 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the Lowy Institute. I'm Sam Rogovine. I'm a senior researcher here and director of digital at the Lowy Institute. I'm filling in for executive director Michael Fully Love today who's in the US on Lowy Institute business. Michael sends his apologies and I know he's sorry he can't be here for this occasion. Ladies and gentlemen, it's our pleasure today to host Senator Richard Di Natale at the Lowy Institute. Earlier this year the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it would be, quote, difficult to imagine the foreign policy landscape in Australia today without the Lowy Institute. We treasure that reputation which comes from many sources. One of them I think is that we jealously guard our status as a non-partisan institution. There is no Lowy Institute view of the world. The research we produce comes from a variety of viewpoints and every day we host a vigorous policy debate on our web magazine The Interpreter. We are open to various viewpoints and most importantly we subject all of them to scrutiny. As of today the Lowy Institute will have hosted three party leaders in the last six months and Richard Di Natale is the second Greens leader to speak here. Whenever a party leader speaks at the Lowy Institute it's an important day but just to add a little bit more gravity to Senator Di Natale's remarks today, a little frisson if you like, I want to remind you of a piece of history. There's been a lot of talk over the last week or so and I'm sure you've heard about whether Labor might in the event of a hung parliament form a coalition with the Greens in order to govern. Labor has dismissed that possibility though many wonder what would actually happen if Mr Shorten's alternatives were another term in opposition or maybe a new election. It's worth remembering that in 1998 Germany's social Democrats led by Gerhard Schroeder defeated Helmut Kohl's centre right government in a federal election and went into coalition with the German Greens in order to form government. I wonder if any of you remember which cabinet portfolio the Greens leader, Joschka Fischer, held in Schroeder's cabinet. It was foreign affairs. Ladies and gentlemen Dr Richard Di Natale is leader of the Australian Greens. He was elected to the federal parliament in 2010 and is the Greens' first Victorian senator. Prior to entering parliament Richard was a GP and a public health specialist. He worked in Aboriginal health in the Northern Territory on HIV prevention in India and in the drug and alcohol sector. Senator Di Natale will speak for about 30 minutes after which I'll be back to moderate the Q&A. So ladies and gentlemen would you please welcome Senator Richard Di Natale. Thanks so much Sam for that very generous introduction. I want to thank you for the invitation to speak here today. I want to thank the Lowe Institute as well more broadly. It is a great honour to be speaking here today. Let me also acknowledge my parliamentary colleagues David Shubridge, potentially the next member for Grainla, Jim Casey. I'm not sure if there are any other parliamentarians in the room but acknowledge them as well. I want to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Aura Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and I want to pay my respects to their elders past and present. Now when I first came to the leadership of the Australian Greens just over a year ago I made it very clear that we needed to repair the relationship between non-indigenous and Indigenous Australia, people from the world's oldest surviving culture. We're now moving through a process of constitutional recognition but it is our view that this should be one step on a pathway towards recognising sovereignty and ultimately to achieving treaties. Now the challenges that we face as a nation are truly global. Climate change, resource scarcity, growing inequality, conflict, the mass displacement of people. In order to meet these challenges we have to have a global view. We need to move away from those old polluting industries of last century that are destabilising our world. We need to move towards greater regional cooperation and where we demonstrate real leadership in addressing these challenges. Over the course of the Abbott, now Turnbull government, we've heard a lot about the threats to our national security. The government's gone to great lengths to counter the threat of violent extremism. We've seen the cancelling of passports of Australian citizens, the implementation of new national terrorism threat advisory systems and we've seen billions of dollars poured into the funding into our national security agencies. We of course recognise that violent extremism is a threat to Australia and it's a growing issue globally to which we have to respond. But all of the evidence suggests that the greatest gains will be achieved by addressing conflict and extremism at its source using diplomatic channels to pursue a global response to a global problem. And on that measure I think the government hasn't achieved what it could have achieved. But it's biggest failure. The Abbott Turnbull government's biggest failure is its pigheadedness in refusing to acknowledge that global warming and all of the things that flow from that poverty, scarcity of resources, instability and the conflict that it creates represents a much bigger threat to our national security. Now don't just take our word for it. John Powers, a US Iraq veteran and advisor to the Obama administration has said, in the security world decisions are made by careful evaluation of risk and climate change is the mother of all risks. Now in the US this is a consensus statement. It's not controversial. The Department of Defence has openly declared global warming and urgent and growing threat to our national security. We've got the Pentagon, we've got NATO member states and the G7 all taking seriously the threat of