Events

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.

On the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Lowy Institute, the Institute's board has invited Sir Frank Lowy AC to deliver this year’s Lowy Lecture and Dinner.

The annual Lowy Lecture is the Lowy Institute’s flagship event, at which a prominent individual reflects on Australia and the world. Past lecturers have included German Chancellor Angela Merkel; UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson; former CIA Director David Petraeus AO; News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch AC; Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull; and Prime Minister John Howard OM AC, who delivered the inaugural Lowy Lecture in 2005.

Sir Frank is one of Australia’s most celebrated business leaders and philanthropists, having co-founded Westfield, the global company he led since 1960. He has also held a number of other public roles, including as a member of the Reserve Bank board and Chairman of Football Federation Australia.

The 2018 Lowy Lecture and Dinner will be held on Thursday, 13 September 2018 at 6.30pm for 7.00pm at the Sydney Town Hall, 483 George Street, Sydney. The dress code is lounge suit.

The Lowy Institute acknowledges the generous sponsorship of the event by NAB, Capital Group and Qantas. We thank them for their support.

We hope you will join us for what will be a thought-provoking evening.

The international order is under strain. Rising powers want to rewrite the rules, Western leaders are turning inwards, and technology is breaking down barriers. What can middle powers do in response?
 
Join Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove, who will moderate a discussion with Ralf Beste, Head of Policy Planning at the German Federal Foreign Office, Volker Perthes, Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and Gudrun Wacker, Senior Fellow in the Asia Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Join us for an address by the Hon Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Samoa.
The Pacific is back in international headlines. New partners in the region are contributing to a fast-changing geostrategic landscape, and old partners are ‘stepping up’ in response. But how new are these current dynamics? How do Pacific Islanders view the movements and machinations of large powers in the Pacific and how have they responded to such developments? How are Pacific Island countries shaping the engagement of partners in the region, and how will they continue to shape them in the future? Join us as we delve into these issues and more with Samoa’s Prime Minister.
 

Whether in terms of denuclearisation talks with North Korea, an escalating trade war with China, or the promotion of a concept and strategy for a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’, the pace of US statecraft in Asia has been frenetic in recent months.

Join Gordon Flake, CEO of the Perth USAsia Centre, together with Lowy Institute Senior Fellows Dr Euan Graham and Richard McGregor, for a panel discussion chaired by Alex Oliver, Director of Research at the Lowy Institute.

Australia now has its fifth prime minister in five years. What does this mean for Australia’s place in the world? Does our reputation as the ‘coup capital of the democratic world’ damage Australia’s international standing? How does it affect our ability to run a coherent foreign policy? And what might we expect from the Morrison Government? 
 
Join us on Tuesday, 28 August, when four Lowy Institute experts will discuss the global implications of Australia’s political crisis.  Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove will chair a discussion with Director of Research Alex Oliver, Senior Fellow Richard McGregor, and Director of the International Security Program Sam Roggeveen.

The future of the Middle East peace process under US President Donald Trump, the use of chemical weapons in Syrian conflict, the implications for the United Nations’ role and its duties – these topics are politically, culturally, and ethically complex and are not easily navigated.

Join the Lowy Institute for an address by Mr Nick Kaldas APM, former Director of Internal Oversight Services in the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), to hear his views on these issues, followed by a question-and-answer session. 

China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea have emerged as the testing ground for great power competition between the US and China, and as a lightning rod for rival claimants in the region, as well as Australia and Japan, to assert their own maritime rights.

Join the Lowy Institute’s Senior Fellow Richard McGregor, together with other pre-eminent experts on the South China Sea – Wu Shicun, of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Linda Jakobson, of China Matters, and Professor Benjamin Schreer of Macquarie University – for a discussion of the controversy.

