Experience Anu

Australia asserts sovereignty to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent and has a long involvement in Antarctic exploration and science. Australia also has important economic and environmental interests in the Great Southern Ocean. We are an original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty which, among other things, establishes all that part of the globe below 60 degrees South as a region free of military conflict and nuclear arms. While Australia has been a leading player in Antarctic affairs for more than a century, Australian leadership should not be taken for granted as new countries emerge as significant participants in the Antarctic treaty System. This NSC public seminar will explore the emerging issues in Antarctica and their implications for the Antarctic Treaty System and for Australia’s Antarctic policy. Dr Tony Press is the Chief Investigator for the Australian Government’s 20 Year Australian Antarctic Strategic Plan and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania. Until July this year, he was the

In the past decade more than 150 books with ‘Anzacs’ in the title have been published. But for Australians there was much more WWI than battles and fighting. The war bitterly divided Australian society and politics, along fault lines that would last for at least a generation. In all of today’s national commemoration we should remember these others ‘wars’—between pro and anti-conscriptionists, between ‘loyalists’ and those whom they stigmatised as ‘disloyal’, and between the labour movement and an increasingly authoritarian government. Within the labour movement, too, there was a war which tore it asunder, in ways that stalled its emergence as a party of reforming government at the national level. Professor Joan Beaumont is an internationally recognised historian of Australia in the two world wars. Her most recent book Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War (Allen & Unwin, 2013) has been shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Award (non-fiction) and the NSW Premier’s (Australian History) Award.

The Government’s decision to commission a new Defence White Paper – the third in just in just five years – suggests that Australian defence policy is in trouble. That comes as no surprise, because Defence policy is never easy. But the new White Paper will only fix the problems if we understand why the last two failed, and avoid the same mistakes. Professor Hugh White AO, ANU Public Policy Fellow delivered a keynote address during ANU Public Policy Week 2014.

Born in the United States to immigrant Chinese parents, Amy Tan is an internationally celebrated writer. Her novels The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetters Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning, are all New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, and two children's books. Her work has been translated into 35 languages. Join Amy Tan and Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences as they discuss the collapse of China’s imperial dynasty to the inner workings of courtesan houses in her new novel Valley of Amazement. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humour, Amy Tan conjures a story of the inheritance of love, its mysteries and senses, and its illusions and truths.

Alastair Walton, Chairman of BKK Partners and a former Co-Chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia, discusses Australia’s financial sector in the context of global developments impacting the industry.

Visiting international academic and influential science blogger Professor Jim Coyne gives a provocative talk at ANU Research School of Psychology.

Greg Combet has been central to some of the biggest public struggles of our time—on the waterfront, the collapse of an airline, compensation for asbestos victims, the campaign against unfair workplace laws and then climate change. From an idyllic childhood on the Minchinbury estate in the western suburbs of Sydney, Combet's world changed dramatically with the early death of his wine-maker father. The shy child was uprooted to the suburbs and an uncertain future. A scholarship allowed him to study engineering and saw him appreciate first hand the role of unions in the workplace. He rose to lead the Australian trade union movement and become a senior minister in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. Along the way he has battled his own struggles, with political ideology, the impact of work on families and the loneliness of the parliamentary life. His story is not just a personal memoir; it is an insight into how power works in Australia, who holds it, how it is used and the ruthless ways in which it is snatc

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, in conversation with Virginia Haussegger

The Curtin Medalist for Excellence in Medical Research for 2013, Canberra’s Centenary Year, is Nobel Laureate Emeritus Professor Rolf Zinkernagel. The Medal was presented to Professor Zinkernagel for a Lifetime of Achievement at a ceremony at JCSMR. Professor Zinkernagel then presented a Public Lecture on his work entitled 'Why do we not have a vaccine against HIV or TB?' Professor Zinkernagel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for his research, carried out in conjunction with Professor Peter Doherty at The John Curtin School in the 1970s. The Prize was for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediated immune defence.

