Hello, hello everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel Laura's Little Library and welcome to today's video Which are talking about my five star predictions from earlier this year. Were they actually five stars? Let's find out. So right at the beginning of 2022 I made a list of 10 books that I thought were going to be five star reads for me And I was looking back on this list Earlier in the in November and I realized that I read all the books on that list except for one So I went ahead and I read it. So I read all 10 books on this list Which for someone who forgot about my five star predictions for basically the entire year I was pretty happy about that. I was pretty stoked. I thought I was gonna have to do a reading vlog of reading like four or five of them No Anyway, so now that I have read all of them I'm gonna go through and say whether or not they were actually five stars and see how good my predictions were Which will be very interesting for the predictions that I will make For next year. So I will be doing this again because I very much enjoyed it Make sure you hit the subscribe button and hit the bell to be notified when I post that video For my five star predictions for 2023 One of the first books that I had picked out as a possible five star read for this year was a sequel To a book that I had read previously. I owned the first book. I loved it The first book itself wasn't a five star But I thought the second book very well could be and that was love boat reunion by abigail hingwin The first book is love boat type hay And you are following side characters from the first book in this one and their romance and kind of Planning a reunion. So getting everybody from the first book back together This book was amazing. It features an asian woman in stem in college and Her romance now the real question though was was this a five star read for me? Yes, yes, it was. I enjoyed every single moment of it. I enjoyed every aspect of it I don't think this could have been done any better. Like the nostalgia from the first one But then brought up even higher The glitz and glam of them going back to type hay and having this reunion But also the hardships that they faced and how they support each other through it and just It was a five star. I'm so happy Now the next one I'm gonna talk about was happily ever afters by leis bryant This follows our main character who loves writing romance novels But then when she gets into this really good art school She has this major mental block and has a writer's block and cannot write anymore So she decides to create her own romance In order to inspire herself So was this a five star read for me? No, but it was close. It was a four star read It got a little boring and a little slow at some parts and I enjoyed the premise of it, but then it just got to be repetitive of just nothing happening for not writing pushing friends away It yeah, it didn't quite live up to the expectation, but it was still very good The third prediction I had made was tokyo ever after by emiko gene And this follows our main character who is japanese-american and she finds out that her father is actually the prince of japan and so she decides to go to japan and to meet him and kind of be Learn what it would be like if she was a japanese princess and it's very like uh princess diaries esk but with uh japan and Was this a five star read? Yes. I absolutely freaking loved this book. I started reading it And already I was feeling such strong attachment to the book and the characters that I started a vlog Just for that book for that day that I read that book because every couple of chapters I would have to stop and like express my feelings of enjoyment or giddiness for this book And so that's why I did the vlog so I don't have that linked But I adored this book five star the second book tokyo dreaming is out And I haven't read it yet because I had heard some people don't love it as much as the first one But I really want to so I'm trying to like let some time pass lower my expectations But I'm so excited for tokyo dreaming The next book that I predicted was a five stars was going to be dial a for aunties And this is by jesse q sutanto. So this follows our main character Who is a photographer in this wedding business that her and her four aunts have each aunt specializes in a different area of getting ready for a wedding And she accidentally goes on a very bad date and the guy ends up dead And so she enlists the help of her aunties to help get rid of the body while they're also trying to put on a wedding And was this a five star read Yes, yes, it was I I loved this book the the balance between like whimsy comedy and like Not it's not dark. It's not dark by any means But like the fact that there's a dead body and they were trying to get rid of it like it was just the perfect amount of whimsy and comedy but also like Cultural aspects and like putting on the wedding. It was such a fun enjoyable read I loved our main character. I loved her romance And obviously, I mean not romance with the dead guy, obviously, but she does it does get better for her I'm happy to say and just the relationship that she has with her aunts and that they have with each other Is just so fun and entertaining to read and then since then I have read the Second book the sequel that came out after it and it's been a good time Moving on the next prediction was book lovers by Emily Henry. I was so excited for this book to come out Our main character is Nora who is a literary agent and she has this like Workplace enemies to lovers, but they're on vacation with an editor And they end up going to this same small town unknowingly and it's an enemies to lovers And so the question was this five stars No, I think this was the most shocking one that was not a five stars I Here's the thing It was pitched as enemies to lovers, but I don't think it was I think they had One little like not even a disagreement, but just like she was bummed and he didn't have the best first impression of her And then they were like, okay, so we're co-workers. We're gonna work on this thing and then it bloomed into a romance This was still a 4.5 out of 5 star like it was so Close to a five star I'm so surprised that it wasn't a five star for me But there were just some other elements of the book that I was like I wish this could have been done better or