 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Australian National University. As we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet tonight, pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. The Honourable Nambri people have been meeting here for nearly 25,000 years, and it is great to be able to share this land of theirs tonight. Tonight is indeed a very special event for ANU. Tonight, we celebrate the enormous contribution of our Chancellor, Professor Gareth Evans. Not just his decade of service as our Chancellor, but his long and successful commitment to serving our nation and indeed the world. As many of you know, Gareth will complete his term as Chancellor in December this year. As a university community, we wanted to honour Gareth's legacy to ANU and Australia. Given Gareth is one of the great orators in Australian history, an annual oration seemed fitting. Gareth is one of Australia's leading public intellectuals. His brilliant mind, eloquent and prolific writing and sharp policy and social analysis set him apart from his peers. Throughout his time at ANU, Gareth has overseen the development of our campus master plan, which will transform our campus into a vibrant, connected and sustainable epicenter for Australia's education and research sectors. Indeed, he has made sure it will have a timeless elegance. His skillfully maneuvered the university through big debates in Australian higher education, including deregulation and academic freedom, being a leading voice and advocate for Australia's university sector. He was instrumental in establishing the highly successful Crawford Leadership Forum, with preparations for the 7th event well underway now. Under Gareth's leadership, the Crawford Leadership Forum has become a hub for the debate and formulation of ideas on the major public policy issues facing Australia and our region, and it continues to attract some of the world's best thinkers and current and future leaders. On a personal level, Gareth has provided me the guidance, support and friendship during my time as Vice Chancellor, and I thank him for his advice, his quick wit and unwavering passion for the Australian National University. Of course, outside ANU, Gareth has had an extraordinary career. He is best known for his long tenure as Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, characterized by his central role in the establishment of the International Chemicals Convention and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, as it's most commonly known. Prior to joining Parliament, Gareth was a prominent barrister and Queen's Council, actively advocating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' rights and campaigning against the White Australia policy. Gareth's career highlights commitment to a fair and just world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and succeed. These are just a few of the characteristics he shares with our speaker and guest this evening. Ambassador Samantha Power's long list of achievements include a Pulitzer Prize for her book, A Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide, in which she examined why American leaders who vowed never again had nonetheless repeatedly failed to do more to stop genocides from occurring over the course of the 20th century. As a journalist living and working in the former Yugoslavia during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, Samantha Power shared the stories of victims of war, such as mothers in Sarajevo who had lost their sons with the world, while also using her reporting to highlight the resilience of the people of Bosnia. Power worked for Barack Obama when he was a young U.S. Senator, new to Washington, then on his presidential campaign and once he was elected president as his human rights adviser in the White House. In his second term, President Obama named her the youngest ever U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, remarking that Samantha showed us that the international community has a moral responsibility and a profound interest in resolving conflicts and defending human dignity. At the United Nations, she spearheaded a campaign to free 20 women held as political prisoners around the world, which saw at least 16 women freed from prison where they were being held for activities such as peacefully demonstrating without a permit. As the clock on the Obama administration counted down, Ambassador Power worked tirelessly with her U.S. government and U.N. colleagues to finalize the Paris Climate Agreement, ensuring it was an international law regardless of whether the incoming administration pulled the U.S. out of the agreement. Ambassador Power was also part of the team that spearheaded the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, part of an international effort that helped restrict the spread of the disease and ultimately may have saved millions of lives during what had become the worst Ebola crisis in history. What is clear from her deeply personal memoir, The Education of an Idealist, is that this Irish immigrant to the United States has always seized opportunities to make a difference from her writing and reporting to her activism and advocacy to her work at the highest levels of government and diplomacy. In doing so, she has been able to implement real and lasting change that has impacted many people around the world. People who care, act and refuse to give up may not change the world she writes in her book, but they can change many individual worlds. We are delighted and honored to have Ambassador Power with us tonight to deliver the inaugural Gareth Evans Aureation, and with that I welcome Ambassador Power to the lectern. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you Vice Chancellor Schmidt for the introduction. I too would like to offer my acknowledgement to the traditional owners on whose lands we meet today and add by sincere respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. Thank you to ANU. I'm kind of mortified to admit this, but this is my first trip to Australia. How is that possible? I'm so sorry. But ANU made it possible, and as some of you know, who've had the pleasure or misfortune of attempting to evade Gareth Evans, it's just not possible. So I am so pleased to have the honor of being part of a celebration of Gareth. Basically, I would be a part of any celebration of Gareth, which I will get to. At ANU, I'm sure there are many people to thank, but I would like to single out Joe Meehan from the Public Affairs Office for her above and beyond effort to make this trip a success and also to express my gratitude to Sandy Hawk. Joe and Sandy are complete dynamos, and apart from their amazing professionalism and what we call GSD, get shit done quality. I will also not forget the kindness that they have shown my father and my young daughter, Rian, who's here with me, both of whom are with me on the trip. And finally, I'm not sure if she's here, but I would like to recognize the honorable Senator Penny Wong, who I think was planning on coming. I am, again, very honored to be here and to be in the presence of one of my dearest friends and most cherished mentors, your Chancellor, the Indefatigable Professor and Citizen, Gareth Evans. Giving this inaugural Gareth Evans aeration means a great deal to me, probably more than I can convey. In Gareth's memoir, he recounts coming to this very university more than 30 years ago to give a speech just a few weeks after becoming foreign minister. When he finished the legendary A&U political scientist, Des Ball approached him, and Gareth wondered, was Ball about to deliver praise for the new foreign minister's incisive account of the major challenges facing Australian foreign policy, or would Ball wish to slip to the new foreign minister important insight as he prepared to take up this new post? In fact, what Ball said to Gareth was, that was all very well, but when are you going to say something interesting? So, on this occasion, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak at such a remarkable university and to kick off an annual tradition that will carry forward the spirit of relentless, and that's the word that one has to use anytime the words Gareth Evans come up, but relentless engagement and inquiry