In this extract from his submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Gareth Evans argues that it is crucial that protest language claimed to be inherently antisemitic be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, taking into account context and intent. (more…)
Gareth Evans
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When is an illegal war morally defensible?
Some illegal uses of force have been judged morally defensible, as in Kosovo in 1999. But the US–Israel war on Iran fails that test – lacking lawful authority, credible motives and a plausible path to a better outcome. (more…)
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Australia’s middle power diplomacy matters
Middle powers may lack the economic and military weight to coerce others, but they can still shape outcomes through coalition-building, credibility and sustained diplomatic effort. (more…)
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Why Australia should walk away from AUKUS
Trump’s actions in Venezuela and rhetoric elsewhere confirm that the United States no longer respects international law or allied interests. Australia should rethink its strategic dependence accordingly.
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Managing a mature Australia-China relationship
The Australia–China bilateral relationship remains strong, despite Australian concerns about China’s commitment to a free and open rules-based trading system. Trump’s disruptive tariffs demonstrate that Australia must balance its relationship with the United States while ramping up cooperation on regional economic and trade issues with China. (more…)
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Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?
It cannot be said too often that it is only sheer dumb luck that has enabled the world to avoid for 80 years a repeat of the indescribable horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (more…)
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Evans gobsmacked by ANU change plan
Former ANU Chancellor and Federal Minister Gareth Evans has expressed ‘acute concern’ at proposed changes in humanities and social sciences at ANU. In a letter delivered to the Vice-Chancellor and Chancellor this week, he says the university’s distinctive national mission is being ‘ignored or gravely under-valued’. (more…)
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Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
A presentation by Professor Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, to the University of Melbourne Australian Peace and Security Forum Webinar Abandoning our Fears: Finding Peace and Security in our Region, 8 July 2025. (more…)
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Why Australia should recognise Palestinian statehood
The question for the Australian Government is, how can we most constructively persuade Israel to change course? (more…)
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Remembering Race Mathews
Gareth Evans Eulogy, State Memorial Service, Melbourne Arts Centre, 23 May 2025
Race Mathews had a wonderfully rich and productive life, which he lived to the full for 90 years. He accepted his last years of declining health with serenity, and died — as I guess we all hope we will — peacefully and painlessly, surrounded by loving family. But none of that means that we — his family, friends and admirers — will mourn his passing any less, or miss him any less. (more…)
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Being a good international citizen in a Trumpian world
We live in troubling times, globally and regionally, with not the least of our troubles being the current occupant of the White House. (more…)
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Pursuing Australia’s national interests in a ‘Might is Right’ world
Less America. More Self-Reliance. More Asia. More Global Engagement. (more…)
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Best of 2024: AUKUS: The worst defence and foreign policy decision our country has made
Defence Minister Marles’s love for the the US is so dewy-eyed as to defy parody. Foreign Minister Wong is far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of over-commitment to America’s view of itself, but has been unwilling to rock the boat. (more…)
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Celebrating Race Mathews
In this era of totally leader-focused election campaigning, and presidential prime ministers, it is not surprising that political biographers tend to focus almost exclusively just on those who make it to the very top. But, while it might not be a truth universally acknowledged, the reality is that whether parties actually win office, and the extent to which governments achieve anything memorably worthwhile if they do, often depends at least as much on those who never make it quite so far up the greasy pole. (more…)
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Sheridan wrong on Wong
Greg Sheridan is doubtless now too long in the tooth to change his journalistic ways. But it really is time that he recognised the force of that immortal observation by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Francis Bacon, that ‘Speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love’. (more…)
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Defending nation’s sovereignty is not the act of an ‘appeaser’
Could the Alexander Downer who accuses me and Paul Keating of appeasement possibly be the same Alexander Downer who recently wrote in The Australian that if he had a vote in the US Presidential election it would be for Donald Trump? The same Donald Trump whose willingness to accommodate Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine makes Chamberlain’s behaviour in Munich in 1939 seem almost Churchillian? (more…)
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Independence too big a price for AUKUS fantasy
Paul Keating, Bob Carr and I seem to have jangled a few security establishment nerves with our critique of the AUKUS submarine deal as having profound negative implications for Australia’s security and sovereignty. (more…)
