Latest news with #Lowy
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Australia announces 2025 Maitri Grants, aimed at supporting connections and research across sectors
Australia and India are gearing up to strengthen partnerships across vital sectors of their growing bilateral relationship with the 2025 Maitri Grants, Fellowships and Scholarships, recipients of which were announced by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, according to a press statement issued by Australia's High Commission in New Delhi on Sunday. Administered by the Centre for Australia-India Relations, the Maitri Grants encourage innovative projects and partnerships that reflect the dynamism of the Australia-India bilateral relationship, fostering long-term connections. According to the statement, the recipients of the 2025 Maitri Grants would support connections and research across a wide range of sectors including innovation, enterprise, education, and culture. Welcoming the announcement, Australia's High Commissioner to India, Philip Green, said, 'Australia's relationship with India is stronger, deeper and more consequential than ever – and its future holds even greater promise. At the heart of this relationship are the people-to-people connections that bind our two nations. The Maitri Grants program builds on these ties, helping unlock the full potential of our bilateral relationship.' One of the key initiatives in this year's Maitri Grants includes funding for the prestigious Lowy Institute to recruit a distinguished scholar as the inaugural India chair. The Lowy Institute is rated among Asia's leading think tanks, providing high-quality research and distinctive perspectives on international trends shaping Australia and the world. The appointment of an India chair will be a step change for Lowy's ability to produce world- class research on India's emerging role in the Indo-Pacific and dynamics in the Indian Ocean region. 'This is a rare opportunity to lead and shape a new program of work at the Lowy Institute – a top Asian think tank,' said High Commissioner Green, adding, 'India and Australia are building a closer partnership, and that makes it more important that we know each other better. An India Chair at the Lowy Institute will contribute to Australians' understanding of India at a deep level. We are very different societies, and research, scholarship and analysis will allow us to maximise the opportunity of our shared interests.' Lowy Institute's Director of Research, Hervé Lemahieu, said in the statement, 'In this era of global uncertainty, geography remains one of the few constants — and India is an anchor for strategic balance for Australia and the broader Indo-Pacific region. Understanding India, its trajectory, power, and diffuse interests, has never been more important to us.' 'Australia's public and policy debates are playing catch-up on the rapid evolution of the bilateral partnership. But think tanks also need to do a better job of situating India within a broader regional and international context. The country will be a central player through the chop and change we're experiencing in global politics,' he said. 'This world-class program of research at the Lowy Institute will do just that. It will elevate India in terms of our research agenda. It's an opportunity to bring in new talent, fresh perspectives, and deepen the bench on a vital piece of the puzzle in terms of how Australia looks at and engages the region,' he added. Other projects to be funded by the Maitri grants include a world-class exhibition featuring rare artworks by renowned Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma in Australia; a project to deliver annual leadership dialogues fostering next-generation of leaders committed to the Australia-India relationship; examining how Australia and India can enhance maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean; innovative research across fields such as clean energy solutions and biomanufacturing; and elevating the stories of Australians of Indian origin. 'I congratulate this year's recipients and look forward to seeing how their work helps foster deeper links between Australia and India,' added High Commissioner Green.