that Gareth so embodies. That's the spirit, I hope, of this aeration, which will be carried forward. I, though, in carrying out this role, do not have any desire to come all this way to be boring. So, it's a low bar, I guess, but nonetheless one I hope to clear. So, when Gareth was on to me about whether maybe I could come for this, I initially thought that this would be a great chance to talk about Gareth Evans, the Gareth Evans aeration after all, but he made clear that that would be insufferable, intolerable, no such rubbish, he said, substance, only substance. So, I am here to talk substance about the future of democracy. Before I get into substance, though, I have to say a few words about not only one of Australia's finest diplomats, of course, in history, but really one of the worlds. Gareth has made this world a better, safer, and more peaceful place, and the number of things he's achieved is too numerous to detail here tonight, especially given his warning to me, but to just give you, again, a reminder of all that he has achieved, his crucial role in bringing about the conclusion of the Paris peace agreement that ended the decades-long civil war in Cambodia, his role after some 20 years of false starts in galvanizing the nations of the world to finally find agreement on an international ban on chemical weapons, and let's bear in mind as a direct result of this landmark treaty, more than 72,000 metric tons of chemical weapons have been destroyed as states have complied with the mandates that Gareth and other Australian diplomats were indispensable in securing in those talks. He almost single-handedly made the non-governmental organization, the International Crisis Group, one of global prominence and relevance. Relevance is also always something that matters a great deal to Gareth, and, of course, he pretty much birthed the idea, the norm inherent in the so-called responsibility to protect, which elevated the issues of atrocity and genocide prevention within governments, within international organizations, in a manner that notwithstanding, again, some peril to the norm now, particularly with America's retreat, but also with a sort of inward-looking focus among democracies, which I'll come to, notwithstanding that this doing this would seem just like an idea, I really do believe that the elevation and prioritization it brought about has saved thousands of lives, and that is, again, because of the indefatigability, I think, of Gareth. So I don't flatter myself to believe that my career in diplomacy has all that much in common with Gareth's remarkable record, but I did find one really important parallel between your chancellor and me. Gareth titled his memoir, Encourageable Optimist, and when a journalist later asked him, what keeps you up at night? Gareth responded, worrying whether I've made a complete fool of myself by publishing a memoir with the title, Encourageable Optimist. So Gareth, as someone who has just titled her own memoir, The Education of an Idealist, I'm right there with you, and I know the feeling of vulnerability that our title choices leave us with, at this time in history in particular. But ultimately, I do take both inspiration and comfort that a person of Gareth's stature and with all of his achievements on behalf of international peace and security, including the disappointments and failures along the way that he writes quite candidly about in his book, that he so proudly owns the mantle of what can be achieved, whether by incorrigible optimists or unrepentant idealists like me. So tonight, though, on substance, I'd like to address a problem that I know is of paramount concern here in Australia and that is on people's minds back in the US in a very real, tangible way these days and in so many nations around the world, and that is the topic again of the future of democracy. So I'm going to do three things tonight in the time that we are together and then I'm looking forward to Gareth's response. But first, to just look very quickly at the state of democracy and its relative appeal around the world, that's the bad news part of the evening. Two, to discuss the rise of China and its implications for democracy, not the good news part of the evening either. But third, to argue that facing a future in which two very different models will coexist on this earth, a democratic model and what we are lately calling authoritarian capitalism or a more autocratic model, to argue that we Australians, Americans, Democrats can and should take a number of steps to enhance democracy's prospects. So first, sort of the state of play as it relates to democracy. Gareth has written, quote, if ever there was a period in which it was possible to be optimistic about the state of the world, it was in the late 1980s and the years that followed. The pace of events was tumultuous and it was impossible not to be caught up in the excitement of it all. And quote, Gareth was referring, of course, to the seismic events like the end of the Cold War, the spread of new freedoms that accompany the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela walking out of prison after 27 years and apartheid ending in South Africa. It really did seem and it really was the case that a new era of cooperation and partnership was within reach. The world seemed to be genuinely trending toward more openness, more rights, more dignity. Now flashing back long before that, let's recall that around a decade before Gareth became Australia's foreign minister back in 1976, only about 30% of the countries in the world were democracies and that number had remained relatively unchanged since the end of the Second World War. So think about it, 1945 to 1976 pretty stagnant in terms of the democratization and the expansion of rights. That year though, 1976, an uprising began in Portugal. After 42 years of military dictatorship, the country's so-called Carnation Revolution led to a transition to democracy. What followed was three decades of global democratic flowering. By the turn of the century into the 21st century, the percentage of democracies in the world had doubled. More than 60% of the countries in the world, 120 out of 192, were democracies at the turn of the century. Democracy had become the dominant form of government and the majority of people in the world, population-wise, were living in countries with democratically elected leaders. Today though, it's no secret that we are in the midst of what has become known as a democratic recession. We are seeing a pronounced surge in populists in support for populist nationalist figures around the world. Major established democracies are often on the defensive these days, chastened by growing inequality in our societies, intimidated in many quarters by China's economic success, and distracted by the everyday difficulties of conducting even basic governance. The Sydney Morning Herald last year blared a headline, very familiar to those of us living in the U.S., but the headline here was, Is Democracy in its Death Throws? was the question. And I have been since September traveling around the United States and doing a fair amount of international travel as well, talking about my new book, The Education of an Idealist, trying to use this book as a vehicle to make public service and service lowercase s, service of any kind, sort of accessible and inviting, particularly to young people. So I've been traveling around and spending a fair amount of time at bookstores, and I'm telling you, it's no secret, I suppose, but it is really quite striking to see the kinds of books that people are reading. How democracies die, how democracies end, the people versus democracy. Madeleine Albright's fascism, a warning, even my own husband, Cass Sunstein, published a book, Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in the U.S. It was an edited book. I contributed a chapter. Cass contributed a chapter and edited the book. He says, in answers to the question, Can It Happen Here? No, I say maybe, just so you know. A source of lively debate in our marriage. But the causes for concern that give rise to this kind of glut of doom are not simply anecdotal. According to the American Organization Freedom House, which has developed metrics on freedom around the world in a