The United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in 2013, tasked with investigating the alleged systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in North Korea, with a view to ensuring full accountability, particularly for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity. The Hon Michael Kirby was appointed as Chair of this Commission. As part of its investigations, the Commission conducted public hearings with more than 80 victims and other witnesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington D.C. The Commission’s report was made public in February 2014 and detailed many alleged crimes against humanity arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State’ and called for urgent action from the international community. In this public lecture, Mr Kirby will be talking about his work on the Commission and the human rights situation in North Korea.

What if the traditional lecture became a thing of the past? Are there some forms of learning that are better suited to computers than the classroom? Do students want to be talked at or talked to? Technology is opening up new ways to teach and learn and we want your opinion on what the classrooms of the future might look like. Featuring panellists: Professor Sanjay Sarma Director of Digital Learning, MIT Dr Joe Hope Physics Education Centre, ANU Ms Laura Wey Education Officer, ANUSA Chaired by ABC 666 Mornings Presenter Ms Genevieve Jacobs

Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Ambassador Roberto Azevêdo delivered a public lecture on the 17th of July 2014 at ANU entitled, New momentum: can the success in Bali transform the WTO? Ambassador Azevêdo discussed where the WTO should go next and reflected on how trade issues might play into the G20 process — a timely discussion in the lead up to Australia's hosting of the G20 Summit in November. Ambassador Azevêdo is the sixth Director-General of the WTO. In 2008 he was appointed Permanent Representative of Brazil to the WTO and other international economic organisations in Geneva. His appointment as Director-General of the WTO took effect on 1 September 2013 for a four-year term. Ambassador Azevêdo's expertise is international economics and he has published numerous articles on these issues. The ANU book with Brookings Institution - The G20 Summit at Five: Time for Strategic Leadership, as well as a similarly-themed East Asia Forum Quarterly, was launched on the day of the lecture. Thi

What causes some eruptions to be more explosive than others? Is it the total driving gas fuel, or how fast the gas escapes? This lecture examines both the volatile content and the speed of magma ascent immediately prior to eruption. Chemical zonation preserved inside glass pockets and crystals provides one of the fastest clocks in geology. These timescales of chemical diffusion operate over minutes to hours in the run-up to eruption. Initial results show that more explosive eruptions may result from higher rates of magma ascent. Terry Plank is the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She is a geochemist who studies magmas associated with the plate tectonic cycle. She is known particularly for her studies of subduction zones: the inputs on the ocean floor, the temperatures attained beneath volcanoes, the melting process in the mantle, and the water contents of magmas before they erupt. Plank

Claiming the body as property has been represented as the best way to ensure control over our own choices and lives; a crucial way of asserting our rights to bodily integrity; and an important means of protection against the abuse of our bodily materials by today's biotechnology companies. Refusing to see our bodies as property, it is argued, reflects either a religious view of the body as belonging to God, or a misguided sentimentalism that blocks clear thinking about matters such as prostitution, surrogate motherhood, and the sale of spare kidneys. Since we trade in our bodies whenever we work for a wage, there is no reason to view markets in sex or reproduction as a problem. Drawing on feminist arguments about the self as embodied, I argue that it is indeed a problem to think of the body as property, and a problem to view the body as a marketable substance. My minimal claim is that we do not need to assert property in the body in order to express what we mainly care about when we say ‘it’s my body’, which

The Gender Institute marked its 3rd anniversary on Friday 21 March 2014 with an inspirational lecture and discussion with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Ms Elizabeth Broderick from the Australian Human Rights Commission, who spoke on; "Progressing gender equity and the role of male champions of change" Commissioner Broderick was introduced by ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young, AO who lauded her committed advocacy and confirmed ANU support for her goals: preventing violence against women and sexual harassment, improving lifetime economic security for women, balancing paid work and unpaid caring responsibilities, promoting women’s representation in leadership, and strengthening gender equality laws, monitoring and agencies. Over 100 people attended the event and enjoyed a light lunch in the Hedley Bull reception area prior to proceedings. The 2013 student prizes for excellence in gender research were awarded by the Vice-Chancellor. The Gender Institute extends congratulations to all this years recipie

