Australia is off-track and looks set to miss its Paris emission reduction target. National emissions are rising and the government seems unwilling or unable to agree on credible policies to reduce emissions. The Commonwealth Government has shelved its centrepiece new climate and energy policy, the National Energy Guarantee (NEG). The Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (RET)

The Australian government appears to be actively soliciting financing from foreign governments and investors towards Adani’s coal mine and rail line, projects it plans to subsidise.

As Fiji prepares to chair climate talks in late 2017, Pacific leaders are gathering in Suva to consider what policies to push for. One should be a moratorium on new coal mines. Australian government ministers are actively promoting subsidies to the world’s largest new coal mine, Adani’s Carmichael project. When Pacific leaders have called for

New polling from The Australia Institute shows the majority of Australians think US President Donald Trump will not honour a deal to take refugees from Manus Island and Nauru to be resettled in the United States. Half of respondents (51%) disagreed with the statement ‘Donald Trump will follow through on the agreement’ while 28% agreed

From 17 March to 24 March 2017 The Australia Institute surveyed 1420 Australians about Donald Trump’s election as President of United States of America.

The Australian Government is not doing enough to ensure that Australian imports of forestry products are consistent with the goals of Australian aid programs and stated commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. Australian aid includes programs and projects to help Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Island nations to better manage their forestry resources for

If a binding agreement can be reached on a post-2012 international climate regime, it is likely to include a market-based instrument for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and enhancing forest sinks in developing countries (collectively known as ‘REDD-plus’). Under such a scheme, countries that reduce net REDD emissions below a pre-set baseline

This paper examines Australia’s attitudes to climate change in the region under the two most recent federal governments. The Howard Government’s engagement with the region profoundly influenced understandings of Australia’s role in a climate-changed Pacific. During its time in office, the realities of climate change were largely denied, the Pacific was portrayed as volatile and

A response to a series of papers authored mainly by Helen Hughes whose argument that customary land tenures are the principal cause of poverty in PNG, and that Australia should make its aid contingent upon changes, is influential in Government circles. This report argues that the proposed privatisation is based on wholesale confusion about the

Proposes a new global plan for international action on climate change which would enable all countries to work together to achieve deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions over the next decades.

Explores Australia’s current commitment to the observance of universal human rights standards and its relationship with the international institutions established to monitor them.

Policies towards North Korea under Bush have been shaped by an imperial and cold war framework, compared to the economic relationship sort by South Korea through the Sunshine policy. Great power interests have split Korea in half and this piece recommends that internal Korean relations must be normalized before any international action is taken.

North Korea since there withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been labelled a ‘rogue State.’ While the US has continued a policy of containment South Korea wants to reopen ties to North Korea through the ‘’Sunshine’’ policy. This piece recommends Australia follows the South Korean example and reengages with, not excludes, North Korea.

Clive Hamilton and Hal Turton respond critically to some of the recent claims made in bestselling book ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who claims to be an environmentalist. They argue that Lomborg’s analysis is both too amateur and too simplistic to be taken seriously.

Submission No. 4 to the Senate Environment References Committee Inquiry into Australia’s Response to Global Warming

Address to the Taxation Institute of Australia’s Corporate Tax Intensive Conference, Sheraton Towers, Melbourne