Greg Earl
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Writer & editor @LowyInstitute @AsiaSocietyAus @AusForeign Was @FinancialReview deputy editor, Jakarta, Tokyo & New York correspondent
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Articles by Greg Earl
Australia-Indonesia relations: From Keating’s bold vision to Albanese’s careful pragmatism
Back to the future It is now just over 30 years since then Prime Minister Paul Keating declared, to some frisson in the international relations community, that “no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia”.
Voting for a changing world
Looking out It is conventional wisdom among Australian political commentators to observe, and sometimes regret, that foreign policy doesn’t matter in elections in an island country with a once stable two-party system. This is despite some critical moments in modern electoral history when this was clearly not the case. The Vietnam War provided a key campaign issue for a Labor renaissance in 1969 and 1972.
Economic diplomacy: Trump era transcends economics
Downgrading delicately It is hard not to spare a thought for economists at the International Monetary Fund, required to produce a global economic outlook in the eye of the deglobalisation being pursued by the Trump administration. Not only are the trade facts changing almost by the day, but the plan to slash the State Department only underlines that US support for the IMF itself could quickly wither if its analysis upsets the White House.
Tariffs on or temporarily on pause: ASEAN’s big choice
Into the void Last week in response to the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reached for the diplomatic gambit that has increasingly become the government’s go-to response to geo-economic fragmentation: ASEAN. Declaring bluntly that the United States had abandoned regional nations, Albanese said Australia would “step up its engagement with ASEAN countries and fill the void”.
Budget 2025: Trump proofing Labor’s poll chances
Words apart Donald Trump may have well and truly trashed most of the conventional interpretations of American exceptionalism in little more than two months in office. However, it says a lot about the enduring power of the catch-phrase that Treasurer Jim Chalmers couldn’t help talking up his own Antipodean version this week as he sought to Trump proof the Labor government’s election fortunes with “Australian economic exceptionalism”.
Economic diplomacy: A fairy tale response to Trump’s tariffs
Taking a slice Just over a century ago the classic Australian children’s book The Magic Pudding was published reputedly as an antidote to both conventional fairy tales and the Great War food shortages. But the story of a pudding that renews itself after each slice is carved off has over time also become an allegory for the risks of relying on one funding source for multiple government ambitions.
Economic diplomacy: It’s populists vs plutocrats in Trump Take 2
Teams apart Treasurer Jim Chalmers says economic policy and foreign policy is now a team effort in the Albanese government, to the point that “they’re almost indistinguishable”. Chalmers’ speech to the Australian Institute of International Affairs annual outlook conference this week arguably marked the rhetorical high point of the government’s embrace of statecraft joining up these policy arms, which has flowed through development aid, renewable energy, and defence policy shifts, among others.
Economic diplomacy: It’s populists vs plutocrats in Trump#2
Teams apart Treasurer Jim Chalmers says economic policy and foreign policy is now a team effort in the Albanese government, to the point that “they’re almost indistinguishable”. Chalmers’ speech to the Australian Institute of International Affairs annual outlook conference this week arguably marked the rhetorical high point of the government’s embrace of statecraft joining up these policy arms, which has flowed through development aid, renewable energy, and defence policy shifts, among others.
Asia’s year of electoral upsets
Outmoded With the US presidential election sparking all sorts of debate about the future of the erstwhile bastion of global democracy, it is little appreciated what a bad year it has been for old guard forces in the region closer to Australia. Sheikh Hasina might have scripted yet another victory against a largely non-competing opposition in Bangladesh in January. But the frustration and ill-feeling that this left behind meant she had to abandon the country within seven months.
Economic diplomacy: After the storm comes the reconstruction
The Asian Development Bank has certainly not chosen a TikTok-grabbing theme for its latest bout of navel gazing by committing to “Solving challenges together, connecting the region, and empowering people for dynamic economies and a healthy planet.” However, the recently released mid-term review of the ADB’s Strategy 2030 – which was unveiled in rosier global times in 2018 – provides a good summary of how things have changed across all international development agencies after Covid and...
Economic diplomacy: After the storm comes the reconstruction
ADB: Kumbaya no more The Asian Development Bank has certainly not chosen a TikTok-grabbing theme for its latest bout of navel gazing by committing to “Solving challenges together, connecting the region, and empowering people for dynamic economies and a healthy planet.” However, the recently released mid-term review of the ADB’s Strategy 2030 – which was unveiled in rosier global times in 2018 – provides a good summary of how things have changed across all international development agencies...
