Correspondent's Notebook
Archive for March, 2009
Spying on the boss
27 March 2009
Elements in Australia’s defence establishment have been hit by allegations of spying on their political boss, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
The highest-ranked civilian public servant in Australia’s defence department, Secretary Nick Warner, has ordered an investigation into the spy claims.
The suspects are accused of hacking into the minister’s computer in search of information about his long friendship with Helen Liu, a wealthy, Sydney-based business woman, who is also Chinese.
Radio Australia’s Canberra Correspondent, Linda Mottram, looks at the spy scandal and its political reverberations in Australia’s capital.
Covering the National People’s Congress
20 March 2009
Just over a week ago, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told the National People’s Congress that he was optimistic that the Government’s target of 8 per cent economic growth was still possible.
This week, the World Bank announced a new forecast for China, of just 6.5 per cent.
But as Australia Network’s Beijing correspondent, Tom Iggulden, reports, while China’s leaders grapple with a slowing world economy, it seems there’s one area where they are thriving.
Beating the ‘great recession’
13 March 2009
What started in the United States and spread to Europe and now to Asia has finally been given a name: “The Great Recession”.
By no less than the head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn who not so long ago was sure the global economy would grow by at least a little bit this year.
Now he’s sure it will shrink to below zero – the worst performance in most of our lifetimes.
This week, Radio Australia’s business correspondent, Karon Snowdon, looks at the challenge for Asia in beating the Great Recession through leadership and cooperation.
A nervous Fiji
6 March 2009
The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group set a September deadline for Fiji to declare a return to democratic rule.
Interim prime minister Frank Bainimarama promptly replied, there would be no election.
Pacific Beat presenter Geraldine Coutts has just returned from Fiji and reflects on the future for those who have the most at stake.