global warming and the threat that global warming poses to national security. We've got Dr Chris King at the US Army Command who put it this way, we aren't prepared for 100-year war and that is the scale and breadth of what climate change presents. History confirms that nobody knows how to win 100-year war. Now compare that to the Australian government's 2016 defence white paper which barely mentions global warming and certainly doesn't identify it as a threat to national security. So while you've got top brass in the US being issued with directives to make global warming a priority, you've got the Australian government with its head in the sand. In a recent interview President Obama said that ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States. Climate change is a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don't do something about it. Now of course this isn't to minimise the threat of ISIS but it is a recognition that global warming left unchecked is a direct threat to our very existence. And it takes a hell of a lot of courage to make a statement like that when the fight against ISIS is front and centre in the minds of many governments and their citizens, particularly in the US. But leadership requires courage. Global warming is a threat multiplier. It exacerbates drought, famine, displacement, food and water scarcity and disease. As again the President of the United States said, this makes every other problem we've got worse. That's above and beyond just the existential issues of a planet that starts getting into a bad feedback loop. Now we're already seeing drought stricken farmers in North West Kenya fighting each other for water and cattle. We're seeing environmental changes, fuelling violence and military conflict in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. We've got climate crisis in rural areas and destroyed farmland and coastal zones that are pushing people into urban drug wars in Brazil and Mexico, all documented. We've got a study published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences that says that extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 was mostly, most likely due to global warming and that the drought was a factor in the violent uprising that began in 2011. This is the future if we continue on the government path of inaction on global warming. This is the future that we face. Yet there we were on the first day of an election campaign with the Prime Minister saying that having an ambitious climate reduction target would reduce our leverage in international obligations. Well, what nonsense? What a remarkable revelation, completely misunderstanding the way those global negotiations work. And having been in Paris, I can tell you when those negotiations were occurring, we are an outsider in the global climate movement. We've chased off foreign investment in clean energy and we've reduction targets that would keep us as the worst per capita polluter in the world, tied with that wonderful climate champion Saudi Arabia. Now, we realise that setting ambitious targets sends a signal to the global community. It says we're serious about transforming our economy. And to do that, we need to have serious targets. So we have a science based target of 60 to 80% reductions below 2000 levels by 2030. And we want to get to net zero emissions by 2040 at the latest to avoid the fast approach in tipping points, which President Obama talks about from which there will be no safe return. So this isn't just about preserving our environment or transforming our economy. But as the American Defence Forces said, it is about preserving a national security as well. The impact of global warming is going to fundamentally change the character of our foreign relationships. The science is crystal clear, we have to keep global warming to below two degrees, preferably below 1.5 degrees to avoid catastrophic climate change. And to get this done is going to require an unprecedented commitment. To fail on this front means unprecedented global and regional instability. Of course, here in Australia, the cost of forging ahead with those new coal mines is that we drive our neighbours in the Pacific from their homes. And we've had the President of Kiribati, who said clearly what we are talking about is survival. It's not about economic development. It's not about politics. It's survival. And last year, the Kiribati Government purchased 20 square kilometres of land in Fiji as a backup plan for food security and possibly even relocation of its citizens. That's the future we're talking about. And yet in the midst of that, what did we see from our immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott? We saw them caught out joking about the desperate situation of Pacific Islanders whose very existence is threatened by global warming and rising sea levels. When Minister Dutton said that time doesn't mean anything when you've got water lapping at your door, we had a really rare insight. It's away from that careful language that characterises international diplomacy. But it was a rare insight into how our leadership actually treats our closest neighbours. Earlier this year I was able to visit the Great Barrier Reef and saw the devastating coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and of course the areas of Tasmania's ancient wilderness destroyed by unprecedented fires. I live in a rural community where people are telling me all the time how rainfall patterns have changed dramatically over their lifetime. I've got colleagues in the medical profession who have shown me how advanced spread of some vector-borne diseases is climate related. But one of the most worrying things of course is that modelling demonstrates that global warming will usher in an unprecedented displacement of people and a refugee crisis. As Patrick Sykes recently noted in Foreign Affairs, for this one there will be no tyrants to blame and