Sean Kelly

**The ABR Podcast**

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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‘Rejecting the system it created’: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations

by Rebecca Strating

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Rebecca Strating’s commentary ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’. While the second Trump administration presents a challenge for Australian policy makers, it also provides an opportunity for Australia, explains Strating, ‘to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia’. But what are leaders across Asia concerned about and how are they responding to the Trump administration? Strating provides a survey, noting that ‘most Southeast Asian nations have so far opted for hedging strategies that maintain relationships with multiple partners’.

Rebecca Strating is Director of La Trobe Asia and was this year awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in recognition of her contributions to the fields of strategic defence and international relations. Her most recent book, Girt by Sea: Re-imagining Australia’s security, was published by Black Inc. in 2024. Here is Rebecca Strating with ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’, published in the June issue of ABR.

Recent episodes:

ScoMo and his flow brain

The ABR Podcast

Scott Morrison has now been in office longer than any of his four predecessors, and yet what do we really know of the man? In today’s episode, political historian and commentator Judith Brett rounds out our picture of the prime minister by patching together recent profiles of the elusive ‘ScoMo’ by Annika Smethurst, Lech Blaine, and Sean Kelly. Brett identifies a host of traits – from his habitual blame-shifting to an ability to compartmentalise the Christian morality governing his private life – that have helped shape his political fortunes. Behind the veneer of ‘ordinariness’ lurks a pragmatic opportunist whose avoidance of scrutiny is itself now being scrutinised. This essay is the cover feature of our upcoming November issue, available to read in full from October 29.

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ScoMo and his flow brain

by Judith Brett •

November 2021, no. 437

Scott Morrison has now been prime minister longer than any of his four predecessors: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, or Malcolm Turnbull. He has won one election by the skin of his teeth and faces another by May next year. So what sort of man is he and how good a prime minister? These three publications give us slightly different takes on these questions.

... (read more)