Business Times
16-06-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Australians equally distrust both Trump and Xi: survey
[CANBERRA] Australians are equally distrustful of both US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new survey, complicating Canberra's task of managing ties with its key security ally and biggest trading partner. A new survey released by the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney showed that 72 per cent of respondents said they did not trust Trump to act responsibly in global affairs, just edging out the 71 per cent who said they did not trust China's Xi. When asked whether Trump or Xi would be a better partner for Australia, the two leaders were tied at 45 per cent apiece. The results come as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attends a Group of Seven meeting in Canada, where he could hold his first face-to-face meeting with the US president. Albanese will be hoping to negotiate an exemption on US steel and aluminium tariffs for Australia, as well as trying to secure Trump's support for Aukus following the announcement in Washington of a review of the security accord. Albanese's balancing act with Trump is a difficult one. Australians' faith in the US has deteriorated following the president's return to the White House. Trust in America as a global player has fallen to just 36 per cent, by far the lowest result in the Lowy survey's 20-year history. Yet despite an aversion to Trump, Australians are not ready to move away from the US as the nation's primary security partner. The survey showed consistent support for the US alliance, with 80 per cent of respondents saying America was important for Australia's security. Meanwhile, attitudes to China have slightly improved, although Beijing is generally considered less reliable than the US across most metrics. BLOOMBERG
Mint
15-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Australians Equally Distrust Both Trump and Xi, Survey Finds
Australians are equally distrustful of both US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new survey, complicating Canberra's task of managing ties with its key security ally and biggest trading partner. A new survey released by the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney showed that 72% of respondents said they didn't trust Trump to act responsibly in global affairs, just edging out the 71% who said they didn't trust China's Xi. When asked whether Trump or Xi would be a better partner for Australia, the two leaders were tied at 45% apiece. The results come as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attends a Group of Seven meeting in Canada, where he could hold his first face-to-face meeting with the US president. Albanese will be hoping to negotiate an exemption on US steel and aluminum tariffs for Australia, as well as trying to secure Trump's support for Aukus following the announcement in Washington of a review of the security accord. Albanese's balancing act with Trump is a difficult one. Australians' faith in the US has deteriorated following the president's return to the White House. Trust in America as a global player has fallen to just 36%, by far the lowest result in the Lowy survey's 20-year history. Yet despite an aversion to Trump, Australians aren't ready to move away from the US as the nation's primary security partner. The survey showed consistent support for the US alliance, with 80% of respondents saying America was important for Australia's security. Meanwhile, attitudes to China have slightly improved, although Beijing is generally considered less reliable than the US across most metrics. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies
Which is why Albanese left Canberra quite untroubled by the prospect of not meeting the US leader at all. And, if a meeting were to occur, Albanese had no intention of grovelling, no basket of delicacies to offer. Even though Trump tells us that he's open to extravagant gifts. When Ramaphosa said to Trump, 'I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you,' the US president replied: 'I wish you did. I would take it.' Australia has had an offer on the table in an effort to persuade Trump to exempt the country from the tariffs he has imposed on every other nation and penguin colony (with notable exemptions for Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba). Loading 'The ball is now in the US court,' Trade Minister Don Farrell told me five weeks ago. 'We have put our proposition to them, and it's open to them if they want to accept it.' It included an offer of setting up a reliable supply chain for critical minerals to help break China's stranglehold. The offer is still in the US court. Albanese is not going to plead. The Coalition is still demanding that the prime minister insist on an urgent meeting with Trump at any cost. Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor on Thursday said that Albanese must do 'whatever is necessary to meet with President Trump … as quickly as possible'. Maybe the opposition hasn't quite adjusted to the quiet patriotism that Australians feel about this. The country wants its leader to be on his feet dealing with Trump, not his knees. Or maybe the Liberals do get it, and they're trying to set Albanese up to fail. Loading In a poll published this week, non-partisan Pew Research found that, among 24 nations, Australia was one of the countries with the greatest distrust of Trump. Seventy-seven per cent of Aussies said they did not trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. This was identical with sentiment in Canada, yet Trump hasn't breathed a word about annexing Australia. The median distrust rating across all 24 countries was around six in 10. Australians have firm views about the US president. We will not reward a lickspittle leader. Does that mean we want to dump the AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain? From the news coverage this week of Trump's decision to review the deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's deeply unpopular. But a separate poll this week revealed that the opposite is true. The Lowy Institute survey poll found that 67 per cent of Australians support acquiring US nuclear-powered submarines, the first and most contentious element of the AUKUS pact. The poll of over 2100 people was conducted in March. When it was first announced, Lowy's poll found support at 70 per cent. 