the migrants won't be escaping war. They'll be fleeing nature, specifically the ocean and they'll have no home to return to. Some people might actually take issue with the fact that Patrick Sykes says that there are no tyrants to blame. When you see what happened to Australia's climate laws, which were described by the International Energy Agency as template legislation when you saw the repeal of those laws, the only country in the world to undo strong action on climate change. It's hard to agree with the assessment that no one's to blame. Now our global treaties don't accommodate people fleeing natural disasters. They don't accommodate those things. And we do think it is absolutely critical that there are global diplomatic efforts to establish an international agreement on how to respond to people displaced by global warming. We have to ensure that those global diplomatic efforts take place. And in Australia, the Greens advocate for a special form of humanitarian visa for people who are displaced by global warming. That will be the future. Unfortunately, though, here in Australia on this issue, the debate seems to be stuck in another century. As I said, I was in Paris last year for the signing of the climate agreement. And what struck me most was that Australia's political establishment is lagging so far behind foreign governments, the business community, civil society in realising the huge economic opportunities that exist with the transformation to the clean renewable energy economy. By world standards, we're a wealthy, well educated society. We have massive, massive research potential through many of our institutions, the CSIRO. In fact, the two agencies that the Greens helped establish with Labor in the last parliament, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We have the potential to export that technology to the rest of the world, not just to countries with large rural populations, for example, in rural France, the US, China, etc., but also to those millions of people around the world who don't have access to a centralised grid. And it's a bit like what's happening in much of the developing world where you're seeing technology leaping over fixed telephone exchanges to mobile phones. Australia can help those countries without access to power to leap over expensive, last century centralised grids to a much more autonomous, clean energy, micro grids, smarter grids. But to do it, we've got to support those institutions that allow us to export that technology. And we have both the government and the Labor Party committed to stripping a billion dollars from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and to prevent it from using capital grant funding to fund those projects. One of my key priorities going into the next parliament is to work with the next government to reap the potential that Australia's energy exports and technology transfer hold for the new economy. Now, despite the Pentagon's prescience about the risks of global warming, the same can't be said for its understanding of the way U.S. foreign and defence policy have contributed to greater instability in the world. The U.S. along with Australia, as its partner, has time and time again failed to learn from its mistakes. We are their biggest backers with Australia the only nation to have joined the United States in every major military intervention in the past century, both world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. Our unfailing support for the U.S. means that Australia has been complicit in the horrific consequences born as a result of these foreign incursions. The situation in Iraq, for example, is a horrifying deadly testament to this. And you've got George Bush, who led the world, including Australia, into this conflict. And it is a decision that is now seen by most credible analysts as one of the most grievous, strategic disasters in modern history. A conflict that we opposed right from the outset. The violent decade-long occupation which followed shattered Iraq's social and economic structures, it ignited long-dormant sectarian tensions that have contributed to a regional reign of violence by Islamic State. The brittle institutions of Iraqi governance were bombed into existence by the United States and its allies and they now threaten to collapse entirely. Extensive research has illustrated the link between foreign military occupations in places like Iraq and the rise of extremism. In the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks and throughout the war on terror, U.S. occupation was linked to increases in mortality to displacement and poverty, creating fertile ground for recruitment into extremist groups. It's a conclusion that's backed up by intelligence organisations around the world who have confirmed that the 2003 invasion of Iraq helped grow a new generation of radicalisation. Unfortunately, and despite clear evidence of the horrific consequences of U.S. foreign incursions, the U.S.-Australia alliance remains the primary influence on the way Australia relates to the world. In failing to pursue a more independent foreign policy, we renounce our ambition to be a confident 21st century nation and in doing so we undermine our own national interests. By following the U.S. into those airstrikes in Syria, we contribute further to destabilisation in a region torn apart by an illegal invasion in 2003 and we make Australians less safe as a consequence. Though the Prime Minister's reluctance to commit further troops to the conflict in Iraq and Syria in December 2015 might show a departure from the usual script and we absolutely welcome that, our troops shouldn't be there in the first place. We would be much better served by a strategy to combat extremism with inclusion at home while supporting global efforts to cut off financial and personnel support to Islamic State. Instead, we've blindly followed the U.S. into yet another conflict with