The map that shows Australia’s nine most important allies
The long list of alliances that Australia has joined in recent years is dizzying. Our international editor James Curran untangles the alphabet soup of acronyms and ranks them by importance.
Paul Keating once remarked that before his creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation leaders’ summit in 1992, an Australian prime minister basically showed up to only two international summits: the Pacific Islands Forum and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
Since then, the list of global forums demanding a prime ministerial presence, along with the plethora of new arrangements and alliances that Canberra has joined, has becoming dizzying.