whole variety of spaces, we are now, this year, in the 13th straight year of freedom in relative decline around the world, 13 years. We've seen, instead of rule of law, which we would have gone to great lengths, and many of you, perhaps, as well, went to great lengths to try to promote around the world, we now have what the Carnegie Endowment calls rule by law, where more than 70 governments in the last decade have taken serious measures to restrict civil society from legal means like regulation to intimidation campaigns. Parties and politicians that were once at the periphery due to their extreme views now occupy influential roles in many established democracies. From these more mainstream positions, they often demonize immigrants and refugees, attack the press, and do what they can to undermine the judiciary and checks and balances on centralized power. They don't like those pesky checks and balances. Today, 90% of the media in Hungary, for example, is owned or controlled by allies of President Viktor Orban or his Fidesz party. In Poland, the Conservative Law and Justice Party came to power in 2015 and has since tried to gain control over the country's judiciary. In 2018, some of you know this party, the Law and Justice Party, passed a law that forced the retirement of long-serving Supreme Court judges who were then replaced by allies of the ruling party. Critical reporting in Poland is now dismissed... sorry, critical reporting generally is now dismissed as fake news not just by President Trump but by leaders in dozens of countries, including Poland and Hungary. The most recent Pew poll of global attitudes across 27 democracies has found that overall, more people are dissatisfied with how democracy is working in their country than satisfied. My own country is one of those. Only about 40% of Americans say that they are satisfied with how our democracy functions. In Australia, recent polls indicate the levels of satisfaction. The good news is that they are higher here. Nevertheless, one notices in these polls, which I think are credible, one notices a clear downward trend over time. And some studies, like that produced by the Democracy 2025 initiative based here in Canberra, indicates that satisfaction with Australian democracy has begun falling precipitously. As the researchers warned, Australians have grown more distrustful of politicians, skeptical about democratic institutions, and disillusion with democratic processes. So, is democracy doomed? I certainly do not believe so, but it's worth, again, digging into this question, as I do think democracies are suffering more than just a crisis of confidence. The global expansion of democracy, this third wave of democratization that began with the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, has ended. The disposition and rhetoric of President Trump have, of course, cast a spotlight on these larger, worrying trends I've touched upon. Trump, of course, in addition to his assault on democratic institutions like the media, the courts, and the political opposition party at home, Trump, maybe sort of beneath the radar, has removed the reference to democracy from the State Department mission statement, has repeatedly proposed cutting billions of dollars from long-standing democracy promotion initiatives, and, and this is better known, has shown greater affection for the leaders of the most repressive countries in the world than he has for most of our closest democratic allies. Beyond Trump, many of the ills that we face in the U.S. Intense inequality, big money in politics, gerrymandering and restrictions on voting rights, corruption, polarization, you name it, have seriously undermined faith that America's democracy can deliver, that it can deliver tangible returns. And I believe parallel dynamics are at work in many of those countries experiencing democratic backsliding around the world. So now let me touch upon the rise of the alternative, the second part of my remarks. President Xi has been explicit about China's desire to provide an alternative model that does not imitate Western values. He has said, quote, China offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence, end quote. Now the word independence here is really important. It is shorthand to signal other countries that China will not be budding its nose into the internal affairs of other countries, and particularly not paying attention to human rights practices or even, you know, cronyism, corruption associated with various projects, which I'll come back to. Now the achievement that China has marked in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is something that I think all of us can celebrate, must celebrate. It is extraordinary, and the effects on human dignity and human life encapsulated in that figure I think cannot be overstated. But, needless to say, its authoritarian capitalist model has really disturbing aspects. Well beyond banning YouTube and Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, Beijing has done something far more egregious, locking up more than one million Chinese Muslims in internment camps, framing the measures as effective counter-terrorism. In the coming years, and I don't have to tell you, but China plans to have assigned a citizen score to every one of its people. This score will use artificial intelligence to process a mix of information about the citizen's movements, purchases, social media postings, religion, and the records of their family members and friends. The government will then use this continuously updated score to classify citizens as safe, normal, or unsafe. This score will in turn, this is not me talking, this is the government talking, will in turn be used to determine everything from citizens' access to jobs and social services to whether they should be picked up for preemptive questioning or be allowed to travel. Already, the Chinese government has revealed that due to bad social credit, a bad citizen score, it has blocked its citizens from taking flights 17 million times, 17 million times. Under President Xi, China has capitalized on its economic heft to turbocharge its diplomacy and international development to cornerstones of U.S. power since the end of World War II and tools that the United States has used to support the consolidation of democracy. China's foreign affairs budget has doubled since 2013. This is, as in my country, the U.S. State Department budget stagnates, and as we've seen as career diplomats flee the Trump administration, which has shunned expertise and generally most forms of diplomacy. Greatly enhancing its influence, China now provides just as much development financing as the entire World Bank and as of 2018, some 20% of African government's external debt was owed to China. Now some of this, again, is to the good, and I'll again try to touch on that later, and Chinese leadership in a range of venues can be to the good as it was in the Ebola response back in 2014, 2015 as it has been and can be on climate and energy renewables and so forth on peacekeeping, which I'll come to. But the issue of external financing, the one thing one has to take note of is it gives China tremendous leverage around the world. I'll just give one example. China has loaned the African country of Uganda $3 billion since 2011, and more than a third of Uganda's national debt is now owed to China. Thus, it should not have been altogether surprising when Uganda issued a statement last month condemning the protesters in Hong Kong as radical and violent, saying, quote, Hong Kong's affairs are China's domestic affairs, end quote. At the United Nations, the US remains the largest donor and, at least for now, still wields the greatest influence. When I joined the Obama administration in 2009, though, China was the eighth largest donor nation, contributing around 3% of the UN regular budget. Today, it contributes four times that. Just in that short period of time, just in a decade, it has overtaken Japan this year as the second largest funder in the UN just behind the United States. It already contributes, as I alluded to a second ago, three times as many peacekeepers, 2,500 soldiers and police, three times as many as any other permanent member of the Security Council. Gallup polling across 133 