no clear strategic objective and without really pausing to ask the question, whose interests are we serving? The integration of our foreign and defence policies with the interests of the United States extends to their presence on Australian soil. We've got ground stations places like Pine Gap which have supported a regime, not at all transparent, around drone assassinations in any country in which the U.S. chooses to conduct them with the resultant civilian casualties. Now despite the stifling bipartisan consensus and unquestioning consensus around the U.S. alliance, raising questions about its benefit to Australia and the world is hardly a radical position. As former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has argued our military and intelligence capabilities have become ensconced within the U.S. military infrastructure to such a point the two have become blurred. We've become so enmeshed with America's strategic aims that we jeopardise our own future security and important bilateral relationships in the region. And as former Australian Ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald has reflected, goth wetland at the time enraged Washington when he spoke out publicly against the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi. But I quote, like it or not, in the end America accepted his reframing of relations. It is right to question the benefit of the alliance and to review it so that it is something that serves the Australian national interest and the global interest. We're now looking at a whopping 17 billion dollars allocated to acquire F-35 Joint Strike Fighters which have been described by a number of people within the establishment as, I quote, a failure waiting to happen, an embarrassment and all sorts of other colourful language. We've also got over 50 billion dollars plus on 12 now potentially nuclear powered submarines and another five to six billion on the weapons that support them, which is the largest procurement program in this nation's history. It's a massive dividend to the arms manufacturers and it comes sponsored by the Unity Ticket Labor and Liberal, the increased defense spending of 2% GDP. And we've got to recognise that this comes at a massive opportunity cost. This is billions of dollars that we aren't putting into schools, into hospitals, into a central infrastructure. Yes, we do support the modernisation of Defence Force capabilities. For example, the purchase of up to six submarines to replace the Collins Class capability. But we also believe that defence policy should be about keeping Australia and our region safe and stable, not using defence policy as a substitute for industry policy. The difference between buying six submarines and 12 is equivalent to funding the National Broadband Network short for. Just one of those submarines, just one of them, could be used on foreign aid to massively increase our contribution. The difference between buying 72 Joint Strike Fighters or smaller tried and tested aircraft could deliver transformational investments to make our cities more resilient to climate change. So we don't support a mandated 2% target. We think there needs to be a national debate. Remarkable that one of the biggest increases in government expenditure would go through without a debate about whether that's a wise investment. We don't accept the fact that defence spending is a sacred cow. How is it that we can have enormous scrutiny on our health and education budgets and yet we can have so many procurements within defence that don't meet basic objectives. So we believe in a defence force that protects Australia not one that serves to substitute as industry policy and not one that serves the interests of a foreign power. Where Australia could be a leading voice in the on the global stage is in the global nuclear disarmament movement. But here again we're held back by our unwavering support of the US Alliance. Both the 2009 and 2013 defence white papers referred to Australia's reliance on Washington for extended nuclear deterrence. The former Australian ambassador to the US, Dennis Richardson, even made a submission to the United States Congress nuclear posture review calling on them to explicitly confirm that they would come to our aid if our security were threatened. In his words he wanted to be sure countries like Australia do not need to develop their own nuclear weapons. Australia has repeatedly refused to rule out nuclear weapons use instead emphasising the security benefits of nuclear weapons. It's among the most active nuclear allied states seeking to oppose and undermine moves through the open-ended work group on nuclear disarmament toward a much needed nuclear ban treaty. This kind of dangerous position not only undermines Australia's safety but that of the world. And we isolate ourselves with this stance. There's real progress being made towards the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. It's happening right now. The humanitarian pledge which recognises the need for nuclear weapons to be explicitly prohibited under international law was supported by 127 countries at the Vienna conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in December 2015 but Australia was not one of those 127 countries. No state or international body could adequately address the immediate humanitarian emergency or long-term consequences caused by nuclear weapons detonation. The only way to protect against the horrendous impacts from nuclear weapons and nuclear war is to abolish them once and for all. And yet our tight-knit alliance with the US makes us more prone to those dangers rather than having a more independent foreign policy. As former Prime Minister Fraser described it our relationship with the US has become a paradox. Our leaders argue we need to keep our alliance with the United States strong in order to ensure our defence in the event of an aggressive foe. Yet the most likely