Lowy Institute

Thursday 15 August 2024

The Lowy Institute was delighted to host the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister of New Zealand, for a special foreign policy address on Thursday 15 August.

Rt Hon Christopher Luxon is the 42nd Prime Minister of New Zealand. Since coming to power in October 2023, Prime Minister Luxon has focused closely on issues of foreign, defence and trade policy, including re-engaging and reinvigorating New Zealand’s relationships with traditional and like-minded partners. He is also the Minister for National Security and Intelligence and the Minister Responsible for Ministerial Services. He entered Parliament at the 2020 election as the MP for Botany and was elected Leader of the National Party in November 2021.

Prior to entering Parliament, Prime Minister Luxon enjoyed a long career in the private sector: as Chief Executive Officer of Air New Zealand from 2013 to 2019, and at Unilever where he worked in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the USA and Canada.

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Defence expert Ross Babbage talks with the Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen about his new research paper, Deterrence and Alliance Power: Why the AUKUS Submarines Matter and how they can be Delivered. They discuss not just the viability of the project – can US and UK shipyards deliver? – but its justifications. Why does Australia need these submarines?

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Can we measure national success beyond economic growth? Professor Robert Costanza speaks with the Lowy Institute’s Alexandre Dayant about why countries need to move away from gross domestic product as the measure of economic prosperity and factor in other complementary gauges of success. In a time of high inflation, increased cost of living, and growing environmental degradation, Professor Constanza argues that moving “beyond growth” is essential to achieving sustainable prosperity.

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As the United States approaches a pivotal presidential election, how do Australians view our security ally? After two years of official re-engagement, have Australians’ perceptions of China changed? What should the government do about climate change, and how do Australians feel about renewable and nuclear energy?    
   
Now in its 20th edition, the Lowy Institute’s flagship annual poll is the longest-running and broadest survey of Australian public opinion on the world. For two decades, it has revealed changing attitudes and played an influential role in the public debate on foreign policy.

The Hon Tim Watts MP opened our event, after which an expert panel unpacked the results of the 2024 Lowy Institute Poll and discussed how Australians see their place in the world.

The Hon Tim Watts MP, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, was elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Gellibrand in 2013 and has served as Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2022.

Ryan Neelam is the Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute and the author of the 2024 Lowy Institute Poll. He previously served as an Australian diplomat in Hong Kong and at the United Nations, New York.

Michelle Lyons is a Research Fellow in the Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Development Centre where she works on international climate change policy and climate finance. She has more than a decade of experience in the public service and at ANU working on international and domestic climate change policy and is a recipient of the prestigious Sir Roland Wilson Scholarship.

Sam Roggeveen (moderator) is Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. He was the founding editor of The Interpreter, is editor of the Lowy Institute Papers, and is the author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace. Before joining the Lowy Institute, Sam was a senior analyst in Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments.

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In the final episode of our series on the South China Sea, host Susannah Patton and Lowy Institute colleague Richard McGregor debate the implications of the recent tensions at Second Thomas Shoal for Beijing’s strategy, the credibility of US alliances, and the considerations of other regional countries such as Australia.

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What do the maritime security challenges close to Australia mean for the country's future?

We were joined in discussion with Rebecca Strating and Joanne Wallis on their new book Girt by Sea: Reimagining Australia's Security, which looks at six maritime domains central to the country's national interests and offers an alternative vision for how Australia should understand its strategic challenges.

The authors discussed their reasons for reimagining how Australia should understand its strategic challenges, focusing on finding security in the north seas (the Timor, Arafura and Coral Seas and the Torres Strait), the Western Pacific, the South China Sea, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean.

Rebecca Strating and Joanne Wallis spoke in conversation with Hervé Lemahieu, Director of Research at the Lowy Institute.

Professor Rebecca Strating is the Director of La Trobe Asia and a Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her research focuses primarily on Asian regional security, maritime disputes, and Australian foreign and defence policy.

Professor Joanne Wallis is Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Director of the Security in the Pacific Islands research program, at the University of Adelaide. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution.

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In part three of our South China Sea series, Dr Michael Mazarr speaks with the Lowy Institute’s Susannah Patton about the US’ strategy in the South China Sea. The United States has few easy options for countering China’s coercion of its ally the Philippines. Dr Mazarr of the RAND Corporation argues that the United States needs to plan for a scenario in which China gains control over the disputed Second Thomas Shoal and focus on how it can shore up other outposts controlled by the Philippines.

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Weeks prior to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the Lowy Institute hosted global terrorism expert Professor Bruce Hoffman for a podcast with Program Director Lydia Khalil. They spoke about the future prospects of political violence in the United States and discussed Hoffman’s latest book, God, Guns, and Sedition, which traces the trajectory of terrorism, particularly far-right terrorism, in the United States and assesses its present day dangers, its relationship with mainstream politics, and the harm it poses to US and global security.

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In this special episode of Conversations, the Lowy Institute’s Dr Michael Fullilove and Hervé Lemahieu discuss US President Joe Biden’s momentous decision overnight to withdraw from his bid for a second term.

In the past three weeks, US politics has been reshaped before our eyes. A resurgent former president Donald Trump, emerging from an attempt on his life, appears stronger than ever. Meanwhile, after weeks of defying calls to withdraw from the race, Joe Biden abruptly abandoned his bid for a second term as US president. Will it be enough to turn things around for the Democratic Party, and where does the United States go from here?

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In part two of our South China Sea series, Dr Oriana Skylar Mastro speaks with the Lowy Institute’s Susannah Patton about China’s objectives in the region.

Beijing is pursuing an aggressive strategy to push out the United States and prevent Southeast Asian claimant states, especially the Philippines, from exercising their sovereign rights.

Dr Mastro, Center Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Stanford University, Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author ofUpstart: How China Became a Great Power, explains the military, political and legal dimensions of China’s approach, which has gone relatively unchecked by the United States and its allies, until now.

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