In this episode, Latika interviews Australia’s shadow foreign minister Simon Birmingham at the recent GLOBSEC security conference in Prague.

Senator Birmingham recently travelled to Kyiv, becoming the first Australian foreign or shadow minister to visit Ukraine since 2014.

He discussed the need for Australia to upgrade its contributions to Ukraine and why the European theatre matters to the Indo-Pacific. In Ask Me Anything he questioned Latika on what Australian foreign policy can do to engage Europe in Asia better.

On China policy, Simon Birmingham continued the softened tone the Coalition has adopted since losing the election in 2022 but insisted that nothing had changed in their policy settings when it came to standing up to Beijing’s coercion and bullying behaviour.

However, he acknowledged that the opposition no longer would be calling for an inquiry into Covid, a call that triggered the CCP’s economic coercion of Australia.

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