reason Australia would need to confront an aggressive foe is our strong alliance with the US. It is not a sustainable policy. That from the former Prime Minister of the country. Of course it doesn't have to be this way. An independent and confident Australia is possible. One that respects international law and that protects human rights. When our leaders stand independently when they show courage and articulate a clear vision we've shown that we can punch above our weight in the world. Australia's stand against the Japanese whaling industry is one example. We had civil society and government coming together with clarity and conviction. It's evident in Australia's successes at the United Nations Security Council under foreign ministers of various political stripes including the current Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's leadership of a key resolution regarding access to the crash site of MH17 and the emergency aid to civilians caught in the Syrian civil war. If we can bring the same tenacity that we did to these circumstances and to our broader foreign policy there will be enormous benefits for Australia, for the region and for the world. Underpinning this independence and courage must be an understanding that we cannot shirk our responsibilities in the world. We've now got the government vying for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. I have to ask what is the point when we regularly throw our own human rights responsibilities out the window? What kind of leadership could we possibly offer when we don't have our own house in order? We only have to look at how Australia's been at work in our region to see this in action. Look at the behaviour of Australia towards East Timor around our maritime boundary and utterly reprehensible accusations of bugging cabinet rooms of the East Timorese government under the cover of a foreign aid donation. Instead of advocating for those people who are imprisoned indefinitely in West Papua we funded groups such as Detachment 88. They are the very same police force that have been accused of human rights abuses of harassment and torture and extrajudicial killings of the West Papuans. In exchange for Sri Lanka's help to prevent people seeking asylum from leaving their shores we gave their secret police military equipment like those white vans synonymous in Sri Lanka with the enforced disappearance and murder of its citizens and of course actively undermining UN attempts to investigate human rights abuses and war crimes. We're currently in the midst of an unprecedented retreat on our commitments to human rights asylum seekers on foreign aid on global warming on clean energy investment. A confident Australia would understand there is a better way to welcome people seeking asylum in this country. Instead of denying people freedom and safety in offshore detention camps instead of trampling over basic human rights the treaty commitments we've made driving people to such despair that they are self-harming we are talking about five-year-old children who put a rope around their neck and self-harm because we have a policy that at its core says we will harm innocent people in an effort to send a message to someone else. Now that is a line that a civilised society should never cross. Sadly that is a bipartisan policy. There are ways through this mess. We spend billions of dollars continuing to keep people in those hell holes offshore despite the fact that we know they are both now in crisis. Next year the government will spend approximately four hundred thousand dollars for each man woman and child held on Nauru. We're not going to see an increase next year to Australia's humanitarian intake despite the biggest global flow of refugees since World War II. It just takes a bit of leadership. We close down those camps we spend that money helping people rather than hurting them. We create legitimate pathways through the UNHCR so people don't feel the need to go on to one of those leaky boats. We also understand that the root causes of instability could be addressed through a properly funded international aid program instead of gutting it to the barest bones. It's why we've announced our commitment to increase foreign aid to 0.7% by 2025. It's remarkable that we're having the debate here because in the UK again a bipartisan consensus on that 0.7% target and under successive governments Labor and Conservative alike that target has been enshrined in legislation. They've met that target at a time when Australia has gutted its foreign aid budget by over 11 billion dollars since 2013 plunging our aid investment to a shameful 0.22% of GNI. It's the lowest level of international aid funding since records began more than 50 years ago and it's an indictment on both the coalition's attitude towards the world's most vulnerable people and indeed we haven't heard from the Labor Party about whether they will restore that funding. Let's remember that the coalition cuts built on the 5.8 billion dollars already implemented under the former Labor government and when asked last year on the ABC about the restoration of those cuts the shadow foreign affairs minister Tanya Plibersek said that Labor certainly wouldn't continue with the aid cuts that are scheduled by this government. We need to hear an ironclad commitment about whether the Labor Party will restore that huge cut to foreign aid. A confident Australia would have a clear vision not just for our own clean energy economy but for that of the world. There are great opportunities for an Australia that capitalises on this vision as one of the sunniest, windiest countries in the world with abundant space. We can lead the transition to a clean energy powered future right across the globe. A confident Australia would have a head of state that was actually an Australian, someone of merit not just there because of their birthright. We've now got three leaders in this