Events

Join Lowy Institute’s Executive Director Michael Fullilove and The New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss for a conversation about journalism, American politics and society, and the role of the United States in the world under President Donald Trump.
 
Bari Weiss is an op-ed staff editor and columnist for The New York Times on culture and politics. Ms Weiss was previously an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal before joining The Times in 2017. She is currently working on a book, The New Seven Dirty Words, for Henry Holt and Company. She is a native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of Columbia University.
 
Michael Fullilove is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. He writes widely on global issues for publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Australian press. Dr Fullilove is the author of a number of books, including Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin).

China is holding hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in detention camps in Xinjiang, western China, in what appears to be a systematic targeting of an entire ethnic and religious group in the name of national security. After first denying their existence, China now claims the camps are vocational centres designed to combat extremism. The Uighur community, however, tell a different story – of detainees being forced to denounce their Islamic faith and swear allegiance to the communist party.

The Lowy Institute's Richard McGregor will host a discussion of the situation in Xinjiang, and how the scale of the camps was uncovered. The panel will feature Nury Turkel, the Washington-based chair of the Uighur Human Rights Project, Dr Mamtimin Ala, President of the Australian Uighur Association, David Brophy, of Sydney University, and Lowy Institute researcher Kelsey Munro.

Join the heads of the Brookings Institution and the Lowy Institute for a conversation about the world. John R. Allen and Michael Fullilove will discuss US foreign policy, trends in international politics, and the transformative effects of technology on international affairs.
 
John R. Allen was appointed President of the Brookings Institution in November 2017. He is a retired US Marine Corps four-star general and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and US Forces in Afghanistan. He served as senior adviser to the Secretary of Defence on Middle East Security and Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

Michael Fullilove has served as Executive Director of the Lowy Institute since August 2012. Over the past decade and a half, Dr Fullilove has played a central role in the establishment and development of the Lowy Institute. He previously served as Program Director, Global Issues at the Institute and has also worked as a lawyer, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings.
 

The Lowy Institute is grateful to the United Services Institute of the ACT for their support of this event.

On 30 November, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator the Hon Marise Payne, will deliver an address to the Lowy Institute.
 
Senator Payne has served as a Senator for New South Wales since 1997. She served 12 years on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, including a period as Chair of its Human Rights subcommittee. She was Minister for Human Services from 2013 to 2015 when she assumed the Defence portfolio, becoming the first woman to hold the position of Minister for Defence. She was appointed Foreign Minister in August 2018.

The Perth USAsia Centre and the Lowy Institute have the pleasure of inviting you to the Perth launch of the Lowy Institute’s distinguished Asia Power Index. Launching the Asia Power Index will be the Honourable Kim Beazley AC, Governor of Western Australia, Dr Michael Fullilove, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute, Hervé Lemahieu, Director of the Asian Power and Policy Program at the Lowy Institute and Professor Rikki Kersten, Dean of the School of Arts, Murdoch University. Moderating the discussion will be Professor Stephen Smith, Director at the Perth USAsia Centre and former Defence and Foreign Minister.
 

How is China trying to unseat the United States as the dominant power in Asia? What tactics are Beijing using and how is the US responding?

Join a Lowy Institute panel for a discussion of China’s challenge to America’s military dominance in Asia, a phenomenon which is upending Australia’s longstanding assumptions about its strategic position in the region. The panel will examine the entrepreneurial ways China has been building military power, how it may have lulled the US into inaction, and what it means for the future of security in the Indo-Pacific.

The panel will be hosted by Sam Roggeveen, Director of Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, with Oriana Skylar Mastro, of Georgetown University and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Brendan Taylor, of the Australian National University, and the author of ‘The Four Flashpoints: How Asia Goes to War’, and Professor Benjamin Schreer of Macquarie University.

The decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union is more than two years old. What will happen on Brexit day on 29 March next year? What kind of deal, if any, will Britain negotiate? What will be the impact on the infighting in British politics and within Prime Minister Theresa May’s government?
 
As the country nears the date set for the conclusion of negotiations with Brussels, join a panel of experts at the Lowy Institute to discuss the outcomes of either a ‘deal’ or ‘no deal’ scenario, the outlook for the United Kingdom after Brexit, and the consequences for Australia and its ties with both London and Brussels.

The decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union is more than two years old. What will happen on Brexit day on 29 March next year? What kind of deal, if any, will Britain negotiate? What will be the impact on the infighting in British politics and within Prime Minister Theresa May’s government?
 
As the country nears the date set for the conclusion of negotiations with Brussels, join a panel of experts at the Lowy Institute to discuss the outcomes of either a ‘deal’ or ‘no deal’ scenario, the outlook for the United Kingdom after Brexit, and the consequences for Australia and its ties with both London and Brussels.

Melbourne's panel will include Professor Philomena Murray, School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Tom Bentley, former director of London based think tank, Demos, and now Adviser to the Vice Chancellor at RMIT University, and Dr Euan Graham, Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute. The panel will be moderated by Daniel Flitton, Managing Editor of Lowy Institute's The Interpreter.

