Calculating the cost of Australian Defence Forces (ADF) operations in Afghanistan is not straight forward. Defence portfolio budget papers and Department of Defence Annual Reports provide data on actual, estimated and planned expenditures on defence activities, including current operations. Defence department practice for discrete activities such as Operation Slipper is to provide data for "Net...

Clinton Fernandes of the Australian Defence Force Academy outlines the history of successive forums for investigation of crimes committed in East Timor by Indonesian military forces and militia forces under Indonesian control between 1975 and 1999 and reviews the work of courts and inquiries under UN, East Timorese and Indonesian auspices.

Australian journalist and researcher Nic Maclellan writes that following public protests in the Kingdom of Tonga in recent years, the re-election of key pro-democracy figures in elections last month ensures that “reform of existing political structures will remain high on the agenda”.

In this paper David Martin Jones argues that the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's United Malay National Organization now faces the challenge of renegotiating the terms of its fraying social contract, widening the basis for minority participation and more forcefully addressing the problem of judicial corruption.

While the violence of the attempted coup in East Timor is shocking, it should not be a surprise. East Timor has been moving into multi-dimensional crisis for several years, resulting from three factors: rule by the gun; increasing and apparently intractable impoverishment and corruption; and deeply eroded legitimacy of all the major political players. Tanter...