country all of whom support a republic at least in name. We've got state and territory leaders declaring their support. There is more momentum now than ever before and leadership would mean turning this talk and this support into concrete action real steps towards becoming a republic. It is within our power to use our relationships around the world to protect human rights, to reduce inequality and in the process to create a safer and more stable world for everyone. Australia can be a more confident, a more courageous country. We have the smarts, we have the economic strength and we have the decency to do so. Unfortunately that's just not something reflected in the policy priorities of either the Prime Minister or the opposition leader. When we focus on violent extremism to the exclusion of the security threat posed by global warming. When we rush to follow the United States into Iraq and Syria but fail to demand a clear long-term strategy with clear objectives. When we window dress at the Paris climate conference but at home slash the renewable energy target and scrap the world-leading price and carbon we fail to live up to Australia's great potential. That has to change. Thanks very much everybody. Thank you. Senator, thank you very much. Those remarks were thoughtful, broad, deep. We have about 15 minutes for questions now. I'd ask you to just you know come up with some some interesting questions of your own. Please state a question, not make a statement or a speech of your own. Let us know your affiliation if you have one. I'm conscious of the fact that climate change was a major part of your address and I hope some of the questions do address that. Since it's not my specialty I'm going to start by focusing on something else. It occurs to me that if I can be bold enough to speak on behalf of the so-called foreign policy commentariat of which I'm a member I think the common criticism of the Greens is that they don't take real politic seriously enough. We live in an anarchical international system in which states ultimately have to secure their own look after their own security and it's clear now that Asia is becoming the new cauldron of great power competition in the world. Yet in your remarks you said almost nothing about US-China tensions. You didn't talk about China's determination to impose its will in the South China Sea and maybe even ultimately China's ambition to displace the United States as the foremost regional power. I think it's to the enormous credit of the Greens that it's always taken the threat of nuclear weapons seriously and you reinforce that today in your remarks. But it seems to me if we do take nuclear weapons seriously we also have to wrestle with the realities of great power competition and come up with some ideas about how we can manage that your response. I suppose just to respond to the focus on the speech on climate change I mean the emphasis really was to try and give force to the argument that we need to start treating this as a national security threat hence the focus on that issue. No one would argue for a moment that the issues in the South China Sea China's some would say aggressive incursion into that area that it's purchasing well it's effectively gaining territory is a huge problem in the region. The question for us is as a nation is how are we going to mediate our way through one established superpower and an emerging one and is it in Australia's national interest to be so clearly aligned with the US when it comes to that issue and I know that people I think you talked about the foreign policy establishment I think there are different views about how we should respond to that particular threat. I think that on this issue that Wiserheads must prevail that we need to look at the issue of arbitration if necessary. We've got avenues through which to do that and it seems to me that we have not pursued aggressively enough the option of arbitration and a diplomatic resolution to that specific conflict. It seems that the response has been largely focused on the the military response and international law exists for a reason there are ways to be able to prosecute a case through those processes and I think that should be Australia's focus but yes of course like many people we have we have major concerns about the conflict in the South China Sea the specifically the Spratly Islands now becoming a real cause for concern and a cause for concern in the region. But I would posture that I don't think anybody has the you know a clear response about how Australia should respond to that threat. Now from the floor please this gentleman here please wait for the microphone other side right there. Thank you Senator. I suppose I'd like to question which is sort of touching on global warning but it seems that global politicians really haven't addressed the elephant in the room which to me is the exponential growth of populate world population. We've seen 30% growth in population in the last 20 years to over 7 billion people if we assume that continues as the way it is will be probably in 2050 somewhere around 9 to 10 billion people in the world. A lot of the issues you talk about around global warming really are just sandbagging the tsunami of population growth. What policies do you believe worldwide politicians need to make to address this issue because if we don't address it all of your all of the global warming the scarcity of land etc are going to cause us major problems. So I suppose the first thing I would say is it's very important to consider the equation around impacts of population as a function of population and consumption. Those two things go hand in hand and if you look at per capita emissions it is countries like Australia that far exceed many other developed countries. So let's not just accept that it's simply a function of population it's a function of both of those things. However population is still an important part