this shouldn't have been as prominent as it was and But I'm still super excited for her next book to come out next year next up was the henna artist and This follows our main character in the 1950s in india And she is a spinster And she wants to really buy her own house. And so she's been working hard as a henna artist for the upper class women Kind of learning all their secrets listening to their gossip. So I thought this was going to be a five stars book Was it a five star book? No, this was like a three star book for me. It was Really slow and completely character driven, which is kind of not my vibe There really just wasn't a plot and I didn't care about the gossip because I didn't really know any of the characters or what was going on So There is another book, but I don't think I'm actually gonna read it So I can see how other people love it, but it just was not down my alley Like I still think it's a well written book It was just not down my alley, but also Look up the trigger warnings Then we had the last graduate by Naomi Novik and this is the second book in the skullamance trilogy I read the first book and I loved it. It was actually my favorite book of 2021 And so I was like, well, obviously if it's my favorite book then the second book is definitely gonna be five stars, right? so it follows our main character and it's a Dark academia kind of magic like it's harry potter, but really dark It's amazing. So they they go to the school. There are no adults. No teachers The school is teaching these kids and it's all very like school is also kind of trying to kill them at the same time The second book was that a five star read? No Very close though again. It was a four point. It was like a four star 4.5 I I loved the continuation of our characters, but there were just some misses like kind of Again, I think the books like slowed down the pacing was off. I wasn't as invested in the problem That was kind of the main plot of this book. I was like, why is this really a problem? I don't quite see how it affects things Um, but you did dive a lot more into like the school's history and how How it why it works the way it does which was really cool. I still highly recommend the first one I mean, I still rated the second book very highly and i'm super excited to read the third one It just the second one wasn't quite a five star read Then the next one is the merciless ones by namina porna. I just talked about this in my november wrap up This was the last book I had to read for my five star predictions This is the second book after the gilded ones And it follows our main character who lives in this society where they test women's blood And if it runs red then the normal humans is totally fine But if it runs gold then they are demons and they must repent for their sins And they get taken away to fight for the king and his army against these creatures who are terrorizing The land I very much enjoyed the first one and I very much enjoyed this one But the big question was it a five star read? No, so again, if you watched my november wrap up, I do go into detail about this book There were just a lot of terms That was very difficult to keep track of and then it made kind of understanding the book a little bit difficult and I wasn't quite as attached to the characters in this one like I was the first one And like the ending was really good, but it took a while to kind of get reinvested into it. So Still four out of five star reads still very highly rated just Not a five star moving on the next five star prediction that I had was carl ball by Stephanie garber This is a well-loved trilogy a lot of people here on booktube Love it and on bookstagram. They really like it. So I thought, you know, it's about time for me to read this So it follows our main character and her sister and they don't like their family life They do not get along well with their father. He wants to marry them off for money And there's this big carnival event that happens and you can only go if you're invited These two girls get invited to go to this big event And so they run away and they find that not it is not as they seem as the main character sister gets Taken and she is the object of the game Literally they have to find her sister and that is how you win the game So first book in a trilogy I actually ended up binging the entire trilogy and I'm now working on Stephanie garber's other series Which is connected to this main trilogy. I'm caught up on that series Which normally takes me forever to work away through a series. So There's the question. Was it a five star read? Yes I love this. I love this so much the like dark Whimsical vibes were perfect the twists and turns the who are the characters really which boy does she fall for Everything was just on point. How do we get there? It was like I said dark whimsical Carnival game like if that sounds like something you're interested in Please pick it up if you haven't already. It's definitely worth all of the hype Now we are on to the final book on the list. So my final five star prediction for 2022 Was the late of secrets by trisha levin cellar This follows our main character who is a blacksmith with high general anxiety And she runs her blacksmith shop with her sister One day a warlord comes by and requests a very powerful weapon and our blacksmith Mates the weapon even more powerful than she meant to And she realizes that she cannot give it to the warlord So she runs away with it with her sister and a couple other people And they have to figure out how to defeat the warlord with this super powerful weapon So the question is was it a five star read? Yes, yes, it was I loved this. So I read blade secrets. I read master of iron that came out And then I read all of trisha's levin cellar's backlist because I loved these two books So much the anxiety rep in our character was amazing. So anxiety is different for everyone I also have anxiety But I was able to identify with a lot of feelings with our main character Her anxiety is very similar to how mine works. So I just felt so seen in this book and so represented and to have A character with anxiety like I do Be the main character in an epic fantasy book It blew my mind. It made me so happy I loved the sisterly dynamics. The romance was amazing The you learn so much about the world and then the second book was also amazing. So again Even if you're