Friends and Allies in Foreign Policy

Bob Carr Bob Carr fulfilled a lifelong ambition when he became Australia’s Foreign Minister in March 2012. The former Labor premier of NSW was appointed by Julia Gillard to fill a casual Senate vacancy and went directly into Cabinet in the foreign affairs portfolio, but quit the Senate shortly after Labor lost government in 2013. In 2014 Bob’s book Diary of a Foreign Minister sparked a storm of controversy because of his comments about first-class air travel and airline food. Bob insisted most of his comments were self-mocking and satirical, but the criticisms continued even though many critics praised the overall thrust of the book and its insights on foreign policy and the political process. Previously Bob had been the longest continuously-serving Premier in the history of NSW. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 1988 until his election as Premier in March 1995. He was re-elected in 1999 and then in March 2003 he secured third four-year term. He retired from State politics in 2005 after over 10 years as Premier. As Premier he introduced the world's first carbon trading scheme and curbed the clearing of native vegetation as an anti-greenhouse measure. He was a member of the International Task Force on Climate Change convened by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and was made a life member of the Wilderness Society in 2003. He has also received the World Conservation Union International Parks Merit Award for creating 350 new national parks. Bob has received the Fulbright Distinguished Fellow Award Scholarship. He has served as Honorary Scholar of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. Earlier books included Thoughtlines, What Australia Means to Me and My Reading Life. Michael Fullilove Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, is the 2015 Boyer lecturer. His lectures, delivered on ABC Radio National, were titled A Larger Australia. Michael is the author of Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World, winner of the 2014 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. He is also the editor of Men and Women of Australia! Our Greatest Modern Speeches. He writes widely on global issues in publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The National Interest and Foreign Affairs. He is a sought-after media commentator and speaker in Australia and abroad. He is also the co-editor, with Anthony Bubalo, of Reports from a Turbulent Decade, a new anthology of the Lowy Institute's best work. He wrote the feasibility study for the establishment of the Lowy Institute in 2002 and served as the director of its global issues program for almost a decade until his appointment as executive director in 2012. He has also worked as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating, and a lawyer. He remains a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings. He graduated in arts and law from the universities of Sydney and New South Wales, with dual university medals. He also studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he took a master's degree and a doctorate in international relations. Michael lives in Sydney with his wife Gillian and their three sons. Alison Broinowski Dr Alison Broinowski, formerly an Australian diplomat, has written and edited eleven books about the interface between Australia and Asia and Australia’s role in world affairs. After joining the Australian Foreign Service in 1963, Alison lived in Japan for a total of six years, and for shorter periods in Burma, Iran, the Philippines, Jordan, South Korea, the United States and Mexico, either as an author or an Australian diplomat. She speaks Japanese and French. Alison is a visiting fellow at ANU and UNSW, and a senior research fellow at the University of Wollongong. She is a member of the Australian Republican Movement, the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the Asia-Pacific Council of Macquarie University, and is co-patron of the Asian Association of Australian Studies. Her most recent book, Allied and Addicted, challenges the value of the Australian-American alliance. Her last overseas assignment was in the Australian Mission to the UN in 1989-90, and in 2005 she co-published with James Wilkinson The Third Try: Can the UN Work? Alison is currently developing a research project on public and cultural diplomacy. Emily Howie Emily Howie has worked with the Human Rights Law Centre since 2009 protecting human rights in Australian foreign policy, defending democratic freedoms such as the right to vote as well as anti-racism and minority rights issues. She also works on accountability for Australia’s actions overseas such as border protection measures and military cooperation, including Australia’s involvement in the US drone program. Emily has a masters in law from Columbia University in New York. In 2012 she was awarded Columbia’s Leebron Human Rights Fellowship to conduct research on asylum seekers in Sri Lanka. Prior to joining the HRLC, Emily worked as a Senior Associate with Allens Arthur Robinson, a legal adviser to the House of Representatives Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and in the Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Emily has substantial human rights litigation experience, including as a lead lawyer in Roach v Cth [2007] HCA 43, which established constitutional protection of the right to vote. Last month, Emily co-authored a report with Human Rights Watch’s Elaine Pearson examining Australia’s readiness to operate effectively as a Human Rights Council member if elected. Sow Keat Tok Dr Sow Keat Tok joined the Asia Institute in May 2012. He obtained his PhD in Politics and International Studies from Britain’s University of Warwick in 2011. He was previously associated with Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR) in that university, the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham and the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. He is also current editor of the CSGR working paper series. At present, he is working on China and its policy behaviour towards sovereignty, with particular attention to China-Hong Kong and China-Taiwan relations. His research interests spans the Asia-Pacific region, and include China's foreign relations, East Asia's regional institutions and approaches to regionalism and South-East Asia's internal politics and external relations.