countries shows that President Xi is now viewed as favorably or more favorably than the American president, and while people around the world are more or less evenly split about whether they hold a favorable or unfavorable view of China, its favorability numbers are relatively high, particularly in the developing world and among younger generations. In countries like Tunisia, Nigeria, and Kenya, all countries that I think the United States and Australia would like to see continuing their progress ensuring up democratic institutions in those countries' views of China today are markedly positive. Meanwhile, in Brazil, Mexico, Poland, and yes, even here in Australia, double-digit gaps exist between those in the 18 to 29 age range who have a favorable view of China and those from the older generation, over 50, who are more skeptical. Authoritarian capital is well beyond China. Authoritarian capitalism is increasingly seen as an effective economic model, which is partly what explains some of these numbers, as Roberto, Stefan Foa, and Yashka Monk have pointed out, within the next five years, the total GDP of countries that Freedom House considers undemocratic, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, for example, will surpass the combined GDP of the U.S., Australia, Japan, Germany, and the world's other democracies. The implications of this, I think, are serious. A powerful argument through the years for democracy has always been that accountable governance and economic development go hand in hand. For leaders around the world wavering on whether to become more open, and for citizens deciding what kind of society they hope to build, the appeal of democracy has, in the past, been tied, in part, at least, to its ability to deliver for people's quality of life and economic well-being. China's well-documented economic success, combined with this awareness of growing inequality inside democracies, has at least complicated this argument. All of this said, though, we don't actually know yet how aggressive Beijing will become in trying to use its leverage and its assistance to nudge countries on the fence or to nudge those countries that are backsliding to nudge them in a more repressive direction. We actually, I think, don't know. We don't know whether Beijing is agnostic on regime type abroad as between autocratic nationalists or democratic, open, you know, however you want to characterize various regimes. Are they agnostic and more kind of mercantilist and transactional? Or does Beijing, or will Beijing, deem it as in China's interest to, you might say, make the world safe for autocracy and authoritarianism? In other words, will they start to care whether there are a growing number of non-democratic states in the world? Will that be deemed in China's interests? I, at the UN, this was a while ago now, more than three years ago, or almost three years ago, feels like a longer time than it is, I suppose. During my time at the UN, I saw competing impulses from Chinese diplomats. On the one hand, as you know, China's internal stability remained the overriding concern for its government. Over many decades, by contrast, the US has recognized that our national security is enhanced by a democratic world in which we have more democratic partners to take on shared challenges. I never got a sense of that kind of vibe from Chinese diplomats. It was clear that China saw domestic security as the most important foundation of its national security. And that's why, again, this question of how they're going to think about other governments and the composition of those governments or the trends in those countries is, I think, an unsettled question. But having a proof point, again, about this emphasis on domestic security has come in just the last fortnight with the incredible leaks of Chinese government party statements and government internal government documents related to the detention of the Uighurs. And here, again, there are many things to say about these documents, which I'm not going to go into here. But one of the most striking features, I think, of the language in those documents is the fear and, you know, just genuine fear, particularly of President Xi in his speeches, the internal speeches that had not seen the light of day beforehand, but also of the Communist Party officials charged with implementing this mass detention policy. And so there is a great fear that animates the widespread repression and that drives the massive spending on internal security and surveillance measures. And by the way, that internal security and surveillance spending now apparently exceeds that which has been invested in the military and the defense. So that's, again, the mindset, I think, by and large. But while I was at the U.N., I also saw China beginning to step up to influence countries on issues where the United States has enduring interests, but has more recently, especially, in my view, dangerously, vacated a leadership role under President Trump. So this question, again, of how aggressive beyond its borders I think there's some evidence of certain trends in certain directions, but it does, they're competing polls clearly on Beijing. Many expect China to actively pull countries in its direction in terms of regime type, but others, like the great historian Arnie Wested, argue that Xi Jinping's China is, quote, nationalist, not universalist, end quote. China has an awful lot on its hands governing a country of 1.4 billion people, and it may be that, at least for the time being, its main approach will be to try to show that China's system works better in China than America's system works in America. Nonetheless, we're, again, seeing some developments that suggest that they may be beginning to try to influence events beyond their borders, in part because their conception of domestic security is so expansive. Many of you are familiar with what happened just last month when an American sports executive in the National Basketball Association used his Twitter account to express support for the Hong Kong protesters. China took the NBA, its most beloved sports league, off the air. Chinese companies canceled millions of dollars in sponsorship agreements with the Houston Rockets, the team that was run by the general manager who had posted the tweet, and the NBA, I have to say, took time, a fair amount of time to get its voice back and to remember that its product was not one in China that could be obtained anywhere else. It was not a fungible product and that there was a safe harbor that the NBA could find in invoking the right of free speech. The website of the Marriott Hotel Chain listed Hong Kong and Taiwan separately from China on a drop-down menu for bookings and had its entire web presence in China shut down until it issued a profuse apology in which it fell compelled to disavow, quote, separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, end quote. A growing number of companies, I know you're experiencing this here as well, but have found themselves bullied into altering its public positions, even if those positions are actually taken far, very far from mainland China. And I know here this is an interesting week to be here as you all debate the question of Chinese efforts to influence domestic events here in Australia. I would put myself on record as not thinking that it is pious or do-gooderist or sensationalist or even anti-Chinese to warn that all democracies must take seriously the warning recently issued by Australia's former spy chief, Duncan Lewis, who said, quote, you wake up one day and find decisions made in our country that are not in the interests of our country, not only in politics but in the community or in business, end quote. So I think vigilance is essential. We have lived foreign interference in an American election. I can tell you it's not fun, especially to do the forensics after the fact that we realized that the scale of interference was so much larger than our intelligence community was aware of at the time. And so it seems to me, again, not at all paranoid to be vigilant and to take note of the variety of ways in which foreign powers, and not, again, not speaking only of China, again, for us, it was Russia, but can take advantage of their cyber technology and