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Remembering Pete Steedman
Legendary student agitator, Oz-era editor, Hawke-era Parliamentarian, union official, music industry executive and all-purpose provocateur, Pete Steedman died aged 82 on 10 July 2024 after a long battle with cancer. This is one of a number of speeches given at a memorial celebration of his life at the Melbourne Trades Hall on 7 September 2024. (more…)
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AUKUS: The worst defence and foreign policy decision our country has made
Defence Minister Marles’s love for the the US is so dewy-eyed as to defy parody. Foreign Minister Wong is far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of over-commitment to America’s view of itself, but has been unwilling to rock the boat. (more…)
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The urgency of Palestinian statehood
It is time for Israel to recognize the force of the rapidly growing international movement to recognize Palestinian statehood, not as the final outcome of a political settlement but as a path to achieving it. (more…)
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Détente: Towards a balance of power between the USA and China
Former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, other former Cabinet Ministers, former State Premiers, a Nobel Laureate, diplomats, writers, academics and human rights advocates are among 50 Australians supporting an appeal to establish détente between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. (more…)
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We must do everything in our power to build a comprehensive new détente between the US and China
We, and our fellow 50 Australian signatories, believe that it is time for the United States and China to enter into a comprehensive new détente, formally pledging to treat each other as mutually respectful equals, to resolve differences peacefully and to work together to advance global and regional goods like nuclear arms control, the mitigation of global warming, counter-terrorism and cyber-regulation. (more…)
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Détente: Towards a balance of power between the USA and China
Former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, other former Cabinet Ministers, former State Premiers, a Nobel Laureate, diplomats, writers, academics and human rights advocates are among 50 Australians supporting an appeal to establish détente between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. (more…)
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Why Australia can’t rely on the US to save it from China
While there is a measure of agreement among Australian policymakers, and those who influence them, about the severity of regional security challenges we will face in the years ahead, serious divisions persist between Government and Opposition, within the wider think tank, academic and media policy community, and to some extent within the Albanese Government. They relate to the extent and imminence of the security threat posed by China under Xi Jinping; the wisdom of further deepening Australia’s alliance dependence on the United States; how we should be prioritising our defence preparedness; and how much weight we should be giving to diplomacy over defence. (more…)
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A compelling voice for rethinking Australia’s national security
Sam Roggeveen’s Echidna Strategy rightly challenges Australia to act as a diplomatic powerhouse, not a military one. (more…)
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The case for recognising Palestine
Since a United Nations General Assembly Resolution vote in November 2012, Palestine has had the status of a state within the UN system. It is not a full member state but, like the Holy See, a non-member observer state. Australia – after a heady debate within the Gillard cabinet – abstained on that vote. (more…)
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Remembering Bruce Grant: An advocate of Australian self-reliant defence capability
Bruce Grant, who died in August at the great age of 97, made an extraordinary contribution, as a writer and thinker, to Australia’s understanding of itself as a nation, and our place in the world. His richly well-lived life – with its multiple incarnations as journalist, author, university lecturer, diplomat and ministerial adviser – was commemorated at a memorial event in Melbourne this month, at which I offered this tribute. (more…)
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Remarks on the Australia-China divide at the AsiaLink launch of Happy Together, by David Walker and Li Yao.
The juxtaposition and interweaving of life stories from Australia and China make for endlessly fascinating reading. (more…)
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Talking up war over Taiwan flouts reason, fact, judgment and Australia’s national interest
It is never wise, in foreign affairs and defence policymaking, for emotion to trump reason, for politics to trump objectivity, or for sensitive judgment calls on major national interest issues to be made before they have to be. Talking up, as so many now are, the prospect of war with China — with Taiwan as the likely trigger point — runs the risk of offending all three prescriptions.
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Why the Hawke-Keating government remains the gold standard
You don’t have to be partisan or nostalgic to lament the quality of political leadership in Australia. The mediocrity of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison coalition governments, the chronic underperformance of the manifestly more talented Rudd-Gillard Labor governments, and the inability of either side of politics to achieve anything like the creativity and sustained effectiveness of the Hawke-Keating governments of 1983-96, is there for all to see. (more…)