Indonesia: Jokowi’s real legacy is an unpredictable successor
Back to the future There is a somewhat careworn characterisation of modern Indonesia as a country that keeps on changing in order to remain the same, with the rider that the more it changes the more it becomes familiar. There will be much of this type of circular thinking in the next few months as the first president from outside the dynastic, military or religious elites, Joko Widodo, hands over after ten years in power to a scion of those elites, Prabowo Subianto.
Economic diplomacy: Taking sides for an election
Pecking orders If hierarchies count in diplomatic communication, what are we to make of the duelling lists that Foreign Minister Penny Wong reeled off in a speech this week about why Asia matters to Australia. The speech began with an unremarkable recitation of how medium sized, trade-exposed countries need to rely more on law and norms rather than power and size to make their way in the world.
Economic diplomacy: Playing defence with Prabowo
Looking back Unsurprisingly, there was much harking back to the glory days of 1945 when Australia marked 75 years of diplomatic relations with Indonesia this week with a new defence agreement. Australia’s tendency to talk up government-to-government agreements more enthusiastically than Indonesian counterparts hints at an underlying nervousness.
Economic diplomacy: Banking on the Pacific
Rebuilding regional banking is unlikely to pay dividends without an underlying business revival. Australia’s oldest bank its name from the Bank of New South Wales to Westpac in 1982, reflecting apparent optimism about business prospects in a globalised western Pacific at a time when Asia-Pacific was the favoured collective name for this part of the world.
Economic diplomacy: Banking on the Pacific
Island bound (again) Australia’s oldest bank its name from the Bank of New South Wales to Westpac in 1982, reflecting apparent optimism about business prospects in a globalised western Pacific at a time when Asia-Pacific was the favoured collective name for this part of the world. Jump forward to the Indo-Pacific era, with all the implied meanings about a different geostrategic outlook, and Westpac has contracted its presence in the region.
Economic diplomacy: Looking beyond a 30-year anomaly
Joining the dots Tim Ayres is a little-known junior minister in the Albanese government. But Ayres nevertheless plays a symbolically significant role in bridging the traditional ideological fence between maintaining a local manufacturing industry and being a global free trade advocate.
Economic diplomacy: Looking beyond a 30-year anomaly
Joining the dots Tim Ayers is a little-known junior minister in the Albanese government. But Ayers nevertheless plays a symbolically significant role in bridging the traditional ideological fence between maintaining a local manufacturing industry and being a global free trade advocate.
Economic diplomacy: Ringfencing the Lucky Country
Rethinking globalisation Brad Setser brings a useful perspective to the deglobalisation debate in Foreign Affairs this month, chiding those worried that the world as we know it is collapsing and also those only too happy to exploit any panic for their own purposes.
Economic diplomacy: Budgeting for deglobalisation
Moving on There has been quite a movement in Australia in recent times towards better coordination of the three main arms of international relations policy – defence, development aid, and diplomacy – to achieve national objectives. It was underlined last year when the Strategic Defence Review suggested that the two less well funded latter parts of the triarchy deserved more support.
Economic diplomacy: Budgeting for deglobalisation
Moving on There has been quite a movement in Australia in recent times towards better coordination of the three main arms of international relations policy – defence, development aid, and diplomacy – to achieve national objectives. It was underlined last year when the Strategic Defence Review suggested that the two less well funded latter parts of the triarchy deserved more support.
Economic diplomacy: It’s nostalgists vs strategists
New binaries Australian economic leaders have a double-edged history of trying to redefine their opponents out of the political debate from Paul Keating’s “straightmen, fixers and maddies” to Joe Hockey’s “lifters or leaners”. But there is a dilemma with Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ bid to give a modernist edge to the government’s wholesale embrace of new wave global industrial policy by framing it as a choice between “nostalgists and strategists”. That is, which word is really the pejorative?
Economic diplomacy: Made in Australia with new energy
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in Brisbane 11 April 2024, announced proposed support for local manufacturing – with the federal government to assist with the “heavy lifting of economic transition and industrial transformation”. Elbows out Is there a better case study in the curious politics of geo-economic fragmentation than Australia’s latest effort to revive manufacturing?
Economic diplomacy: Made in Australia with new energy
Elbows out Is there a better case study in the curious politics of geo-economic fragmentation than Australia’s latest effort to revive manufacturing? Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week set out an ambition for a “future made in Australia”, and in doing so has blamed five of the country’s closest economic and security partners for his flagship return to big government, when it is ultimately driven by concern about excess capacity in its unnamed biggest trading partner (i.e.: China).
