May 2025 (print copy)
Labor Party decisively wins a second term in Government
The Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Anthony Albanese has won a stunning victory in the Federal election and will return to the Treasury benches for another three years.
The strong endorsement from the Australian people and the expectation in the electorate for the Government to take more courageous initiatives in its second term, provide a rare opportunity for strengthening social justice, peacebuilding and environmental protection in Australia’s domestic and international policies.
APSF congratulates Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party on their victory and looks forward to working with them to promote peace and conflict prevention internationally and particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
The psychology of Australia
We need to take the psychology of our nation very seriously, according to Dr Jule Macken, a former investigative journalist and now researcher into Australia’s abuse and occasional torture of asylum seekers.
Speaking on the theme “Are peace and democracy on life support?” during the APSF webinar on 15 April, Dr Macken reflected on the change between the 1970’s when Australia adopted international human rights standards and was a leader in the humane and generous settlement of refuges and migrants, and the situation in the 1990’s when Australia was inflicting brutality on people arriving on our shores.
In the 1970’s, denial of past wrongs began to break down and we saw Prime Minister Whitlam hand back land to the Gurindji people, sifting a symbolic handful of dust into Vincent Lingiari ‘s hand. “We were starting to come to grips with the reality of Australia’s colonisation,” observed Macken. “It was a period of explosive debate: who are we? What flag do we want? What anthem?” she explained.
But in 1996, PM John Howard shared his vision of a “relaxed and comfortable” Australia, “on the condition that we don’t look back, we don’t avert out gaze to where we have come from,” observed Macken.
“We have paid a terrible price. Australians today experience an unprecedented loss of trust in our institutions and leaders, there are terrible issues of mental illness, especially amongst young people, yet we are not galvanising, we are not coming together to say enough is enough” said Macken.
“We need to reconnect with reality. We need to love, need to care and we need vast amounts of energy. We need political action because that is where change comes from….We can’t build strong relations based on lies. We can’t have peace without justice,” concluded Julie Macken.
Australian democracy is degraded: we need to be vigilant
The current state of Australian democracy is ‘worrying’ according to William Maley, Emeritus Professor of Diplomacy at the ANU. Democracy is degraded rather than in crisis, he explained, as the effectiveness of its institution and structures have diminished over time.
Speaking in the “Are peace and democracy on life support?” webinar on 15 April, Maley suggested there were three key areas of degradation. First, “there has been a decline in the effectiveness of the Parliament as a deliberative body”, he explained. “Speeches in Parliament have little effect on the decision-making process”, he said.
Second, “major parties have become patronage networks” and many of today’s MPs have a very limited range of experiences outside the political process; they are elected with limited life experience, according to Maley. Their club-like behaviour also leads to a ‘lack of willingness to kick out Ministers who have misbehaved’, he explained.
The third area is the emerging contempt for the rule of law, according to Maley. It has been revealed in changes to the Migration Act that were finally read down by the High Court, and the secrecy around a range of government decisions and activities, such as Australia’s bugging of the Timor-Leste Cabinet Office during negotiations over the Timor Sea oil.
Maley also pointed to a larger problem, ‘when politics is seen as war.’ “If you see politics as war, you lose capacity for effective decision making,” he said.
William Maley recently published a book Australia: The Politics of Degraded Democracy and Julie Macken’s forthcoming book Australia’s schism in the soul: colonization, asylum seekers and a nation’s failure to mourn, tracks the psychological devolution of White Australia since colonization.
A video recording of the webinar is available here.
An alternative to Aukus: why a strategic defensive approach best suits Australia
Albert Palazzo
Missiles and drones are a better buy when compared with the nuclear-powered submarines Australia hopes to acquire from the US under the AUKUS deal.
For more than a century, Australia has followed the same defence policy: dependence on a great power. This was first the United Kingdom and then the United States.
Without properly considering other options, successive federal governments have intensified this policy with the Aukus agreement and locked Australia into dependency on the US for decades to come.
