In his keynote address to world leaders at the G20 Summit in Brisbane last November, Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, chose to complain about the difficulty of getting his domestic budget, including a $7 co-payment for medical patients, through a fractious parliament. World leaders were openly bemused.
In this Lowy Institute essay under review, Peter Hartcher discusses more generally the pathology of parochialism that infects foreign policy debate in Australia. He asserts that when in opposition, Tony Abbott was a particularly ruthless practitioner of the art. Thus Labor’s campaign to get Australia a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and …read more
The Adolescent Country