not like super into fantasy I would still recommend this because even for those who aren't super into fantasy I feel like this is a really good book To read it just blew me away. I was so happy with it the world building the characters the magic I got emotional reading this book. Like it just it hit me so hard All the right places Those are the 10 books that I read As five star predictions for this year Half of them were actually five stars. So half were and half weren't But none of them were terrible. Like my lowest rated one was a three star But most of the ones that weren't five stars were four stars So I was very close to predicting the books that I would love So that was really cool and it kind of gives me a little bit of confidence for like My upcoming list of 10 books that I'm predicting are five stars. So yeah, I'm excited And if you're excited for that video again, hit the subscribe button Hit the bell to be notified for when that video goes up I'm also posting three times a week going into January because I have so much content that I was just very inspired to do So yeah comment down below some of your favorite five stars from this year Also, I have bookish social media link down below that you can find me there Give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and are looking forward to more videos like this But until I see you all in the next video. I wish you happy reading


Happy birthday idea, happy 25th anniversary. When I compare the present with my time in idea in 2005, I can see a lot of things which have changed massively in the world, but the world for idea has not changed as much as one might expect. Its basic philosophy and its basic approach, I think has withstood the test of time rather well. The approach by which it specialises in producing the technical know-how on how to build solid consensus-based institutions, including electoral systems, how to manage politics, how to build successful political parties, how to ensure a proper consideration of gender in politics, so many different issues. But the world has changed incredibly around idea. I think of five issues which are startling in their implications for preserving democracy, starting with the whole issue of climate change which we scarcely spoke of and which is now impending disaster for many countries, cities around us. Secondly, financial austerity and inequality which has long-standing difficult challenges for governments across the world. Thirdly, the implications of conflict, particularly for you the Europeans, but also for West Africa, of the conflicts that have spread from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya. These causing migration, causing new fear of terrorism, obviously new challenges for governments on top of that COVID. And adding to all the complexities of policymaking is the complexity of social media. How in such a divided society, segmented, a polarised society, can one build the consensus necessary to tackle these long-term challenges? I think idea is beginning to tackle some of these issues and I'm very happy to see it developing partnerships with many different organisations. But it could go further. I'm sure it could go further in seeing how to develop consensus-based policies in a period of such challenge and with such a polarised society. And to do that, governments need to work very much with civil society and political parties. Could idea look into this? Could it seek good practice in how societies as a whole manage to tackle some of these challenges? I wish idea good luck.


Hello my beautiful internet friends today. We are tackling something that I have been it's been on my list to do for like months I have never had the like guts to do it or the words to so we're gonna give this a shot today in my new background new set Can we call it that I mean like my couch that I always talked to you guys on is right there So it's not really that different so not that long ago I released a video called the worst family in America talking about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis epidemic Purdue pharma and like the real sleazy things that those companies have done to impact the rise of addiction and overdose deaths in America and I got a variety of comments on that most were amazing So thank you and then some were not great and I usually don't pay any attention to like dumb comments They happen it's part of the game no big deal But there was one that gave me pause and made me realize that maybe now would be a great time to film this if you Don't know I have been on pain management medication from the time that I was 18 in that horseback riding accident That I have when I was 13 that led to like all the ankle problems. I also really messed my neck up I also have a brain condition called a Kiari malformation I also have chronic migraines which means I get them more than 15 days a month Which means I get them a lot and they suck all those things work together I am in pain most of the time by the time I hit 18 and no one had any solutions left I tried everything and so I started seeing a pain management doctor at the time I was 20 the old medications wouldn't work and we switched the heavy hitters We switched to opiates and let's pause for a second. Keep in your mind that I was 20 When that happened moving on for the past seven years almost eight years my birthday is coming up I have been on prescription painkillers heavy-duty prescription painkillers pretty much ever since I came off of them for about a month and a Half mostly to make sure that I could we were also trying some other medications So we kind of want to look isolate at the time and see if they would work But I wanted to get off of it to see if I could live without it because I do not like being on them I do not like taking medication, but also the amount of pain that I'm in doesn't work for a living life Doesn't work for being alive doesn't work for going to work doesn't work for having Conversations or doing much of anything aside from laying in bed and crying and so that I can exist so I can sit here and talk to You so I can Be a person and want to stay alive and take the pain down because it's never actually gone I have opioids at my disposal whenever I need them. I take them when I need them I don't take them when I don't and that has always been the case But when I did that video talking