Author Archives: Damien Kingsbury

About Damien Kingsbury

http://www.deakin.edu.au/profiles/damien-kingsbury

Joko Widodo’s visit to Australia

In discussion with the ANU’s Ass.Prof Greg Fealy and the ABC’s Tom Switzer, on Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s visit to Australia:                                                                     […]

Australia’s diminishing aid budget

Australia’s aid budget is the lowest it has been, as a proportion of GDP, since aid began. From its mid-1960s peak of 0.48 per cent of GDP, the aid budget is now less than half that, at 0.21 per cent. The simple reason for aid cuts has been to save money to balance budgets. The […]

Social democracy is sick; is it dying?

There was little surprise in the Conservative’ victory in the UK’s recent elections. What was surprising, however, was the loss of traditional Labour seats.This can be explained by a number of obvious factors, but perhaps the critical factor has not yet been discussed. Jeremy Corbyn was a Labour leader who struggled to sell a compelling […]

West Papua’s limited hopes for the future

After a half a century of incorporation as part of Indonesia and following a period of broadly declining violence in the half island of West Papua, the past year has seen a marked upsurge in Papuan-initiated violence. This increased violence appears to demonstrate that, even after so much time, anti-Indonesian sentiment is as strong as […]

Q+A in East Timor’s future

My answers to some questions by an Agence-France Presse journalist ahead of Timor-Leste’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of its vote for independence: · What are the key developments politically, economically and socially in East Timor since 1999? A: The development of the Timor Sea fields has allowed Timor-Leste to get on its feet and […]

Review: ‘Working for the world: the evolution of Australian Volunteers International’

Working for the world: the evolution of Australian Volunteers International Peter Britton Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne If two approaches can be said to reflect many Australians’ approach to assisting others, they are probably volunteerism and working with communities. It was this approach which characterized Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme (VGS), which from the early 1950s pioneered […]

Sri Lanka bombings; the wheel of violence continues to turn

For a country which gave the world the word ‘serendipity’, from an early Arab trader name for the island, Sri Lanka has been subject to extremist violence almost from the outset. Easter Sunday’s coordinated bomb blasts in the capital Colombo, which killed almost 300 and injured hundreds more, were just the latest event in a […]

War ‘declared’ in West Papua

On the last day of January 2019, the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) announced in Port Moresby that it recognized that West Papua was in a state of war with Indonesia and supported the OPM’s military wing, the National Liberation Army of West Papua (TPNPB) is its own declaration of war against Indonesia early in 2018. […]