We are now halfway through Donald Trump’s first term as president of the United States. With a polarised US public and a fraying international order, the president faces his first electoral report card since 2016 in the mid-term elections. The results will influence the trajectory of US politics and foreign policy for the next two, and possibly six, years.
 
Join Lowy Institute Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove for an address on the Trump administration, the effect of the midterms on US foreign policy and what this means for Australia and the world order. The event will be chaired by Lowy Institute’s Research Director Alex Oliver.

Michael Fullilove has served as the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute since 2012. He writes widely on Australian foreign policy, US foreign policy and global issues in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Australian press. In 2015, Dr Fullilove delivered the Boyer Lectures, which were published as A Larger Australia: The ABC 2015 Boyer Lectures (Penguin). Dr Fullilove has written and edited a number of other books, including Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin), which won the 2014 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

The Institute’s Aus-PNG Network is hosting a special viewing of the film Power Meri which documents the journey of PNG’s first national womens Rugby League team as they journey to Australia to compete in the 2017 World Cup. These trailblazers must overcome many obstacles – including cultural and financial – to reach their biggest stage yet. As well as viewing the film, participants will be able to take part in a Q&A session with some of the producers of the documentary.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the global financial crisis and the elevation of the G20 to a leader-level forum. Ten years on, has the G20 fulfilled its promise of improving global economic cooperation, particularly in the current environment of rising geopolitical tension and trade frictions? With only a few weeks until the Buenos Aires Summit, Dr David Gruen, Australia’s G20 Sherpa, will discuss the role of the G20 in the global economic order, including its progress since 2008 and prospects for the future.

This event has been cancelled.

Unfortunately our guest John Micklethwait is now unable to travel to Australia for medical reasons.

The economic crisis facing journalism has broadened into one of relevance, as President Donald Trump seeks to undermine the mainstream media. Yet amid newspaper closures, job cuts and the attacks on ‘fake news’, the quality press is staging a remarkable resurrection. John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, argues that the industry is in transition, not decline. The news of the future will be more personalised, monetised — and less ‘fake’.

John Micklethwait oversees editorial content across all Bloomberg platforms, including print, television, radio, digital and research. Prior to joining Bloomberg in early 2015, he was editor-in-chief of The Economist, leading the magazine into the digital age while expanding its readership.

On Monday 29 October the Lowy Institute will host the Hon Bill Shorten MP, Leader of the Opposition, for a major foreign policy address.
 
Mr Shorten has served as the Leader of the Opposition since 2013. He was first elected as the Member for Maribyrnong at the 2007 Federal election. He served as a Cabinet Minister in the Rudd and Gillard Governments.

 

In an age of ubiquitous data, the “scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it”. Join Google’s Chief Economist, Hal R Varian, and Lowy Institute’s International Economy Director Roland Rajah for a discussion on the economics of data, how data can drive innovation and improve our wellbeing, and the debate over its effects on competition and the appropriate role of government. 

On the eve of the visit to Australia by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the Lowy Institute is holding an event on the issue of the republic and Australia’s place in the world.
 
Constitutional monarchist Julian Leeser MP, Federal Member for Berowra, and Michael Cooney, National Director of the Australian Republic Movement, will join Alex Oliver, Lowy Institute Director of Research, for a panel discussion on whether Australia’s status as a constitutional monarchy affects the way the world see us – and how we see ourselves.

In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a mild-mannered Wharton grad set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude involving billions of dollars of Malaysian Government money. Billion Dollar Whale is the definitive account of the fraud perpetrated by Jho Low, the man who fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the world. Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, who uncovered the magnitude of the scandal, tell the story of the massive financial fraud that led to the fall of the government of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak earlier this year.
 
On 4 October, Pulitzer finalist Tom Wright will join Aaron Connelly, Director of the Lowy Institute’s Southeast Asia Project, for a conversation about the 1MDB scandal and the political implications for Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and the world of finance.

Indonesians are frenetically preparing for presidential and legislative elections next year, in which President Joko Widodo will once again face retired general Prabowo Subianto. But this is hardly a rerun of the 2014 race: Jokowi has consolidated control of a much larger coalition, with the addition of a sizeable Islamic conservative bloc; while Prabowo has had to navigate a path to nomination in a difficult political environment. The casualties of the contest thus far appear to have been the rights of Indonesia’s ethnic and religious minorities and LGBT community.
 
Please join us at a Sydney edition of the ANU Indonesia Update for a discussion of the implications of these developments for Indonesian politics, with a political update presented by the ANU’s Tom Power, a keynote on the status of minorities in Indonesia by Professor Robert Cribb, and panel discussions featuring Sidney Jones, Aaron Connelly, Sandra Hamid, and Charlotte Setijadi.
 
The Indonesia Update has been an annual event held by the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983; this is the 13th abbreviated Sydney edition held by the Institute.