Foreign aid is an important resource for the Pacific Islands, and for many countries is a major point of engagement with the region. Yet public information at the project level is sparse, often lacks detail, and is difficult to access. This lack of transparency reduces the effectiveness of aid. It makes it difficult to coordinate aid efforts across multiple stakeholders. It makes it challenging for countries in the Pacific to align aid with their own investment priorities. It makes it harder for donors to learn from each other and from the past. It also reduces the accountability of aid, on both the sending and receiving sides, that flows in to Australia’s immediate region.

At the end of 2017, China announced it had been a year of “remarkable progress” on human rights. However, activists draw attention to an increasingly repressive environment in China, including restrictions on academic freedom; domestic human rights deteriorations in law, policing, and terrorism; the surveillance apparatus; and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. 
 
Behind closed doors, Australia has raised human rights issues with China in annual high-level dialogues, and continues to work on human rights capacity-building projects with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
 
What is the current state of human rights in China, and has the Chinese Communist Party been trying to improve the situation? How have different Australian governments (and others) engaged China on human rights, and how effective have those efforts been? 

How are human rights in North Korea and broader regional security through North Korean denuclearisation connected, and can one be achieved without the other?
 
Kim Jong-un’s successful pursuit of his nuclear agenda has arguably only been possible because of his ruthless wielding of power and control, and the surveillance and oppression of the North Korean people. 
 
The US and its allies want North Korea to denuclearise in the interests of regional and global security. Following the recent meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, we have focused on if and how genuine denuclearisation can be achieved. But does the lack of any real public accountability that arises from the human rights situation in North Korea mean Kim’s promises at the Singapore summit are just empty rhetoric?  

When French President Emmanuel Macron recently visited Australia, the Australian government welcomed France as a stable partner in the Pacific region. Much of this stability relies upon the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, which will hold a referendum on self-determination in November this year. The independence movement Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) has been campaigning for independence from France for more than three decades.
 
Leading Kanak politician and official FLNKS independence spokesperson Daniel Goa will speak about the lead-up to the referendum, the FLNKS proposal for a Kanaky-New Caledonia republic, and economic options for an independent and sovereign state. At a time when the Australian Government is stepping up engagement in the Pacific region, join us to discuss implications of the referendum for ties between Australia and one of its closest Pacific neighbours.

Join Hervé Lemahieu, the principal researcher behind the Asia Power Index, and an expert panel for a discussion on the method and findings of the largest comparative assessment of power in the region ever undertaken.

SYDNEY
In-conversation with Hervé Lemahieu, Director of the Asian Power and Diplomacy Program; Bonnie Bley, Research Fellow; Richard McGregor, Senior Fellow, and journalist and broadcaster Geraldine Doogue, followed by a Q&A.

Join Hervé Lemahieu, the principal researcher behind the Asia Power Index, and an expert panel for a discussion on the method and findings of the largest comparative assessment of power in the region ever undertaken.

MELBOURNE
In-conversation with Hervé Lemahieu, Director of the Asian Power and Diplomacy Program; Bonnie Bley, Research Fellow; and Daniel Flitton, Managing Editor, The Interpreter, followed by a Q&A.

Join Hervé Lemahieu, the principal researcher behind the Asia Power Index, and an expert panel for a discussion on the method and findings of the largest comparative assessment of power in the region ever undertaken.

CANBERRA
Asia Power Index launch and in-conversation with Hervé Lemahieu, Director of the Asian Power and Diplomacy Program, and Bonnie Bley, Research Fellow, followed by a Q&A.

 

Join the Lowy Institute's Executive Director, Dr Michael Fullilove, for an in-conversation with Jessica Tuchman Mathews, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about the international role of the United States in the era of President Trump.

Ms Mathews was president of the Carnegie Endowment for 18 years, and has also worked in the executive and legislative branches of government, in the non-profit arena, in the media, and science policymaking. She is a former director of the Office of Global Issues at the National Security Council, and has covered arms control, energy, environment, science, and technology issues as a member of the Washington Post’s editorial board.