of that equation. Most international demographers would suggest that population will peak towards the end of the century at about 9 billion and that ultimately the reason for that is that with increasing development in low income countries will see fertility rates decline and that's the history of developed countries for many decades. In terms of how do we try and address that issue globally I think the single biggest response is the education of particularly women who are denied an education in many low income countries and giving people an opportunity particularly young women who are denied an education has been shown I think through development to be the most effective intervention. Once you give somebody an opportunity for future employment in an environment where they may have been denied that previously it has a significant effect on fertility rates and so that brings me straight back to foreign aid. We can't foreign aid is so critical in issues like global population and ensuring that we start to address that issue more fully. It's absolutely related to the issue of refugees and asylum seekers and I know that having spoken to a number of organisations who work in this space the great need for greater foreign aid investment in Syria at the moment and how critical that is in terms of addressing the movement of peoples. It is fundamental to everything almost everything I've talked about during during the speech and so if Australia was going to do anything as a global citizen it would be to increase its foreign aid budget and to ensure that we have programs that allow women in low income countries to get an education and employment opportunities that they're currently denied. Thank you. Alex Oliver at the front. Just wait for the mic Alex. Thank you Senator for very thought provoking speech. We have a public opinion program here at the Low Institute which has been running for 12 years now and one of the most consistent findings we've had throughout that 12 years is a very strong support for US Alliance and at any one year we find that more than 90% of Australians are overall in support of the Alliance and when we drill down further into the reasons for that they say that paradoxically we would have to spend more on our defence without the Alliance and that the Alliance makes us safer from pressure from countries like China. I was just wondering if you could comment on that because your thoughts about the Alliance and withdrawing from it would seem not to have much public support at all and what has been seen as a cornerstone of Australian security. So just to be clear I mean I have been critical of our blind adherence to US foreign policy and the terms of the Alliance is currently understood. I think it's really important to make that point. In any relationship I think if you have two parties who respect each other and where there is a maturity within that relationship then the obligation should be on Australia to be able to speak up against mistakes that are made by the bigger partner in that relationship. So I'm being critical of the terms under which the Alliance seems to operate in a very bipartisan way. Now I think we need to redefine the terms of the Alliance. I think what we need to do is to have a debate in this country and it's just remarkable you can't debate this stuff anymore. There is this stifling bipartisan consensus that simply to even raise questions about the nature of our relationship with the US the current terms of the Alliance is somehow it's heresy. Well it wasn't always that way and you know as I said Goff Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser hardly bastions of well at least in Malcolm Fraser's case of leftist radicalism you know this is this is I think a very thoughtful response to what is a great paradox for us. What we need to have is a debate about what the purpose of our defence policy is. Let's have an open acknowledgement that what we are saying is we don't have a defence force if what you're suggesting there is that Australia's defence force is simply an arm of the US defence force and that our capabilities are so entwined that Australia would have no prospect of responding to a conflict on its own. Well let's at least be honest about that but that's not the debate that we're having in this country at the moment. We like to have our cake and eat it. I think it's also important to recognise as we heard earlier the growing influence of China and what does our relationship with the US mean in terms of the emergence of China as a superpower we should have a debate about those things. I mean we had the incursion into Iraq followed by well most recently in Syria I think we spent five minutes in the Australian Parliament talking about it before we signed off on sending troops to Syria. Five minutes. I mean think of the debate when we had 48 hours talking about Senate voting reform we had five minutes talking about the incursions here and now I'd like to hear those arguments being discussed in Australia's Parliament. I'd like to hear the contributions of people who have different perspectives on these issues. We just don't have that at the moment. There is no national debate and part of the problem is that we have as I said this bipartisan unquestioning consensus at the moment which I don't think serves us well because we don't have a discussion about what is the purpose of our defence force what is the relationship with the US is it I mean is our relationship with the US so tied into defence strategy that what we actually have is effectively the arm of the US defence force. I mean they are questions that as a parliament and as a nation I don't think we spend enough time reflecting on. This gentleman Sorry the gentleman Yes the black jacket Thank you Thank you Senator first off whether we all agree with all your positions or not one thing you do bring is a very measured and calm tone and detailed tone