Michael Fullilove calls for increased Australian defence and diplomatic spending 10 years after dire warning
When Michael Fullilove was invited to deliver the prestigious Boyer lectures a decade ago, the head of Australia’s top foreign policy think tank insisted on one condition. The executive director of the Lowy Institute wanted to deliver his first speech in Beijing, examining Australia’s place in a rapidly changing world. Since the annual lecture series was launched in 1959, Fullilove’s speech at Peking University was the first, and to this day, one speech abroad.
This was a divisive election. Fullilove recalls that some conservative commentators criticized him for choosing the capital of communist China over Washington or London. When he stepped onto the tarmac in China, he received a voicemail from an Australian diplomat: “Can I ask you one favor: please don’t ruin your relationship with Beijing this week!” But he believed no other country could transform Australia’s relationship with the world as much as the rising superpower China.
Lowy Institute chief executive Michael Fullilove argues Australia needs a larger diplomatic network and revitalized foreign service.Credit: Kate Geraghty
In many ways, the geopolitical landscape of 2015 looked much less bleak than today. Barack Obama was in the White House, and Donald Trump’s ambitions for high office were largely seen as delusional. Xi Jinping had not yet been elected president for life of China. Vladimir Putin had captured Crimea, but a full-scale invasion of Ukraine seemed unthinkable. The horror of the October 7 attacks and the two-year war in Gaza was experienced in the same way.
However, Fullilove titled his speech Available in Demolition, It reflects his fear that the post-Cold War global order that has benefited Australia is beginning to crumble. It seemed like a scary message. Now that he thinks about it, he says he probably wasn’t pessimistic enough. “Ten years later, the liberal international order has virtually vanished,” he will say in a speech at the Lowy Institute on Wednesday.
The central theme of Fullilove’s Boyer lectures was that Australia should adopt a more assertive and confident foreign policy, breaking free from the tendency to underestimate ourselves and underestimate our potential influence.
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Examining Australian foreign policy a decade later, he says there is much to be proud of. He praises the Albanian government for allying with Papua New Guinea, making innovative security agreements with Pacific countries such as Vanuatu, and striking a new security agreement with Indonesia. As for his approach to China – epitomized by Anthony Albanese’s quote “Cooperate when we can, disagree when we have to” – he was unlikely to object, given that he coined the phrase himself in his 2015 lecture.
But Fullilove believes Australia must still strive for a bolder, broader role on the world stage and invest the energy and money necessary to make it possible.
Following Albanese’s successful White House meeting with Trump in October, Fullilove is urging the prime minister to think strategically about how to maximize Australia’s influence with a transactional US president. He argues that a cautious, narrowly self-interested approach is not enough.