'Over the past four years, the Lowy Institute poll has shown that Australians' support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines remains strong,' said Lowy's director, Michael Fullilove. The strident anti-AUKUS campaign led by Paul Keating and the Greens has made no real impact. The Australian electorate is discerning enough to judge Australia's national interests. And to tell the difference between distrust of Donald Trump on the one hand, and, on the other, an agreement between Australia and the country that Trump leads temporarily in order to acquire a national asset. (With Britain, of course, the third participant.) Australians have firm views about AUKUS. We will not reward a sellout leader. Which leads us to a key point largely overlooked in the week's frenzied coverage. America is not the point of AUKUS. The reason it exists is not out of love for the US. Or Britain. It came into being because of mutual fear of China. Beijing has built the world's biggest navy so that it can drive the US out of the Western Pacific and dominate the region. If it dominates Asia and the Pacific, it dominates the majority of the global economy. Which ultimately means it dominates the world. If you don't understand this, you haven't been listening to Xi Jinping. Or taking him seriously. Loading Australians understand the country's vulnerability. For years now, seven respondents in 10 have told Lowy's pollsters that they think China will pose a future military threat to Australia. The experts agree. The doyen of Australian defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that Australia's navy and air force would not last a week in a confrontation with China. 'A few days' is all it would take for the People's Liberation Army to destroy Australia's forces. Not that Beijing wants to invade the continent. Australian strategists believe that China can more effectively and efficiently coerce the country by merely deploying some of the 300-plus vessels in its navy to Australia's northern approaches. Extended live fire drills, for example, would deter commercial shipping. Australia's supply lines, imports and exports, would be interrupted. The broad concept – cutting Australia off from the US and the world – is the same one that Imperial Japan was putting in place in World War II. Loading Knowing this vulnerability, an intelligent island continent would put a high priority on submarines to patrol our approaches. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments proved more complacent than intelligent. The six Collins Class submarines were supposed to be entering retirement about now. Which brings us to the second key point overlooked in the week's sound and fury. Journalists asked Defence Minister Richard Marles what would happen if the Trump administration review were to terminate AUKUS. What, they asked, reasonably enough, is Australia's Plan B? He answered that there was a plan, and we had to make it work. More pungently, Jennifer Parker of ANU's National Security College wrote in this masthead: 'Calls for a plan B overlook a blunt reality: AUKUS is already Plan C.' Remember Tony Abbott's Japanese subs and Malcolm Turnbull's French subs? Australia is becoming a byword for fecklessness. China's shipyards are producing two nuclear-powered submarines a year. Australia hasn't produced a single submarine since 2001. It's entirely possible that the Pentagon's AUKUS review, led by Elbridge Colby, complicates the plan. But an Australian with deep and long experience of dealing with Washington predicts that it will not scrap the three-nation treaty: 'I don't think he will recommend kyboshing the AUKUS agreement because, if he did, he'd be effectively ending the alliance. Not formally, but it would fundamentally change the equation.' Either way, with or without AUKUS, Australia's priority should be to prepare itself to stand on its own. AUKUS was supposed to add a serious new capability but not to be the be-all and end-all of Australian defence. 'Things have dramatically changed,' Paul Dibb tells me. 'With the Chinese navy on our doorstep doing live fire drills and the unreliability of our great ally, we now need to do much more to develop the independent capability to deal with contingencies in the South Pacific and relevant contingencies in the South China Sea, events where the US would have no interest in getting involved.' Australia needs to be able to stand on its feet, not its knees, in dealing with its ally. It needs to be able to do the same with its rivals.
The Age
13-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies
Which is why Albanese left Canberra quite untroubled by the prospect of not meeting the US leader at all. And, if a meeting were to occur, Albanese had no intention of grovelling, no basket of delicacies to offer. Even though Trump tells us that he's open to extravagant gifts. When Ramaphosa said to Trump, 'I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you,' the US president replied: 'I wish you did. I would take it.' Australia has had an offer on the table in an effort to persuade Trump to exempt the country from the tariffs he has imposed on every other nation and penguin colony (with notable exemptions for Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba). Loading 'The ball is now in the US court,' Trade Minister Don Farrell told me five weeks ago. 'We have put our proposition to them, and it's open to them if they want to accept it.' It included an offer of setting up a reliable supply chain for critical minerals to help break China's stranglehold. The offer is still in the US court. Albanese is not going to plead. The Coalition is still demanding that the prime minister insist on an urgent meeting with Trump at any cost. Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor on Thursday said that Albanese must do 'whatever is necessary to meet with President Trump … as quickly as possible'. Maybe the opposition hasn't quite adjusted to the quiet patriotism that Australians feel about this. The country wants its leader to be on his feet dealing with Trump, not his knees. Or maybe the Liberals do get it, and they're trying to set Albanese up to fail. Loading In a poll published this week, non-partisan Pew Research found that, among 24 nations, Australia was one of the countries with the greatest distrust of Trump. Seventy-seven per cent of Aussies said they did not trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. This was identical with sentiment in Canada, yet Trump hasn't breathed a word about annexing Australia. The median distrust rating across all 24 countries was around six in 10. Australians have firm views about the US president. We will not reward a lickspittle leader. Does that mean we want to dump the AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain? From the news coverage this week of Trump's decision to review the deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's deeply unpopular. But a separate poll this week revealed that the opposite is true. The Lowy Institute survey poll found that 67 per cent of Australians support acquiring US nuclear-powered submarines, the first and most contentious element of the AUKUS pact. The poll of over 2100 people was conducted in March. When it was first announced, Lowy's poll found support at 70 per cent. 'Over the past four years, the Lowy Institute poll has shown that Australians' support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines remains strong,' said Lowy's director, Michael Fullilove. The strident anti-AUKUS campaign led by Paul Keating and the Greens has made no real impact. The Australian electorate is discerning enough to judge Australia's national interests. And to tell the difference between distrust of Donald Trump on the one hand, and, on the other, an agreement between Australia and the country that Trump leads temporarily in order to acquire a national asset. (With Britain, of course, the third participant.) Australians have firm views about AUKUS. We will not reward a sellout leader. Which leads us to a key point largely overlooked in the week's frenzied coverage. America is not the point of AUKUS. The reason it exists is not out of love for the US. Or Britain. It came into being because of mutual fear of China. Beijing has built the world's biggest navy so that it can drive the US out of the Western Pacific and dominate the region. If it dominates Asia and the Pacific, it dominates the majority of the global economy. Which ultimately means it dominates the world. If you don't understand this, you haven't been listening to Xi Jinping. Or taking him seriously. Loading Australians understand the country's vulnerability. For years now, seven respondents in 10 have told Lowy's pollsters that they think China will pose a future military threat to Australia. The experts agree. The doyen of Australian defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that Australia's navy and air force would not last a week in a confrontation with China. 'A few days' is all it would take for the People's Liberation Army to destroy Australia's forces. Not that Beijing wants to invade the continent. Australian strategists believe that China can more effectively and efficiently coerce the country by merely deploying some of the 300-plus vessels in its navy to Australia's northern approaches. Extended live fire drills, for example, would deter commercial shipping. Australia's supply lines, imports and exports, would be interrupted. The broad concept – cutting Australia off from the US and the world – is the same one that Imperial Japan was putting in place in World War II. Loading Knowing this vulnerability, an intelligent island continent would put a high priority on submarines to patrol our approaches. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments proved more complacent than intelligent. The six Collins Class submarines were supposed to be entering retirement about now. Which brings us to the second key point overlooked in the week's sound and fury. Journalists asked Defence Minister Richard Marles what would happen if the Trump administration review were to terminate AUKUS. What, they asked, reasonably enough, is Australia's Plan B? He answered that there was a plan, and we had to make it work. More pungently, Jennifer Parker of ANU's National Security College wrote in this masthead: 'Calls for a plan B overlook a blunt reality: AUKUS is already Plan C.' Remember Tony Abbott's Japanese subs and Malcolm Turnbull's French subs? Australia is becoming a byword for fecklessness. China's shipyards are producing two nuclear-powered submarines a year. Australia hasn't produced a single submarine since 2001. It's entirely possible that the Pentagon's AUKUS review, led by Elbridge Colby, complicates the plan. But an Australian with deep and long experience of dealing with Washington predicts that it will not scrap the three-nation treaty: 'I don't think he will recommend kyboshing the AUKUS agreement because, if he did, he'd be effectively ending the alliance. Not formally, but it would fundamentally change the equation.' Either way, with or without AUKUS, Australia's priority should be to prepare itself to stand on its own. AUKUS was supposed to add a serious new capability but not to be the be-all and end-all of Australian defence. 'Things have dramatically changed,' Paul Dibb tells me. 'With the Chinese navy on our doorstep doing live fire drills and the unreliability of our great ally, we now need to do much more to develop the independent capability to deal with contingencies in the South Pacific and relevant contingencies in the South China Sea, events where the US would have no interest in getting involved.' Australia needs to be able to stand on its feet, not its knees, in dealing with its ally. It needs to be able to do the same with its rivals.