Instead, Australia should lean into a military philosophy that I describe in my upcoming book, The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security. This is known as the “strategic defensive”.
The strategic defensive is a method of waging war employed throughout history, although the term’s use only dates to the early 19th century.
It doesn’t require a state to defeat its attacker. Rather, the state must deny the aggressor the ability to achieve their objectives.
In short: if war eventuates, Australia’s only goal is to prevent a change to the status quo. In this way, strategic defensive would suit very well as the intellectual foundation of Australia’s security policy.
Missiles and drones are a better buy when compared with the nuclear-powered submarines Australia hopes to acquire from the United States. And most importantly, they are available now.
A defensive network also makes strategic sense for Australia, unlike the planned Aukus nuclear-powered submarines. Australia has no need to operate in distant waters, such as those off the coast of China.
It’s not too late to rethink
Albert Palazzo is adjunct professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales Canberra. He is a member of APSF. This is a summary of an article that was first published by the Conversation.
Give Peace a Chance
Six issues at the heart of peace and security for Australian are the focus of the first Peace and Security Quarterly Report under the title Give Peace a Chance.
This first PS Quarterly Report addresses the theme of defence and regional security for Australia with informed specialists reviewing the AUKUS agreement, Australia’s relations with China, the international rules order, nuclear disarmament, AI weapons, conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
A second quarterly report is being prepared for release in June. It will focus on climate and environmental security.
The report is available for free download at Give Peace a Chance here.
Sixty-two UN Human Rights experts call for all States to recommit to Human Rights.
At the February Session of the Human Rights Council, the experts called on all States ‘to reaffirm their full commitment to the multilateral international order with human rights and freedoms at its core and to demonstrate their readiness to defend it.’
They were ‘alarmed by the United States’ escalating attacks on the international architecture of human rights, the rule of law, multilateralism, the principles of sovereign equality and self-determination, and vital international agreements on peace and security, climate change, global justice, and international cooperation.’
The statement provides a (regrettable)summary of the recent decisions of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement as well as international institutions such as the Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, and to review its participation in the United Nations and other international organisations. The US decision to use sanctions against the International Criminal Court and its personnel, and to threaten anyone who collaborates with them, is a direct attempt to weaken the rule of international law, human rights and global justice. The United States is also cutting international assistance dramatically, including by eliminating agencies such as USAID and ceasing funding to the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. All these actions have already had – and will continue to have – serious real-world impacts, affecting the lives, wellbeing, livelihoods and human rights of hundreds of millions of people, including the most vulnerable or marginalised populations.
‘Now more than ever, it is the time for States, civil society, businesses, and all people who believe in the value of the rule of international law, justice, human rights, peace and security and sustainable development to come together to vehemently defend these core values and the institutions that safeguard them,’ they concluded.
View the statement here.
UN faces new austerity due to US cuts
As the United Nations seeks to streamline its operations, major restructuring efforts are underway — including the relocation of staff and elimination of redundant functions.
The UN is asking its agencies in two of the world’s most expensive cities — Geneva and New York — to save costs by moving its staffers further afield. According to Devex, the office of the U.N. secretary-general has asked the heads of each city’s secretariat to “identify as many functions as possible” that could be relocated or “otherwise reduced or abolished” if they were seen to be “duplicative or no longer viable.”
The news comes amid other major cost-cutting shake-ups across the UN system, with many agencies already in the throes of restructuring their workforce. The World Health Organization, for example, is preparing to reduce its staff in Geneva and at its leadership level, and the UN Refugee Agency is preparing for up to 6,000 job losses.
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Six issues at the heart of peace and security for Australian are the focus of the first Peace and Security Quarterly Report under the title Give Peace a Chance.
This first PS Quarterly Report addresses the theme of defence and regional security for Australia with informed specialists reviewing the AUKUS agreement, Australia’s relations with China, the international rules order, nuclear disarmament, AI weapons, conflict prevention and peacebuilding.