their ability to hack, to take advantage of their ability to fund large-scale purchases, for example, of social media accounts, as they have done recently. It looks like in the United Kingdom with regard to Hong Kong, and basically their effort to shape public perceptions without, of course, having their fingerprints on those efforts. China is not the only country pulling the overall system, I think, in these directions today, far more players from the cash-rich Gulf states to aspiring leaders for life, like Prime Minister Orban, President Erdogan, or President Sisi in Egypt. These leaders are on the scene, and they are actively promoting their political visions more so than we saw during the third wave of the 1970s and 1990s. Many of them are operating with an impressive range of tools beyond their borders, and right now, in some cases, those tools are exceeding that which established democracies are bringing to bear. Those tools can include development aid, military assistance, diplomatic heft, and media influence on a range of platforms. Okay, so now, what can be done? We have these two competing models. There's some questions, a lot of questions still outstanding about China's intentions, and a huge amount of opportunity, I should say, notwithstanding these challenges, again, to try to partner with a country as powerful as China on a host of shared concerns. So I just want to close by offering a few ideas. I present these ideas with humility, because I think it's actually really and truly fair to say that the task before us is enormous. I think it's the greatest challenge of my lifetime, for sure. This question, again, of how to solidify and to grow democracy in a manner where it is, in fact, the ascendant model is the go-to model of governance. It is where people's aspirations in democracies and those countries that are denied basic rights, where those aspirations take citizens. So what can be done? First, it goes without saying, I think, but I'll say it anyway, the most critical step is to strengthen our own riven divided democracies. In the U.S., of course, I mentioned the impediments that we're facing, gerrymandering restrictions on voting rights. I'm glad that these issues, those specific issues that subset of challenges do not yet seem to have become the corrupting forces here in Australia as they have in the U.S., but we do have really significant domestic polarization in common. It does seem as if that is something we have in common. I'll just speak, again, from an American perspective, but I cannot overstate how challenging polarization has made it to meet any problem, to resolve any problem, much less to make a dent in a problem as big, for example, as the global human rights recession or as strengthening democracy around the world. In the U.S., the salience of one's political identity is so much greater than that of all we might have in common as neighbors, as citizens, as classmates. It is really striking that data on this is kind of devastating. And whenever a fresh issue arises in the U.S., we see almost instant polarization. I know from the second I landed in Sydney on Sunday that impeachment is on some people's minds here. So let me just share one chilling finding from one of the leading opinion pollsters in the U.S. Last month, and this isn't about impeachment as such, but it's about the circumstances that gave rise to the impeachment inquiry. Last month, when the story was first breaking about President Trump's effort to enlist Ukraine, the Ukrainian government, in helping his reelection campaign, the polling institute at Monmouth University, again, a very credible poll, found that only 40% of Republicans believed that President Trump had talked to Ukrainian President Zelensky about investigating Joe Biden. Now, you might say, well, what's so strange about that? It's very strange because President Trump stated openly that he had spoken to Zelensky, and the White House released a virtual transcript and a call summary which detailed the content of the call. And so what we have is basically the majority of Republicans finding refuge in the idea, the false idea, that Trump either didn't talk to Zelensky or, the other part of the poll, was that they just couldn't be sure, even though Trump himself had spoken about the call. And it was because, again, it was filtered through what we call solution aversion. It was filtered through the prism of, of course, not wanting there to be a scandal, not wanting anything untoward to have happened and therefore better, easier to believe that the call never occurred in the first place. In Congress, these divisions paralyze any constructive action. Australia made such strides that are so inspirational to somebody like me from far away on gun control. When a gunman in the U.S. kills 58 people at an outdoor concert, the baseline expectation in the United States is that our Congress won't do anything to try to decrease the risk of future attacks. And every time another mass shooting occurs when the vast majority of Americans, even across both parties, wishes to see sensible gun control measures, every time there's another shooting, it further undermines the belief among Americans that their government is capable of passing laws in the public good. From what I understand, polarization again is asserting itself here as well. In the 1990s, a third of Australian major party politicians used to self-identify as moderates, a third. Today, according to a poll that I gather again is credible, only a tenth of politicians self-identify as moderate. Now, I do not have a cure for widening polarization. If I did, I would have grabbed it, needless to say, nor I think do most of us. But we have got to acknowledge that as we think again about the future of democracy healing our divisions or at least placing a dent in them has got to be a priority for all of us. Second, as we enter a period in which two models of government are kind of competing, you could say, for adherence, domestically and geopolitically, if not explicitly competing. We, I'm just here speaking about the United States, have to rebuild, build even our diplomatic core and make it fit for modern purpose. At present, in the U.S., the largest and most powerful democracy in the world, notwithstanding our current issues, the Pentagon and armed services have more than 225,000 American personnel deployed outside the U.S. The State Department has 9,000, around 9,000. Indeed, and some of you may have heard this, kind of colorful statistic, but the Pentagon famously has only slightly fewer people serving in marching bands than the State Department has diplomats. The Trump administration still does not have ambassadors posted in more than 40 countries around the world. And this, again, this battle, this need to support nascent democracies, this need to invest also in conflict resolution, which can be a conflict, can be a huge impediment to human rights and to democratic fulfillment. Those investments can't be made if we are starving our diplomatic cores and militarizing our foreign policy as the United States has done. For example, I think in the wake of the Arab Spring, the United States and our allies could have done even more to help a country like Tunisia as it tried to consolidate the hard-earned democratic gains achieved by its protest movement. Today, when a new leader in Ethiopia, now a Nobel Prize-winning leader, negotiates peace with its neighbor, releases political prisoners, opens up freedom of the press and points a cabinet with 50-50 gender balance and declares that his, quote, ultimate goal is to ensure that a democratic election takes place in Ethiopia, end quote. We and other democracies should be doing far more to support his agenda. In Sudan, in Sudan, when an incredibly courageous and persistent protest movement forces a leader indicted for genocide out of office and pressures the military leadership into signing a power-sharing agreement, democracies should be collectively investing significant support to improving the likelihood that military leaders will actually stick to the agreement. Third, and I only have four, as democracies, I think it's really important that we not underestimate our own leverage. This is really important, and we in the United