Lowy Institute: Live Events

On Thursday 26 June 2014, Ian MacFarlane launched 'Beyond the Boom', a Lowy Institute Paper by Dr John Edwards. Ian MacFarlane and John Edwards reflect on the argument in John's book- that the mining boom is far from over, and that it hasn't been as important for Australian prosperity as widely believed.

Aaron L. Connelly, Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institue, discusses the Indonesian presidential election between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto. He notes that the presidential race is closer than was anticipated three months ago and outlines the key events that have led to the turnaround in the polls. He also explains that while polling data from the most reliable polling firms has not been released, we can assume that the race is now very close. Aaron outlines what we could expect from a Prabowo presidency, and the positions that each candidate has taken on Indonesia-Australia relations.

Tess Newton Cain and Jenny Hayward-Jones discuss what has changed within the PIDF since its introduction last year(0.30). They analyse the beginning of new diplomatic relations with Indonesia (2.25) and also provide an insight into the regional architectures of the PIDF and what the PIDF has in store for the future (4.45).

Lowy Institute's Research Director Anthony Bubalo, Nonresident Fellow Rodger Shanahan and Military Fellow James Brown discuss the current state of turmoil in Iraq, following the fall of Mosul to ISIS.

On 11 June 2014, the Lowy Institute held a panel event featuring Australian war artist Ben Quilty and the Lowy Institute's James Brown, where they reflected on their mutual experiences from Afghanistan. The event was moderated by Lowy Institute’s Executive Director Michael Fullilove.

Lowy Institute Military Fellow James Brown speaks to Commodore Peter Leavy who was in charge of the joint-task force organised to search for the missing Malaysian Airline Flight 370. Commodore Leavy discusses the difficulties that were faced by his team during the search including communication problems with other nations, weather issues, and operational limitations. Transcript Interview between Commodore Peter Leavy RAN, Commander Joint Task Force 658 and James Brown, Military Fellow, Lowy Institute for International Policy JAMES BROWN: I’m talking to Commodore Peter Leavy, who was the commander of the Joint Task Force involved in the search for Malaysian airlines flight 370. Commodore Leavy, how did this mission come together, how did the task force stand up? CDRE PETER LEAVY: The ADF put together a task force a couple of weeks after the aircraft itself went missing. It first went missing, as you know, on the 8th of March. Initially, as with any search and rescue activity, it was headed up by AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, from the Australian perspective working with the Malaysian authorities. There was a little delay, I guess, before the ADF got involved, as you’d understand. The initial search area was between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, so it took some time, and some really good work from the technical analysts to work out that the aircraft was perhaps down in the Indian Ocean, and that’s when we got heavily involved. Personally, I had about 48 hours notice to move across to Perth with a small team, and we established ourselves at HMAS Stirling over there. But we were fitting in our command structure to a wider search and rescue effort that was already in place, and it’s probably worth noting too that the Australian Defence Force was a supporting agency to AMSA in the initial part of the search. We weren’t leading it ourselves, we were providing the assets, but a lot of the legwork on focusing the search areas was actually done by AMSA. That’s where their expertise is, and that’s their remit. (1.20) JAMES BROWN: So you’re the commander, you’re plugging into a wider civilian maritime search agency effort, what was the scale of the mission from your perspective? CDRE PETER LEAVY: It was quite large, we had up to about 18 aircraft from 7 different nations, and at various times up to about 15 to 16 ships – a mixture of civilian ships and naval ships from 5 different nations, plus a submarine of course. So the scale there was quite significant. Diverse nations, from China, obviously a very heavy interest with the number of passengers they had on board MH370; Malaysia, heavily involved as well; and obviously Australia, being in our search and rescue zone, we were quite heavily involved. But the coordination challenges there were, I guess, were tempered by it not being a combat operation, so that made it relatively, or took out one degree of complexity. But just the different language barriers were a bit of a challenge, but we worked through that fairly quickly. One good thing about navies in particular is, we had as a navy, and I had personally, exercised with every nation that was participating there. So we do tend to understand how each other work, how we operate, and the various strengths that each of those teams bought to the search area. So, the coordination in a sense was a bit of work behind the scenes, but relatively straightforward, and made all the much easier by everyone having that single focus on the mission, which for us was actually finding debris floating on the surface, initially. We had, as you know, Ocean Shield doing the, part way through, start of the underwater search, but that was really only one asset. The focus for us, particularly early on, but the focus throughout, for the majority of our assets, was really on that surface search for debris that was floating which would help the drift modelling back-cast to try and pin point the crash site. (3.07) JAMES BRO

In conjunction with the release of the 2014 Lowy Institute Poll today, we have recorded a podcast which outlines and explains the methodology used in our annual polling. In this podcast Lowy Institute Poll Director Alex Oliver, speaks with Sol Lebovic, who has provided independent advice and technical support to the Lowy Institute over the last six years of our polling program. Sol is one of Australia’s most distinguished pollsters, founding Newspoll in 1985 and directing it for more than two decades. Sol explains in this podcast how the Lowy Institute Poll’s sample size, sample selection and weighting methods provide a reliable and rigorous survey which is representative of the views of the Australian public, with an error margin of approximately 3.1%.

On 28 May 2014, former Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby, delivered an address to the Lowy institute on the lessons learnt from the UN inquiry into the alleged human rights abuses in North Korea.

Lowy Institute's Military Fellow James Brown discusses the 2014 Military budget. He explains the key features of this military budget, why defence has done relatively better than other portfolios, and the direction this budget shows the Australian government is taking in regards to defence and its engagement with the world.

Sam Roggeveen interviews Richard McGregor: Obama and the pivot by Lowy Institute

Lowy Institute's Alex Oliver discusses the 2014 Federal budget and what it means for Australian diplomacy and aid (1.39), efficiency concerns within DFAT following budgetary cuts (4.19), and Australia's Defence budget.

On 9 May 2014, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison MP, delivered an address at the Lowy Institute on the future of border protection. The speech covered key issues surrounding border protection, including the announcement of a new 'Australian Border Force', which will consolidate Customs and immigration border operations into one agency. See the full transcript of the speech at: http://www.lowyinstitute.org/events/border-protection-scott-morrison

On 7 May 2014, Lowy Institute Research Director Anthony Bubalo explored how the return of authoritarianism in the Middle East will profoundly and negatively impact upon the security of the West. He recently released an Analysis, 'Next-gen Jihad in the Middle East', which outlines the resurgence of jihadism in the region. Read the paper here: http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/next-gen-jihad-middle-east

Malcolm Fraser on his new book 'Dangerous Allies' by Lowy Institute

German Council of Foreign Relations's Claudia Schmucker & G20 Studies Centre Program Director Mike Callaghan discuss the 'headline items' for the Brisbane Summit (0.18), the issue with 'growth' targets at G20 forums (1.10), the rise of the G7 in response to Russia's intervention in Ukraine (2.17), and developments in the TPP (3.43).