The European project was an attempt to pursue a strategic objective by economic means: continental peace by way of coal and steel. More than 60 years on, if measured against that original set of goalposts, it has been a successful project. Indeed, the lure of European peace and prosperity has been so attractive that the EU has grown dramatically in the last two decades. Yet Europe has many detractors, who point to the challenges of monetary without fiscal union and responding to Russian aggression as failures of the supra-national model initiated by Robert Schuman. What lessons can Australia’s region, the Indo-Pacific, draw from the European experiment. Mr Varghese took up his position as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on 3 December 2012. Prior to this appointment, Mr Varghese was Australia’s High Commissioner to India from 2009 to 2012. Between 2004 and 2009, he was Director-General of the Office of National Assessments. Before that he was the Senior Adviser (International) to the

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, AC CH, has used a talk at ANU to argue for Australia to step back from the Australia-US ANZUS military alliance. Mr Fraser said Australia made a major strategic error and betrayed its national interest by not showing strategic independence from the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union. He warned that Australia needs to be careful not to follow the US into another war, which could potentially be in the Pacific and involve China. "I don't want Australia to follow America into a fourth war, blindly, unthinkingly, with little regard for Australia's national interest and little regard for our security," he says. His talk, at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, was based on his new book Dangerous Allies. Mr Fraser, Prime Minister from late 1975 until 1983, drew on his contribution to the flagship journal of the Crawford School, Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies (APPS). In his APPS piece, Mr Fraser writes that the country made a serious mistake by align

Governments and society are increasingly reliant on cyber systems. That reliance makes us vulnerable to cyber attacks, which can have powerful impacts on people's lives. Because of this, in liberal democratic societies governments have a duty to ensure cybersecurity in order to protect their citizens and, arguably, the people of other nations. But as recent events following the revelations of Edward Snowden have demonstrated, there is a risk that their pursuit of cybersecurity might overstep the mark and subvert the fundamental right to privacy. In this NSC seminar, the presenters will demonstrate that managing the risks of cybersecurity involves trade-offs: between security and privacy; individual rights and the good of a society; and between the types of burdens placed on particular groups in order to protect others. These trade-offs are often ethical in nature, involving questions of how we act, what values we should aim to promote, and what means of anticipating and responding to the risks are reasonably

Energy lies at the heart of the world's sustainability challenge. On the one hand, abundant, accessible, low-cost energy is vital for economic prosperity. On the other hand, the world's pattern of energy use, based on fossil fuels, threatens massive future climate change with devastating potential consequences. The greatest sustainability challenge, therefore, is to meet the energy needs of a growing world economy while moving to a safer pattern of energy use. In this talk Jeffrey Sachs will discuss strategies for creating a road map on deep decarbonisation to ensure the world can have the energy that it needs for prosperity while reducing CO2 emissions drastically. Jeffrey D Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, a leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 80 countries. He serves as Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, as well as Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Developm

As Indonesia's economy grows, it is increasingly being referred to as a rising middle power and there is mounting speculation that Indonesia might eventually join the ranks of Asia's great powers. Regardless of just how far Indonesia will rise, its government and the will of its people will become increasingly influential in terms of its regional leadership and the values and norms Jakarta espouses. What are the domestic opportunities and constraints that inform Indonesia's rise and how will various domestic contexts affect Indonesia's foreign policy and the values it espouses? Meanwhile, the image of Indonesia as a more stable and democratic nation has contributed to a significant deepening of security ties with some other nations (such as Australia) and these nations may well grasp the opportunity to continue doing so as Indonesia rises. But how might this be perceived amongst our other Southeast Asian neighbours and how might this affect our relations with them? Within Southeast Asia, what will the rise of