When he emerged as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister in 2018, Scott Morrison was not known for his diplomatic credentials and had never made foreign policy a big feature of his political career. Yet he has presided over one of the most consequential periods in Australia’s international relations: from a recalibration of ties with China, Australia’s primary trade partner, to the announcement of the AUKUS agreement.

In this episode, Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program Sam Roggeveen speaks to journalist and political commentator Paul Kelly about the factors and influences that have shaped Scott Morrison’s approach to foreign policy, which are detailed in Kelly’s new Lowy Institute Paper, Morrison’s Mission: How a Beginner Reshaped Australian foreign policy.

Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large at The Australian. He writes on politics, public policy and international relations and is a former Editor-in-Chief at the paper. He has written or co-authored 12 books on Australian politics and history including The End of Certainty (1992) on the politics and economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating era, The March of Patriots (2009), offering a re-interpretation of the Keating and Howard prime ministerships, and Triumph and Demise (2014), an account of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era. Morrison’s Mission follows his 2006 book for the Lowy Institute on John Howard’s foreign policy, Howard’s Decade.

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