Australia's Antarctic agenda

Australia has had a long connection with, and significant national interests in, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Territory comprises 42 per cent of Antarctica's landmass. Australia is not only a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty but has played a significant role in the development of what is termed the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This article aims to provide an overview of Australia's key policy interests and government policy goals towards Antarctica, including its commitment to the ATS. In examining key policy objectives we note that despite continuity and development of these objectives, significant changes and challenges have arisen in the period 1984–2006. It is these challenges that will help frame Australia's Antarctic agenda over the next 20 years and beyond.     

Managing Australia's water resources

We have a great power not to destroy and in exercising that power, we will give proof of our consideration for the future, and for the first time in our history we will be recognised as custodians of the earth. Tasmania has rivers flowing to the sea … these are great natural energy resources just crying out to be developed and developed they must be.     

Australia's trade policy dilemmas

In recent years, Australia has had a very active agenda for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) whose net economic benefits remain at best unclear. There has been a strong defensive element to some of this PTA activity but the Howard government also used PTAs to pursue non-economic objectives, such as the promotion of foreign policy and security interests. This article broadly outlines Australia's PTA policy and the problems and dilemmas that it has generated. More importantly, it looks ahead to consider likely scenarios for trade policy under the Rudd Labor government. Each of these scenarios has different implications for policy strategies and outcomes. This article concludes that while there could be significant pay-offs should Labor choose to pursue its traditional preferences for non-discriminatory trade arrangements, the world has changed considerably since the heydays of the multilateral trade system. A commitment to reinvigorating multilateralism will require strong political leadership, imaginative thinking, and creative diplomacy.     

Asylum-seekers in Australia's international relations

The paper is divided into five sections. In the first, I offer some observations on the nature of 'sovereignty', and on the place of 'border controls' within sovereignty discourse. In the second, I discuss what it means to be a 'middle power', and what 'soft power' resources a middle power may need to use. In the third, I argue that crude populism has shaped recent responses to asylum-seekers, with scant regard to some of the wider consequences for Australia's reputation, but suggest that part of the blame lies with past failures of the foreign policy establishment to recognise genuine concerns entertained at mass level about the morality of Australian alignments and affiliations. In the fourth, I outline the key elements of Australia's recent policies towards asylum-seekers, and argue that they entail costs in terms both of Australia's reputation, and the nature of the Australian polity. In the fifth, I suggest some new directions to pursue.     

Australia's Bicentennial $10 Note

Abstract

The Australian Bicentennial $10 banknote represents a major break with traditional banknote technology. The note is the first to use plastic film as a replacement for fibre substrates such as paper, and to incorporate optical variable devices (OVD) as security features. These OVDS cannot be reproduced by the normal photographic processes. The 20-year history of the development of this technology is reviewed and comments made on the difficulty of introducing revolutionary technology into an existing industry.