about the opioid crisis and all of that I talked about how addictive they are and they Absolutely are I think if you've ever turned on the news you've probably heard about that things like Vicodin like oxycutin like oxycodon All of that they are not great for you. They are very addictive substances They come with some serious dangers a lot of people have died from them They are a tool to be used appropriately Sparingly with caution and I am well aware of that But this was one of the comments that I got and I've gotten similar comments before calling me an addict and that's fine Well, let's talk about this for a few minutes. What this person said I'll paraphrase if you don't want to read all of that What this person said is that by making that video. I was blaming someone else for my addiction Am I talking about the fact that this family and this company had lied about how addictive these substances are Along with lots of other sleazy things. I was blaming someone else for my addiction that my leg was cut off So I could keep filling prescriptions and that you can't fool an ex addict Which I guess they are and that one day there's going to be you know a wake-up call for me And there are a lot of ways that I could respond to that comment But before we get into that I wanted to talk about why I'm not addictive why I'm not an addict And here's the shocking groundbreaking answer I don't know some of the biggest risk factors for addiction I have and I had specifically at 20 when I was with a pain management doctor Who trusted me and would basically give me whatever I asked for and never asked for much just what I needed But that's another reason why they probably would have given me whatever I asked for a really big risk factor is trauma A really really big risk factor is sexual trauma Another big risk factor is like life upheaval and all of those had just happened I had just gotten out of a really abusive relationship. My community had completely fallen apart I had lost a lot of friendships. I had been raped Like life was a mess and I was a mess and it wasn't like I was overflowing with willpower at that point in my life In that book that I've mentioned before chasing the screen.  That's me in so many ways except that I somehow escaped it I don't know and let me just make something clear. I am not sitting here in any way Self-righteously being like and I didn't become an addict like yay good for me I honestly don't know how I didn't Perhaps it was because I still had some connection To a couple people who were still really there for me Maybe it was I have no idea fill in the blank, but by all statistics and definitions I probably should be and maybe part of it is just little choices Like I have often been tempted to like take a little bit more So you feel a little less dead inside or more dead inside depending on the day And I've always said no to those for a variety of different reasons But I see just about no difference between me and someone who has gone down that path So I am not sitting here being like good job Joe because I think that can happen to anyone Literally anyone and I still think it could happen to anyone like there are safeguards I have in place in my life Because I realize that I'm on very dangerous medications and that no one is above addiction and no one plans for it to happen And so there are people who I consistently check in with I have a doctor Who is a really good doctor and won't give me whatever I ask for which I'm very grateful for because yeah It can literally happen to anyone. It's not like us and them addiction sucks and ruins lives and steals years and sometimes Literally lives and that breaks my heart But coming back to a friend in this comment here has someone who has lived in chronic pain for a long time I'm very familiar with this stigma like most people assume that you're an addict when you tell them That you're taking oxy or taking Vicodin or whatever it is And then they treat you differently and then they ask you questions They don't have a right to because they haven't earned that right in your life because they're strangers And then they tell you what to do and then they preach to you like you've never done any research in your entire life Like you aren't aware that yes, of course, there's dangerous medications And yes, of course, you are looking for other solutions and you are doing other things And you don't want to be on them and like and it's just a weird dynamic and it's hard It's especially hard in like the medical community when people start treating you differently That has happened to me with many doctors and nurses when I go through my medical history And then we get to that like what I take and people get weird like the other day I was talking to a nurse I was like, hey, by the way, this one was written wrong because I've been on one dosage for three years It's never changed and they wrote it for like half as much I was like, hey, by the way, just so you know like this was done wrong So if you could rewrite that that'd be great Instantly her tone changed instantly she got super weird with me and suspicious and a little bit insulting And was like, no, like this is what it was like we're not going to rewrite that just because you're asking us to And I was like, don't take my word for it. Check my charts. Call my doctors Like I do not care that you do not trust me And it's very obvious that you do not trust me because I am asking for medication That I have had for a long time. Obviously if I'm asking for medication I must be abusing it or I must be doing something wrong What I'm saying is that people treat you different and that sucks But more than that, let's talk about how we treat people who actually are addicted who do struggle with addiction I think it speaks a lot more to that because we treat them like second-class citizens because I felt that even though I'm not addicted I have felt a tiny bit of what it is to be treated like that and it's gross like it feels gross And I've seen how people talk about addicts and I've seen how they're treated and I've seen how our justice system Deals with people who struggle with addiction and it's disgusting and the shame and the judgment that we just pour on them Is stupid and the war on drugs is a war on people who need help And I don't know about you, but I'm really not cool going to war with people who are