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    Alexander Downer

    Columnist

    Alexander Downer was Australia's longest serving foreign minister, from 1996 to 2007, and most recently Australian High Commissioner to the UK.

    Alexander Downer

    This Month

    Australia has joining a number of other Western countries in abandoning the hugely successful liberal market economic model and replacing it with a 1950s style State directed interventionist model.

    Look to South America to see Made in Australia in practice

    The Albanese government’s Peronist-like policies won’t add to growth and investment, despite the prime minister and treasurer’s rhetoric.

    April

    Only if the West show it possesses the resolve to impose significant costs on Iran will they persuade the ayatollahs that proceeding further will bring them intolerable pain.

    Appeasing Iran has proven weak and provocative

    If Tehran’s power can be contained and then reduced, the Middle East will be a much more peaceful place.

    Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom was killed in an Israeli air strike in central Gaza while helping to deliver food.

    Albanese and Biden’s opportunism on aid deaths is contemptible

    The confected outrage over the deaths of Australian Zomi Frankcom and her fellow Gaza aid workers goes way beyond the reaction to earlier wartime tragedies.

    March

    AUKMIN gathering: Penny Wong, David Cameron, Anthony Albanese, Grant Shapps, Richard Marles

    A British friend with important lessons for Australia

    The UK is a good strategic partner for us. It is also a public policy laboratory for what works – and what does not.

    Why is it that for all the engagement with ASEAN at the political and strategic level, our economic engagement is so limited?

    Australia’s under-investment in ASEAN is about them, not us

    South-East Asian nations need to become attractive to foreign investors through deregulation and establishing independent and incorruptible legal systems.

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    February

    Paul Keating at 80: never really understood the Indo-Pacific region.

    Keating’s quaint defence of Australia doesn’t grasp regional power politics

    Labor has put aside two absurd features of the Keating era: a defence policy designed to deal with direct invasion and the diminution of our US alliance

    Victorian Greens MPs Gabrielle de Vietri, Ellen Sandell, Tim Read and Sam Hibbins pose with a slogan.

    One Nation pales in comparison with vicious and evil Greens

    Never has a political party so racist, confrontational and divisive been elected to the Australian parliament.

    January

    Geert Wilders and other populists are now drawing major support from the young.

    Voters want visionary leaders, not managers with a plan

    Populists are thriving in the huge gulf between what the masses want for their countries, and what elites think they should have.

    Xi Jinping’s stimulus efforts and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will continue to have a big influence on coal prices.

    Taiwan’s vote is a crack in the new axis of autocracy

    Jiang Zemin told me that liberal democracy is not for China’s people. Taiwan has once again shown this to be nonsense.

    • Updated
    From left: Joe Biden, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin are all facing elections this year.

    The unknown unknowns of a global year of elections

    There will be more than 70 elections worldwide. Given that several of those elections will be in significant countries and the results are unpredictable, 2024 will be a year of uncertainty.

    • Updated

    December 2023

    From left: Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and Pamela Nadell, professor of history and Jewish studies at American University, during the US House education and the workforce committee hearing last week.

    Israel-Hamas tangled up in Ivy League identity politics row

    The war in Gaza has exposed the splits within Western societies between those who believe in critical theory and those who still believe in the egalitarian genius of liberal democracy.

    The one single takeout from Henry Kissinger’s advice was that every good government needs a clear, simple, foreign policy strategy.

    What Kissinger would have advised on Israel-Hamas

    The Australian government has been trying to balance domestic opinion, rather than articulate clear and simple objectives.

    November 2023

    There is great resistance on the Arab street to any agreement with Israel.

    Activists should know they are marching to destroy Israel

    No Palestinian leader would survive conceding to a two-state solution. Most Palestinians want Israel eliminated.

    The best example of wasteful expenditure is Snowy 2.0.

    Economic irrationalism would have Bert Kelly turning in his grave

    As our productivity declines and living standards stagnate, we need to find a path back to the formula that helped to transform our economic debate.

    October 2023

    President Joe Biden’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the slaughter of Jews by Hamas has been exemplary.

    Is the planet staggering towards global conflict?

    The best way to stop war spreading is to make it clear to our adversaries the incalculable price they would pay for their bellicose behaviour.

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    The rest of the world will barely notice the referendum.

    Yes or No won’t affect Australia’s standing on the world stage

    But like Brexit, after the Voice referendum it will take many years for the country to come back together again regardless of the outcome.

    September 2023

    The Tories may not do as badly as many commentators hope at the next British election. The reason is Rishi Sunak.

    Blowtorch of reality is conservatives’ greatest ally

    The Liberal Party should study UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rather than tacking like a yacht to accommodate trends, fashions and fads.

    While the public were complaining about late flights, high air fares and poor service, Qantas decided to invest in the Voice Yes case.

    Australian establishment should learn a lesson from Qantas

    If corporate elites want to prosper, they need to get back to their core business of providing quality goods and services to the punters and get out of the virtue signalling game.

    August 2023

    Union workers celebrate Peronist Loyalty Day in Buenos Aires in 2021.

    Political class has settled for the new Peronism

    China and post-war Argentina tell us what happens when politics trumps economic policy. Now we’ve been warned by the Intergenerational Report.

    His apparent refusal to accept the legitimacy of the last presidential election result was shameful. But whatever Trump wanted, he failed

    America’s starting to look a lot like South America

    It will take the wisdom of Solomon to steer the US back on to the path of stability and normality.

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