States do this all the time. And part and parcel of this, I think is also feeling that leverage by rejuvenating and strengthening alliances among democracies. So I know, just from having been here a couple days, but also for being Garrett's friend, but how complex and multifaceted the relationship is, for example, between China and Australia. And I don't in any way mean to be anything other than humble in making this point, but an easy for me to say from far away, very far away, it turns out, but it is really important not to discount your own leverage in the relationship. One example, China and its growing imports of natural gas to move away, we hope, from dependence on coal that has caused horrible pollution and put the government on edge as anger over smog chocked cities leads to social unrest. Where does half of all the imported, you know, natural gas come from? It comes from right here. It's not simple that there is major, major dependence given the incredibly large and burgeoning trade relationship, but it is, there is sometimes a tendency to forget that leverage goes in both directions. One thing that would, I think, book each of us up as democracies is if we were speaking in one voice. If we were coordinating not only our statements, but our policies as it relates, particularly to China's actions beyond its borders. For example, vis-a-vis multinationals or perhaps in the instance of foreign interference in elections. There is an awful lot of pooling of wisdom and resources, but also an awful lot of shared joint mobilization that could be done now in part, I think, because of the U.S.'s retreat is not happening near as much as it once might have. And again, part of thinking through what this leverage would look like involves remembering that notwithstanding some of the setbacks for human rights and democracy in recent years, the number of democracies in the world, according to all the major indices, is either at or near its all-time high. So yes, there's this backsliding within democracies a lot to worry about, but there is vast economic and political and strategic leverage if democracies could do a better job of speaking in one voice. Fourth, and finally, we have to, I think, go further and have more confidence, I suppose, in our preparedness to defend the democratic model. You see right now something that feels like a confidence gap between authoritarians who are strutting around, checking out each other, partnering, feeling pretty good about themselves, feeling like their numbers are expanding here and there. Democrats looking inward, running for cover, sometimes it seems, with and reading these books and having these headlines again about the future of democracy. Now, I would count myself a skeptic about either sweeping fatalism or optimism, and when I graduated from university back in 1992, the book that many people of my generation and certainly our elders was reading, that they were reading, was about the global triumph of liberalism, the inevitability of the triumph of western democracy, and that book was Francis Fukuyama's book of history and The Last Man, and it too was a big bestseller in that day. I think what's interesting is all these years later, 27 years later, I guess it is, people have begun speaking of liberal democracy's demise with almost the same certainty that they spoke about its inevitable triumph. My own view, which is my last point here, is that Winston Churchill was basically right when he said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. We know so much about our own dysfunctions, about all the inadequacies in our respective systems, in our respective democracies, but we know a lot less, and I know there are actual specialists here who are exceptions to what I'm about to say, but I personally and many people who are involved in foreign policy representing the United States or in the academic world know much more about our representative democracies and their flaws than we really do about the brittleness of the autocratic and the authoritarian model. And I really think it's important to recall why democracy has gathered so many adherents over the generations, why it did bust out in the way that it did in the wake of the Cold War. And part of that is to remember again what tends to trip up autocrats and authoritarians. So in autocracies, economic growth is often impeded by stagnant state-owned enterprises and by a lack of transparency in the economy, even in China as we know growth has slowed, and one wonders how secure investors will feel with the arrest of expatriates and the absence of due process and property rights. ICG, its own analyst in China from Canada, of course, was arrested and has been arrested as retaliation for Canada's arrest of the Huawei business executive. Those kinds of things are happening more and more beneath the radar in many cases. Autocrats often overreach because they don't hear from critical voices in their inner circles and often prefer the company of sycophants. If you worked, and I should say that even working for the commander in chief of the most powerful democracy in the world, even there I see the temptation to kind of report up in, you know, my husband and I used to call it happy talk. We'd come from a meeting. I'd be like, I just came from a meeting full of happy talk because everybody wants to sort of not bother the boss. He's got so much on his mind and it's not because I fear I'm going to lose my job as I would if I was working for the Trump administration and gave a dissenting view or, you know, maybe even face arrest on corruption charges in China if I gave a dissenting view. But this temptation exists in every institution, I think. But in an autocratic system where there is an awful lot of fear, again, query how much is really reaching the top, whether there is the kind of dissent that we know from the private sector and other places. This is really optimal in terms of group decision-making. In the military, in autocratic or authoritarian cultures, the most capable officers may be less likely to rise than the most loyal. A lack of accountability, the ability to vote somebody out and when you're present for life, there's not a whole lot of accountability. That can breed decay of all kinds. We've seen through history when ethnic, religious and national identity is stymied, as it is so often, in illiberal societies that can lead to social unrest and even to violence. Remember Isaiah Berlin and the bent twig, sort of snapping forth. While innovation is flourishing, of course, in some sectors within certain undemocratic countries, I think there's reason to question whether innovation is undermined, at least in the long term, by the absence of freedom of speech and the presence of fear. Is that really the best, the optimal environment again for innovation to flourish? One of the biggest factors explaining the appeal of illiberal or populist leaders is inequality, as I've noted, as many others have noted, as I think Gareth is going to touch upon, and the feeling that so many people have in both of our societies, Australia and the United States, that people are being left behind, that globalization, that there are winners and losers, and those losers feel really aggrieved, mainly by growing automation and dramatic shifts in work and the workplace and the nature of work. But having said that about, and democracy has not delivered sufficiently or made those people feel as if their needs have been met, that's for sure. But is there a reason to expect that systems that concentrate power at the very top will more equally distribute benefits over time, that those issues of inequality will not plague those countries? And here, Thomas Piketty, the great expert on inequality, now estimates that the share of income in China going to the top 1%, which was only, that share was only 6% in 1978. It's now at least as of 2015, which is his latest numbers, up to 14%. I think even higher in 2019, I'm sure. That's less, substantially less than in the U.S., which is 20%, income 1%, going to the top 1%, but already higher than that in, for example, France, which is 10%. And so, again, this question of inequality and whether, in fact, there will be delivery on some of the promises being made. I would also, and