Economic diplomacy: Hanging on in ASEAN
Passing lane Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Southeast Asia is “where Australia's future lies” and Treasurer Jim Chalmers says even more enthusiastically that “ASEAN is where the action is”. But as Australian officials begin the harder work of implementing last month’s ASEAN–Australia Summit initiatives, the lingering question is whether the feeling is mutual.
Economic diplomacy: Politics rules in Korean envoy row
Prosecutorial democracy South Korea has a curious habit of investigating, often jailing, and then pardoning former presidents since it embraced two-party democracy with particular enthusiasm four decades ago. Now Australians may be about to get a ringside seat on this distinctively hardball approach to politics in their fourth-largest trading partner. Demands are growing to recall the newly arrived Korean ambassador Lee Jong-sup.
Economic diplomacy: Australia Inc’s new tilt at ASEAN
Lost in translation It’s 30 years since the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade produced a 300-page report on business challenges in Southeast Asia, accompanied by similarly hefty publications on new trade opportunities and missed investment possibilities.
Economic diplomacy: Strategic funding comes in from the cold
Former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese will lead the review. Soft dollars While the multiples of defence to aid and intelligence to diplomacy spending have received a lot of attention in recent years as they have relentlessly widened, another form of strategic spending by the federal government has largely flown under the radar.
Economic diplomacy: Strategic funding comes in from the cold
Soft dollars While the multiples of defence to aid and intelligence to diplomacy spending have received a lot of attention in recent years as they have relentlessly widened, another form of strategic spending by the federal government has largely flown under the radar.
Economic diplomacy: To market, to market, with China
Trading up Australia’s international economic engagement kicked off in 2003 with then foreign minister Alexander Downer telling his Cabinet colleagues that he was set to claim the biggest trade policy agenda in Australia’s history. Missing documents from the Howard government decision to join the Iraq war that year have dominated this year’s release of the 20-year-old Cabinet papers.
Economic diplomacy: Pulling the right global value chain
Stepping up Late November 2023, the Albanese government took important steps towards dealing with two of the most debated developments in international economic relations since the emergence of the deglobalisation era followed by the pandemic. Thereleaseof the investment mandate for the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund (NRF), which was a key commitment from last year’s election, is intended to eventually “rebuild Australia’s competitiveness across the manufacturing value chain”.
Economic diplomacy: Pulling the right global value chain
Stepping up Late last month, the Albanese government took important steps towards dealing with two of the most debated developments in international economic relations since the emergence of the deglobalisation era followed by the pandemic. The release of the investment mandate for the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund (NRF), which was a key commitment from last year’s election, is intended to eventually “rebuild Australia’s competitiveness across the manufacturing value chain”.
Economic diplomacy: Hits and misses for Project Diversify
Trading places Stabilisation has been word of the month in Australia’s international economic relations as the Albanese government has sought to unravel the remaining Chinese trade impediments, despite challenges such as the naval friction off Japan. But “diversification” is never far behind. And now thanks to the latest Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) trade survey we have some tentative insights into just how this persistent government policy aim is playing out.
Economic diplomacy: Labor’s green security state rises
Tunnel vision Last Sunday inner city Sydney residents got their first chance to walk inside a 24-kilometre labyrinth of intersecting underground road junction tunnels, which is being claimed as the biggest such infrastructure in the Southern Hemisphere. In response to questions about what drivers should do if they got lost in the maze, a transport official told the visitors: “Don’t stop. Don’t reverse.
How can Australia get its commitments to reduce carbon emissions back on track?
Difficult choices As the Albanese government is gearing up to explain to the world the likely rejection of an indigenous Voice to Parliament at the referendum vote this weekend, attention is also focused on how it will move on domestically from the expected political loss.
Economic diplomacy: ASEAN bound, but words are not enough
Legacy land One of the curiosities of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir of his time in office is that he makes very little of the 2018 gathering of Southeast Asian leaders in Sydney, which was the largest diplomatic event he hosted. It is worth reflecting on now because last week Turnbull was disputing his successor Anthony Albanese’s claim to be making the first Australian leader’s bilateral visit to the Philippines for two decades, something Turnbull says he did in 2015 and 2017.
