28th September 2012
Australian painter Ralph Heimans has just produced a wonderful new portrait of Her Majesty, depicting the Queen standing in the spot in Westminster Abbey where she was crowned. I was delighted to attend the launch of this spectacular painting at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, by Her Majesty’s representative in Australia, Governor General HE […]
19th September 2012
Canberra is “a game of two halves” as the football (soccer) commentators put it. For about 20 weeks a year, the parliamentarians descend on it from all across this vast continent, in a whirl of activity. The rest of time it is somewhat quieter. With Parliament sitting last week, I was up there twice speaking […]
6th September 2012
Back in London again for the Paralympics, Australian Sports Minister Senator Kate Lundy this week fulfilled her side of the gold medals wager with her UK counterpart Hugh Robertson. When Hugh was here in March, Kate had promised to row the Olympic Rowing course at Eton Dorney if Britain got more gold medals than Australia. […]
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3rd September 2012
British Environment Minister Richard Benyon described his attendance at the Pacific Islands Forum in Raratonga, the Cook Islands, as being on the frontline of climate change. In many meetings with ministers from the region, he heard about the vulnerability of low lying island states to sea level rise, and about how many Pacific islands are […]
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23rd August 2012
At 135 million years, the Daintree Rainforest is the oldest rainforest on earth. The Yalanji people have lived there for around 40,000 years. I was invited to visit the new indigenous eco-tourism development at Mossman Gorge, just north of Cairns, a week after it opened. Our local guide, Harold, was a mine of information as […]
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9th August 2012
Globalisation, advances in communications, the “shrinking of distance” do not mean the End of Geography, any more than the collapse of communism presaged the End of History, as Francis Fukuyama claimed. That was the thesis of a talk on “Geography and Diplomacy” I gave to the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland this week. The state’s […]
30th July 2012
Waiting to do a radio interview, I heard an ABC reporter in the slot before me say, “When you’re here in London with all the history and all the international connections, it really feels like it’s the centre of the world.” And, at least for the next few weeks, so it is. July 27 began […]
19th July 2012
Traditional manufacturing centres in Australia and Britain continue to evolve as global supply chains are transformed. Geelong, Victoria’s second city, is responding to challenges which would be familiar in many British cities. Employment has been declining in its historical large manufacturing sectors like car-making and aluminium-smelting, not helped by the strong Australian dollar. Ford announced some further […]
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13th July 2012
Anglo Australian giant Rio Tinto earns $21bn a year from mining in Western Australia. They took me to visit their vast iron-ore mining operation in the remote Pilbara region, some 1000 km north of Perth. As I lined up at the airport with hundreds of miners in their hi-vis jackets, at 4.30 am, I reflected […]
27th June 2012
Over the last few weeks I’ve attended Olympic send-off ceremonies in all the major states, culminating with the national event – the Prime Minister’s Olympic Dinner– in Melbourne on 23 June. They have been a fantastic showcase for the UK, as well as a demonstration of the Olympic enthusiasm in this sports mad country. The […]
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