This report argues that Australia's diplomatic network is seriously overstretched and hollowed out and recommends a major, staged reinvestment to ensure Australia is in a position to prosecute its growing international interests properly. This is the report of a Blue Ribbon Panel convened by the Lowy Institute to examine Australia's overseas network – the first...

In this Policy Brief, Fergus Hanson looks at the Australian government's current approach to suspected war criminals living here. It finds Australia has inadvertently become a safe haven for suspected war criminals and needs to do more to meet its international obligations to end impunity for the world's worst criminal offenders. It suggests a number...

In a new Lowy Institute Analysis entitled 'Ambition: the emerging foreign policy of the Rudd Government', Lowy Institute Executive Director Allan Gyngell explores what we have learned about the Rudd Government's emerging foreign policy, about the Prime Minister's own contributions to it and what questions it raises for the future. "The defining feature of the...

In this Perspective, Dr Michael Fullilove, who is currently based at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, looks ahead to President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural address on 20 January. Obama is an unusually gifted writer and speaker with an old-fashioned attachment to speeches, who will likely address his vision for US foreign policy in his address...

Climate change is not only affecting where people live and prosper but also where mosquitoes do. This is bad news for northern Australia and Australia's northern neighbours. In a new policy brief, Dr Sarah Potter, a malaria research scientist, analyses how climate change will likely affect the spread of malaria and dengue in maritime Southeast...