Retracing the money trail to Southeast Asia
By Greg Earl. Australian companies first made their presence felt in Southeast Asia more than a century ago when tin miners brought significant new capital and technology to the region in a now forgotten pioneering demonstration of successful business engagement. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described this week’s new Southeast Asia economic strategy as the most significant piece of work Australia has ever done on increasing economic engagement with our closest Asian neighbours. That is true.
Economic diplomacy: Spirit of Australia charts a fresh course
Guns AND butter The release of Australia’s new development aid policy earlier this month has been mostly welcomed as the latest move in the Albanese government’s effort to craft a whole of government – or indeed nation – approach to national security. While this was underway in the previous government, the tempo has clearly stepped up, from the Defence Strategic Review backing more support for diplomacy to the talk in the latest budget of “investing in all elements of our statecraft”.
Economic diplomacy: Slicing up a new aid menu
Bottom lines The diversification of Australia’s development aid funding over the past few years amid persistent government budget deficits has relied to a considerable extent on partaking from various magic puddings. So, one of the challenging aspects of the decision to double down on the blended finance approach in the new aid policy – sometimes at the expense of conventional grant aid – is that the pudding has suddenly become more expensive due to rising interest rates.
Economic diplomacy: Hard labour managing geo-economic fragmentation
Catching a wave The Biden administration’s loosely named Inflation Reduction Act has flowed through the global economy like a tsunami engulfing everything from the reshoring debate to cheaper drug prices. Last month, the new wave industry policy finally washed through the Australian government when its oldest independent trade policy adviser opposed domestic electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
Economic diplomacy: Japan’s message in a gas bottle
New emissions When Japan’s ambassador Shingo Yamagami left Australia earlier than scheduled in April, the Albanese government probably hoped it would get a break from his unusually blunt comments about energy policy. But the past month has shown that even in a new era where national security ties have trumped old financial globalisation links, basic economic security still runs deep in international relations.
Economic diplomacy: Power shifts with Jakarta
Trading places It’s now half a century since Australia and Indonesia signed a bilateral investment agreement leading to serial government initiatives mostly on the Australian side to increase economic integration. But the fundamental reality has been that the two countries were largely competitive resource or commodity exporting economies – with coal mining for electricity being the principal example of this.
Economic diplomacy: duelling D-words to delineate China
For the leader-in-waiting from a small, risk averse country, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong was remarkably quick last month to smack down the flagship agreement from the Group of Seven summit. The unusually broad and assertive summit communiqué said the rich country club had agreed to adopt a policy of de-risking rather than decoupling from China as part of a wider process of economic resilience and reduction of excessive dependencies in critical supply chains.
Economic diplomacy: Taking cover from the summit war of words
Growing pains For a newish four-member, self-declared nimble group with an aversion for too much bureaucratisation, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue hit a telling benchmark at the weekend. The leaders’ meeting statement from the hastily re-arranged Hiroshima mini-summit was substantially longer than the last such statement from the ageing, process bound, 21-member, 29-year-old Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group.
Economic diplomacy: Paying for a new security era
Jobplomacy For all the fine words in recent years about integrating the official arms of international relations policymaking in diplomacy, development and defence (the so-called Three Ds), this week’s budget has again demonstrated that the politicians care more about the J Word.
Economic diplomacy: Counting the cost of decoupling
Members only Indonesia took one for the team in an era of minilaterals and “friendshoring” last week when it argued the case for its poorest neighbours to join the latest regional economic club – the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
Paying for a New Thai Democracy
What you need to know The real winners are far from clear, but Thailand’s populist, party jumping election is Asia’s vote to watch this year. By Greg Earl This year began with The Economist Democracy Index giving a striking upgrade to two of the countries which have been a longstanding deadweight on Southeast Asia’s recent political evolution.
Paying for a new Thai democracy
Polling daze This year began with The Economist Democracy Index giving a striking upgrade to two of the countries which have been a longstanding deadweight on Southeast Asia’s recent political evolution. Thailand received the biggest rank rise in the world to 55, a level not seen for the country since the clean-up election after the 2006 removal of then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. But Cambodia also received a relatively big upgrade, albeit to a much lower 121 rank.
Economic diplomacy: unlocked Laos looks for new links
All aboard Next year will be the 30th anniversary of one of Australia’s signature contributions to economic development in Southeast Asia – the Friendship Bridge spanning the Mekong River between Laos and Thailand.
Economic diplomacy: Arming up for war and trade
Guns AND butter It took a Second World War general-turned-president in Dwight Eisenhower to provide one of the most evocative articulations of the classic government spending choice between buying weapons and feeding the people.
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