Too many years have passed since Australia last enjoyed any kind of general reputation as a good international citizen, seen by the world as willing to step up energetically and creatively to help solve global and regional problems even where we had little or no immediate prospect of direct security or economic reward.

We are serial laggards on climate change and now rank among the rich world’s least generous aid donors. We are not remotely as compassionate as we once were towards refugees and asylum seekers. We are no longer serious contributors to UN peacekeeping, have for many years made no significant contribution anywhere to peacemaking and have largely gone missing in our response to atrocity crimes, not least those committed by the Myanmar military. And our once world-leading support for nuclear disarmament, and arms control more generally, has evaporated.