net—and thus well governed. Nor is Australia suffering the kind of political schisms seen in the […]