to debate which isn't always true in all of our politicals so President thank you for that. If I could however follow up on the point about China in the South China Sea you emphasise the importance of arbitration and yet China has repeatedly and categorically ruled out any jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice or the applicability of the United Nations common law of the sea in that in that area doesn't that go to the moderator's point about a lack of real politic as to what actually goes on in that area. The second part of the question then would be you've questioned in some depth the nature of the US the benefit to Australia of the US alliance but then also seem to go on to severely question the size of Australia's own defence spending. It would seem to me that as you just said can't have your cake and eat it too you've either got to have one or the other admittedly you would argue we don't need both which is the current situation but if you question the alliance independent spending on defence might become even more important might it not thank you. So on the first point I mean again having read the contributions of various people to debate around the South China Sea I haven't seen anybody come up with a clear position about how to navigate our way through that. I just don't think there is an obvious one and at the moment it feels like the choices are very binary and it's either back the US which goes to much deeper questions about that relationship or trying to find our way another way through that conflict. On the second point I suppose it comes down to questions about the nature of our defence force defence capability and so on and again I'll go to that point we had a two percent commitment on defence spending one of the most significant contributions when it comes to government expenditure at a time when we told about the debt and deficit disaster again not a scary of debate and if there's anything that we can do through our presence here and certainly in the parliament is to start raising questions about those things and to raise questions about the very nature of what our defence force is there. Let's have an open debate about whether the Australian defence capability exists simply to supplement our relationship with the US or at the moment we're being told that we're doing both and by your own words it seems that you don't think we can do both. So let's at least have a debate about those things and we haven't had a debate or a discussion or any meaningful contribution from either side of politics major parties they're just it's one of those issues you simply can't talk about there was a time when you could and as I said it's not just me that's questioning that relationship I've returned to in a former prime minister Malcolm Fraser who's raising these issues and I think they're legitimate questions to ask and as a nation we should start having that conversation and we're simply not doing it. We have time for one final question Scott Lowe undecided voter and potential green voter but undecided on that you laid out your policies very clearly on a range of social environmental issues and on foreign policy I noticed that one of your colleagues recently spoke with what I would describe as enthusiasm for taking advantage of low interest rates and cranking up the national debt so could you talk a bit about your position and your party's position on that question? Sure Well we've got again it's a very I think it's a it's a very mainstream position many economists will that we've spoken with have said that now is precisely the right time to invest in productivity building infrastructure and we can talk about what that looks like and ensuring that there's a sound business case for those sorts of investments but obviously public transport clean energy and so on would all fit the bill now the time to do that is at a time of low interest rates we have very low interest rates at the moment our view is that we do again as has been suggested by a number of economists borrow money because we know we'll get a better return on that on that borrowing if we invest it sensibly and there is a massive infrastructure deficit in Australia at the moment a massive infrastructure deficit because we have governments continuing to ignore the need for infrastructure spending and that's part of this silly debate we've got into around debt most again mainstream economists say if you are investing for productivity building infrastructure that should be off-budget create a separate lineup we're not talking about recurrent spending here we're talking about spending that will bring in a greater return than what we invest so it should be off-budget we've said that we could certainly invest up to 50 billion dollars we've had an inquiry Peter Wishwilson our finance spokesperson has been touring the country talking to economists talking to regional communities about the sort of infrastructure that's required we can we could borrow up to 50 billion dollars we wouldn't affect our triple A credit rating and provided we do it on sound business case rather than pork barrelling which is sometimes where this debate gets unfortunately caught up in then what we'll actually do is produce a return on that investment so it's a very simple proposition off-budget invest for productivity building infrastructure make sure there's a sound business case and really start addressing that infrastructure deficit ladies and gentlemen would you please thank Senator Richard Dine-Tarling thank you all for coming the Lowy Institute's absolutely determined to keep foreign policy at the forefront of the national debate during this election look out for our notes in your email inbox about future events during the campaign and also keep your eye on the interpreter for regular coverage of the election campaign whenever foreign policy touches on the national debate thank you very much for coming