this is the most upbeat, I think, part of the evening, unless Gareth rescues us all, but I would call attention to a trend that hasn't quite registered yet with most people. Although it does feel like there's now a salience to this issue that there hasn't been in recent months, but political participation is now increasing in almost every region in the world. Voter turnout is way, way up. The number of people who say they are following the news engaging in politics and joining political parties is way up. By many, many measures, the participation of women in politics has increased. The proportion of the population willing to participate in peaceful demonstrations, we've seen that like crazy in recent days, is rising. And take a few examples. In Turkey, where the people of Istanbul delivered a stunning rebuke to President Erdogan twice in a row, first electing a member of the political opposition as mayor in Erdogan's home city. Initially, it was by 13,000 votes. And then when Erdogan came and tried to manipulate the results and forced a re-vote, the people of Istanbul turned around and elected the opposition candidate again. Remember, the first election was 13,000 votes. In the second election, the re-vote, people were so frustrated by what Erdogan's move that they re-elected, as it were, the opposition candidate for mayor by 800,000 votes. It's a 60 times 60 times the margin of the first vote, again, within just a manner of months. In Hong Kong, people have pooled their resources and skills to support those putting their lives on the line in a way that, again, doesn't get a huge amount of attention. Private apartments being open to protesters who need a place to rest. Private text groups coordinating transportation away from areas where police are cracking down. These text groups and have tens of thousands of volunteer drivers who are part of this transportation network. And there's a great quote that I saw in a recent article from Hong Kong. I thought Hong Kongers were self-interested, observed an employee at a hostel that is sheltering protesters for free. Now I can see that we're motivated by public interest. There's no me or you, it's for everyone, said this individual. And the election result this weekend is really sort of a breathtakingly large victory, even if you thought that pro-democracy candidates were going to fare better than the alternative. The fact that more than half of the 452 seats that were up flipped, they flipped more than half from pro-Beijing candidates to pro-democracy candidates is really striking. And this was not only in the dense urban areas, but also in the more rural parts of Hong Kong. And voter turnout, again back to turnout, was higher than at any point since local district council elections began back in 1999. So higher than in two decades now. In Slovakia a young environmental lawyer who'd never held political office and who was vocal on women's and LGBT rights became president this past summer, loudly proclaiming her support for European integration and triumphing over more reactionary political parties. Her victory showed, she said, that quote values such as humanism, solidarity and truth are important to our society. 10 months after Algerians first took to the streets to peacefully demand political reform the country's long-term president resigned. And after the sort of transitional authorities tried to rush a presidential election, the country's interim leaders eventually bowed to public pressure postponing the election. Tens of thousands of people participating in weekly demonstrations have helped fast to their democratic transition well past the point that people would have predicted that these protests would have died out. I already alluded to Sudan where Omar al-Bashir the once untouchable president is now standing trial. In the U.S. where I know there's a fair amount of concern about trends in the 2018 midterm election we saw the highest turnout in 50 years for a midterm election. The highest turnout in 50 years. That's on the heels of suppressed voting of course in 2016 including lower turnout for women in the 2016 presidential election than there had been in 2012 despite the chance to bring forward the first female American president. College students have also more than doubled their turnout in the 2018 election than from four years earlier. In Kentucky and Louisiana two states that voted 20 to 30 percentage points for President Trump Democratic governors have triumphed and again voter turnout surged. The surge in activation of young people manifested also in the marches in the U.S. and globally for climate and gun safety show that climate globally, gun safety only in the U.S. of course shows that the next generation is engaged in pushing back this quote. My colleague at Harvard, Erica Chenoweth has recently shown in her really important research on social movements quote, we live in a decade in which there have been more mass nonviolent movements around the world than at any time in recorded history end quote. So all we can say with certainty is that the future of our societies and the future of the world the role that governments and citizens play in shaping them is being actively contested right now. Despite all of the challenges and setbacks it does seem as though people all around the world no matter their religions or their culture their geography appear to have an inexhaustible aspiration to hold their leaders accountable and I think it is far too early to write the story of democracy's fate in this 21st century. Gareth was recently asked what his advice would be for the next generation and particularly for again the young people who are going to play the most substantial role in determining how or whether these challenges are going to be addressed. Gareth's response was don't give up on politics and he quoted the words of the American labor activist Joe Hill from right before he was executed in 1915 for a murder he may not have committed. Don't waste time mourning Joe Hill exhorted his supporters. Organize don't waste time mourning organize and when I heard Gareth's response again to this question I was reminded of what President Obama has sometimes said when his audiences express their frustration at Trump's latest lie or outrage and Obama's response as you know is sometimes don't boo vote don't boo vote don't mourn organize organizing voting or running for office for the first time showing up for a demonstration raising one's voice on behalf of an immigrant or a refugee publicizing corruption and abuse whether local or macro actions like these are part of what is happening in the world as well as some of these other darker trends and I think we cannot underestimate the resilience and the will of people who we already know because they are our students our colleagues and our neighbors and of course the people who we will come to know as we have in Sudan Hong Kong and so many other places around the world so my favorite I'll close with my favorite sign from one of the women's marches in the United States and so there are a lot of women marching I marched with my young son in early 2017 in one of these marches and the signs were many of them were X rated signs you had to shield your your children from some of them but my absolute favorite sign was actually not held by a woman in the women's marches it was held by what appeared to be a middle aged man and the guy's sign said the following not usually a sign guy but jeesh not usually a sign guy but jeesh in other words like you know what are you gonna do and so I think my question and the question that Gareth has asked perpetually throughout his unbelievably varied and distinguished career what are we each usually not that these times and this contest require us to be I thank you thank you Samantha for a truly wonderful inaugural oration which I'll say just a little bit more in a moment but first let me thank you Brian for setting tonight's events in train and for your very kind words in introducing it and for those kind words I have to say a little bit over the top the great aura to bit I think we do need to reconsider it is the case that when the labour was tipped out by the coalition in 1996 and the incoming government refused to follow through on our