Australian foreign policy: Priorities in a changing world∗

My focus tonight is on change and priorities. It is a commonplace to say that the world is changing, and that Australia must adjust to those changes. But we do not pause as often as we should to scrutinize just how, from our perspective, the world is changing; nor do we consider, as often or as carefully as we should, how our foreign policy might seek not only to react to, but to influence, those changes. If the essence of a sound foreign policy is the intelligent anticipation of change, as Gough Whitlam nicely used to put it, then to what kind of changes should we now be responding, and in what way? It is these large questions that I want to address tonight.