Speeches

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… I’m speaking tonight, not just as fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs, but as patron of Worldwide Support for Development, that’s sponsoring this event. That’s one of the many charities, of Dr Haruhisa Handa, one of the world’s serious philanthropists, whom you might know better, as the founding sponsor of the Handa Opera…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… One of the upsides of being a recovering politician, indeed a former PM, is that you can say what needs to be said in ways that incumbents sometimes can’t. The AUKUS submarine deal, to provide Australia with British or American nuclear-powered subs, is the biggest decision any Australian government has made in decades. It…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Originally published in the Spectator Normally, if the response to a speech of mine was that it had been a ‘despicable and insane performance’ from a ‘failed and pitiful politician’, I’d question what went wrong. But since the comments came from Chinese communists about an address I’d made in Taiwan, it’s hard not to…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Two years back I hesitated to attend this conference lest that provoke China. But since then, Beijing has torn-up the “one country, two systems” treaty on Hong Kong; put upwards of a million Uighurs into concentration camps; boosted cyber spying on its own citizens; cancelled popular personalities in favour of a cult of the…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… Your Foreign Minister has this week spoken frankly with the Australian people about the prospect of invasion so I will do my best to speak with equal candour. For a retired free world politician, there maybe no more telling place to be right now, because this is where liberty and tyranny are most at…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… There’s nothing like some serious pressure to test whether our actions really-do-match our beliefs, and this pandemic has certainly dispelled any notion, that at least for a rich country, you can always get what you need, when you need it, from a globalised economy. Like so many, Australia discovered early on just how dependent…

E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………………… After 14 months of lockdowns, travel bans, and economic back-sliding, these have been the worst of times for most of us – even here, where closed borders have largely prevented the deaths suffered in other parts of the world. But ass Humphrey Bogart said in African Queen, things are never so bad that they…

Sir Robert Menzies once said that men of great talent who achieve posts of leadership and responsibility ‘will frequently be over-praised by their friends and over-attacked by their opponents.’Over the course of his 25-year Parliamentary career, Tony Abbott has certainly been over-attacked by his opponents and perhaps, like Menzies, insufficiently praised by his friends.The launch...

Britain’s departure from the EU is a historical watershed. As a big moment in geopolitics, it ranks with the fall of the Soviet Union. For decades, it had been assumed that the nation state would decrease in importance and that supra-national bodies, such as the EU and the UN, would become ever more relevant; just...