1st February 2012
I’m still in London, making a series of calls on government officials, business representatives and others with links to Australia. Describing some of my meetings below will give you a flavour of the enormous diversity of UK/Australian interests we engage with. I visited Ramsay Healthcare, a major Australia provider which operates around 40 hospitals and […]
29th January 2012
I am currently in London for the 4th AUKMIN meeting which took place on 23/24 January at the prestigious Lancaster House near Buckingham Palace. Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith, led a large Australian delegation of senior officials and military officers. They were welcomed by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Defence Secretary […]
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8th January 2012
Well it wasn’t quite a barbie on the beach: we still felt it wouldn’t be Christmas without roast turkey and all the trim, but it was nice to spend Christmas afternoon relaxing in the sunshine. In some ways Australian Christmas is quite similar to British ones, with parties and carol services. But it’s also the […]
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16th December 2011
Australian readers of this blog will be wondering what the latest headlines about the UKs’ relationship with Europe are all about. The complexities of Europe’s institutional structures are hard enough to follow if you’re living there, let alone observing the continent from 10,000 miles away. In essence, the latest developments flow from the problems of […]
14th December 2011
I had the very pleasant experience today of conducting my first Citizenship Ceremony, in which we conferred British citizenship on seven people at the High Commission in Canberra. They were all Australians who were acquiring citizenship through family links or through naturalisation after living in the UK for some time. It used to be the case […]
5th December 2011
I was honoured to be the guest speaker at University College London’s (UCL) first ever overseas graduation ceremony in Adelaide last week. UCL is a great British institution, regularly ranked in the top ten universities in the world. It recently established its first overseas campus – a School of Energy and Resources – in South […]
2nd December 2011
I was in Sydney this week with the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, who are conducting a study on gambling. The group consisted of three Conservatives, one Lib Dem and one Labour MP, and was led by committee chair John Whittingdale MP, who I used to work with 25 years ago […]
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25th November 2011
Our Armed Forces Minister, Nick Harvey MP, was in Canberra and Sydney this week. He had a series of meetings with the Defence Department Ministerial team – Stephen Smith, Warren Snowdon and Jason Clare, and met a very broad range of senior officials and military officers. There was much to talk about. The Minister and […]
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18th November 2011
Hot on the heels of the visit by HM The Queen, Canberra played host to US President Obama this week. I attended a dinner at the Parliament and a key note speech he gave to a joint session of both houses of Parliament. By chance I found myself sitting next to PM Gillard’s partner Tim […]
14th November 2011
Last week I accompanied Sir Gus O’Donnell, Head of the British Civil Service for some calls in Canberra on his way back from CHOGM. He met Australia’s “200 Group”, a collection of the country’s top 200 federal civil servants, and gave a fascinating talk drawing on his experience of delivering change, and improved performance across […]
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