Letter from New York
Four days after Australia was successfully elected to the Security Council for a two year term I was in New York myself for consultations with the Secretary General and other…
Abbott and the placebo effect
This sums up Tony Abbott and his approach to finding solutions to the condition of the electorate.
Letter from Cyprus
Frankly, I’ve been shocked by the violence of the reaction. To kill the American Ambassador to Libya because some screwball in America made an offensive film is a terrible thing
Never famous enough
Gore Vidal first visited Australia in 1974, and lunched with Prime Minister Whitlam at the Lodge, where they sparred jocularly over the historical accuracy of Vidal’s novel about the Roman…

Letter from Beijing
The first time I visited China I was a bag carrier for the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. It was August 1982. Frankly, the place was forbidding. There were few…
Malaysia’s guessing game
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak seems to be examining his options, as he keeps the people guessing about the date of the next general elections
The North Korean fiasco
There isn’t an English word for what the Germans call schadenfreude but the sentiment is universal; comfort at the discomfort of others. We may not like to admit it but…
Death in Tonga
Not long after becoming foreign minister I made a visit to Tonga. Now Tonga’s a hard place to get to so I flew there in an RAAF executive jet. I…
spare a thought for the punters
When we think of Greece we think of history and holidays. You know, Aristotle, Plato and Socrates and, of course Alexander the Great. But that was millennia ago. These days,…