Twenty years ago, a Norwegian freighter rescued hundreds of Afghan asylum seekers off a sinking Indonesian vessel, triggering a crisis that ushered in Australia’s hardline immigration policies. Read the full story for Al Jazeera here.
Hume council will not seek a legal injunction to prevent Hi-Quality from developing its facility in Bulla as it prepares to accept toxic spoil from the West Gate Tunnel Project. Read the full story here.
A “tsunami of fury” has been directed at the state government following a decision by Transurban to send toxic soil from the West Gate Tunnel Project to Bulla. Read the full article here.
Before serving as Australia’s Consul-General to Hong Kong, Jocelyn Chey made the bold choice to learn Mandarin at university. Arriving from Europe with her parents as a teen in 1954, she’d made her mind up to learn an Asian language. But unlike today, she says… Read More
Despite assurances that Australia faces immediate threats in an increasingly hostile Indo-Pacific region, diplomacy spending has dropped to an all-time low. Reporter Oliver Lees spoke with Asia Link Institute diplomacy researcher Melissa Conley-Tyler, and Professor Hugh White from the Australian National University.
COVID-19 is clearly impacting countries to varying degrees. Differences in preparedness, population density and in the quality of national healthcare systems, as well as in the nature of government responses to the pandemic, have led to marked differences in outcomes. Read the full article here.
A Twitter storm over basketball is representative of the hostility present in the US-China relationship today, where a rapidly changing political landscape has made conflict the new normal. Read the full article here.
Funding for the United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping Force has been drastically reduced in recent years, with over US$1.9 billion owed to the organization in contributions from its members. Since its inception, peacekeeping has been harshly scrutinized by the international community, with glaring failures in Rwanda… Read More
At the Pacific Island Forum held in Tuvalu last week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not budge from his conservative position on climate change. Eighteen heads of states representing their island nations did their utmost to convey the immediate threat posed by the climate… Read More
For five years, a gruesome civil war raged on these terms, a conflict based upon unsubstantiated suspicions and racial prejudice. This latest peace deal has provided some respite for the people of South Sudan, but beneath this superficial calm remains an array of fundamental issues… Read More
Oliver Lees 李奥力 