Joseph Camilleri has been actively involved in the Pax Christi movement since 1969. He served as General Secretary of Pax Christi in England in 1970-72, facilitated the establishment of Pax Christi in the United States, and was the founding President of Pax Christi in Australia from 1974, a position he held for over 30 years. He continues to serve on the Executive Committee of the Victorian branch.
Senator Willessee, Australia’s special Minister of State, has just attended the eighteenth Annual Council meeting of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), established in 1955 and originally including eight member countries: the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, the US, UK, France, Australia and New Zealand. The military pact.
The recent summit meeting between the Soviet and American leaders has confirmed the trend towards close relations between the two countries. It would seem that this kind of political summitry is to become a regular feature of the international calendar.
For some weeks now, all the headlines of the world’s press have been concentrating, quite properly, on the Middle East war, the emerging oil crisis and the continuing saga of political corruption and deceit within the United States. We have had, therefore, little or no opportunity to be reminded of the forgotten but unrelenting war in Indochina.
The conduct of Australia’s foreign policy under the Rudd and Gillard governments was anything but inspiring. Under Tony Abbott, we have so far been treated to a succession of gaffes bordering on farce.
A series of 10-week and 6-week courses offered each year with the aim of developing better community understanding of the dynamics of a rapidly globalising world and Australia's place in it.
Each year the course attracted between 35 and 70 participants, most of them working in education, government, the professions, media, and religious and community organisations, as well as a number of students.
Despite Australia's obvious national interests in the Middle East, our leaders have been strangely silent about the alarming security threats in that region, write Joseph A Camilleri and NAJ Taylor.
The article was published online on the ABC's The Drum
