KEVIN RUDD

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been chosen as the nation’s next ambassador to the United States.

When U.S. President Joe Biden sits down with China's Xi Jinping on Monday, don't expect concessions from the U.S. side.

Friday’s assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in one of the world’s safest countries has stunned leaders and drawn condemnation.

As the White House tries to demonstrate that the war in Ukraine hasn’t distracted America from pressing priorities in Asia, the Biden administration is once again looking to “the Quad.” The informal grouping brings together the US, Japan, India and Australia in an alliance of democracies with shared economic and security interests that span the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The point is to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” but the unstated priority is countering China’s growing power, which rankles the leadership in Beijing. The Quad has its critics, who question the group’s sometimes-ambiguous goals and ask how effective it can be given that some members are wary of provoking China. Still, it’s set to become more relevant as US-China tensions persist and Russia’s invasion of its neighbor sharpens Western security alliances.

Anthony Albanese will lead Australia's first Labor government in almost a decade.

Conventional wisdom says lifting borrowing costs in an election season is unwise. That’s a pity, because there’s a strong case for it.

In at least one sense, Scott Morrison is the most successful Australian prime minister in years.

China is the only friend that might help Russia blunt the impact of economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, but President Xi Jinping’s government is giving no sign it might be willing to risk its own access to U.S. and European markets by doing too much.

The newly sealed Australia-U.K.-U.S. defense accord, known as Aukus (“AW-kus”), reflects rising global concern over China’s ascendancy. So does renewed activity within two other groupings of leading democracies, Five Eyes and the Quad. Aligning against the world’s largest exporter and possessor of the largest active military is no easy task, but the effort has been helped by China’s own actions toward some of its neighbors.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is making the most audacious geopolitical bet of the 21st century.

Japan’s relationship with China was no better than notoriously strained Sino-Australian relations, the Japanese ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday. Japan’s ties with China are often held up as an example to Australia of how productive relations can be maintained with Beijing despite national differences.

Shifting rules over who can get an AstraZeneca shot versus a Pfizer dose are giving worried Aussies whiplash.