intention to call the new foreign affairs and trade building the HV Evert building as a kind of consolation prize they did name the lecture theatre after me but only on the basis as Alexander Downer quick to brief journalists that Evans talks so bloody much well I don't propose to talk so bloody much tonight because it's been Samantha's night but there are just a few more things to say and let me first of all say in response to those kind words Brian I'm only too happy to reciprocate them you're a marvellous adornment to this university as our Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist you've been a superb leader during your time as Vice Chancellor and it's been both a privilege and an absolute pleasure to work with you one of the one of the roles that I've most enjoyed in my decade as Chancellor has been the opportunity that I've had encouraged by successive Vice-Chances but especially Brian to help give some new momentum and vitality to ANU's public policy profile as I've constantly said the last 10 years great universities, a company in which ANU unequivocally belongs are great not only at research and not only great at teaching and learning and a great student experience but they're great in the quality of their engagement with the wider community with ANU's particular value added in this respect being from the outset 70 plus years ago our contribution to the national public policy debate so I couldn't have been more thrilled and honoured than to have this new annual showcase event the major oration devoted specifically to a major current policy issue be it international or domestic named after me I'm deeply conscious that people usually only ever get significant things named after them when they've gone to their final resting place so it is a very great pleasure and privilege for me to be able to actually enjoy this event on this occasion it is the case that my infrastructure is rapidly in manifestly decaying on multiple fronts but I don't propose to turn up my toes for quite a while yet and I do hope I'll be around to enjoy quite a few more of these annual orations I doubt however that I could possibly enjoy any future oration more than that which we just heard my dear friend fellow idealist and at least semi-optimist of two decades standing Samantha Power without succumbing completely to that great American tradition on these occasions of an orgy of mutual admiration I I can say with absolute honesty and conviction that Samantha is someone whom I totally admire both professionally and as a person for as long as I've known her particularly through her successive roles as a freelance frontline journalist as a Harvard Kennedy school professor, Pulitzer Prize winning author for a fabulous 2003 book A Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide a member of course a President Obama's White House National Security Team during his first term and even higher profile as US Ambassador in the United Nations during Obama's second term and now of course I have further cause to admire as do we all as the author of one of the most engaging honest memoirs which I've ever read and you will ever read The Education of an Idealist which has been published in America a couple of months ago just very recently in Australia has already been in New York Times bestseller was named this week was one of the New York Times books of the year is available outside this hall at an entirely reasonable price and which Samantha will be extremely happy to sign for you after we've concluded this event in a few minutes time I enjoyed immensely tonight's aeration as I'm sure we all did not just because Samantha's Samantha but because she wrestled so comprehensively and impressively with a topic with a democracy as a future which has been increasingly agitating and great many of us certainly including me incorrigible optimist though I may be in her talk as you've just heard Samantha first of all gave us a very sober and comprehensive account of the disconcertingly fragile current state of play with respect to democracy worldwide secondly she gave us an even more sober account of the further challenge to democracy now being posed by an ever more authoritarian China under President Xi Jinping it's not just a matter of his behaviour internally challenging the universal human rights values which both of us certainly hold dear but of his being a China whose economic success at least until now seems to have made his governing style an attractive model for so many in the developing world but third of course Samantha finished with a rather more upbeat account of the particular things that can be done to restore democracy's attraction and in that respect I agree with her I agree with her about the need to better defend and articulate the rationale for democracy that it's the only form of government consonant with human dignity and the desire of every individual whatever the culture into which he or she may be born in the making to have a say to have some say in the making of the decisions which most affect their lives I agree with her about the need for countries who embrace these values to stand more closely together in pressing them and I agree with her about the immense powers I'm sure we all do see in the visuals when the collective patience with authoritarian and insensitive governments is exhausted their capacity to mobilize for change as we've recently seen in Sudan are beginning to see in Turkey and Hungary and Samantha said are seeing right now in abundance with the momentum now achieved by the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong but even more I think I agree with her that the most critical step we can take the most critical step we can take is to strengthen our driven democracies to demonstrate by force of example not just rhetoric that we're on the right track bottom up commitment and momentum is an absolutely crucial ingredient in sustaining and restoring effective democracy and Samantha made that clear with many examples but just to add a quick gloss of my own to what she implied rather than very explicitly said so too important is sensitive top down leadership redemption has to come both from below and from above if the leaders of the major parties the centre left and centre right are to recapture ground from extremist fringewellers both the right and the left and they have to recapture that ground if moderate responsive genuinely democratic government is to prevail then I think democratic leaders in all our countries have to change the way which they listen, the way in which they think the way in which they act as to new listening they simply have to recognise that the votes for those fringe dwellers are coming essentially by those who are consumed by economic anxiety security anxiety, personal security anxiety, cultural anxiety and often a mix of all three and who just don't believe those anxieties are being heard there has to be new thinking about the policy strategies necessary to respond credibly to those demands to be heard not least responses to the core anxiety core anxiety about being left behind economically, the need for a real sense of economic security as well as personal security there has to be a new way of acting in political behaviour and government decision making which doesn't feed into so much of it has done in recent years. Feed into the hostility so many ordinary people do feel about what they see as distant, arrogant, unfeeling or hypocritical government elites. Well this isn't the occasion for dealing any further, diving any further into these weeds, these various issues that Samantha has opened up for us so superbly this evening. What she's done of course however is to set us thinking making a major contribution to the debate that all of us must have about the future of democracy and how in particular to ensure the future of liberal democracy. One of the really defining as she said one of the really defining public policy issues of our time. In doing all of that, Samantha has really admirably fulfilled the objective of this new annual narration series. I'm deeply grateful to her, I'm deeply grateful to Brian and the university for making this possible and ask you to join with me one more time in expressing our appreciation.