struggling I'm on board with like trying to help them. There's no easy answer. I'm fully aware of that But rushing to judgment whether it's about me Whether you have assumptions about me and what I'm taking and why I'm taking it Or whether it's about someone else who has been addicted or struggling with that or whatever It's just not helpful in my opinion I've mentioned his book before but in his book chasing the screen Johan Hari talks about how the opposite of addiction is not being sober The opposite of addiction is connection and he has a lot of research to back that up That addiction becomes a lot easier to break When you have that human connection side note I know I am by no means saying like that is the magic solution. It's not like addiction is complicated I completely understand that but we take connection away from people who are addicts shame them We treat them like it's us against them not realizing that none of us are above it If things had gone like that much differently I would be in a very different position than I am right now And I'm not sure why they didn't and I'm grateful for that by the way one of my favorite artists He's amazing. There's a line in a Matt Carney song that goes We're all just one phone call from our knees and I that I was always stuck in my head I think it's so true Like we're literally one phone call away from everything changing in our lives And I think that same principle can be applied with this You and I are one decision from going down a path that sucks us in like addiction So instead of pretending like we're above it and judging people and shaming them and treating them like their failures and second-class citizens Let's show a little compassion. Let's give a little human connection Let's try to understand and listen as we provide effective help. I am not an expert in treating addiction I don't know the ins and outs But I do know that shame and judgment never help because I do have experience in being on the receiving end of that Quite a lot for this and many other things also to that person who said I chopped my leg off for more prescriptions Incorrect. I actually cut my leg off so it hurt less and thus far it has been effective It's been a long road, but it hurts less than my ankle did which is pretty freaking fantastic Thank you guys so much for spending a few more minutes out of your day with me here today I appreciate it more than you know. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video Bye guys


Hi there, I'm Sandy Allknock, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I'm going to talk about dot card watercoloring. Daniel Smith puts out great dot cards and I thought I'd show you just how much paint you can get off of one of these dot cards and I'm using the Darcy's stamp sets. These two have these great little unicorns and then a llama and a fox. I'm going to be painting the llama and the fox in the video but on my blog you'll see some more cards using those stamp sets. I'm using the Sandy Allknock dot card. You can see these are actual dimensional dots of paint so they're dollops. They're put on manually so they're all different kind of sizes. They squish them as equally as they can but since they're done manually they bloop all in there the way paint will bloop and you can just take a wet brush, touch it to the surface and get paint off of it and I'm barely touching it. I'm getting just a little tiny tip of my brush on there and picking up paint color. I'm using the Quinacridone Burnt Orange here and painting my whole fox in. Now you can get a ton painted with one of these dot cards. If you paint cards you're doing just small things these dot cards can give you a good sampling of what some colors look like. There's not only this dot card with my 18 colors on it and this one has my name on it but there's other dot cards that are available too. I will list those as well in the description and over on my blog if you're interested in seeing some more because they have some that have the full set of colors and you can try them out before purchasing a tube because two paints seem like they're expensive. However, just so you know two paints actually work out less expensive in the long run than the like paints that are already in pans because you just get more color out of them. Anyway, I wanted to alter this burnt this Quinacridone Burnt Orange and I'm doing that by adding some sepia to it. Since there's only a little bit of paint here and I don't want to put it on a palette and then transfer it onto my stamp I'm mixing straight on the paper and you can either do what I'm doing which is mixing wet in wet so the color on the bottom is already wet and I'm letting the new color blend into it or wait until it's completely dry and do another layer of color over top of it and then you can alter that color underneath. So there's different ways to do it. If you've taken some of my watercolor classes over at art-classes.com links in the doobly-doo if you're interested then you'll know that there are different amounts of pigment to water ratios and if you use too much water in one it might bleed into the other making blooms and there's lots of discussion of that in some of my watercolor classes particularly in the watercolor backgrounds for card makers because I know there's lots of people that struggle with those blooms and how to keep them from taking over your watercolor. So here when you're using a dot card it's a lot a matter of managing the water and the pigment since you don't really have a well that you're in control of you're not mixing it on a palette somewhere just taking it straight from that dot you need to manage that. So here I'm putting down a good bit of the black color that lunar black spreading it out with my brush with just clean water on it adding a little bit more if I want it darker and then dabbing off if I get too much and I always have a Kleenex or a paper towel or something handy so that I don't end up with a whole lot of big old blobs of dark color that I can't manage and that it dries while I'm trying to get everything to move around. So even though this is sped up you can kind of get an idea of how I'm applying the color from the dot card onto the painting and then moving it with the brush and the water and throughout this I'm trying to use all of my colors so you can see what they all are but it's a real little expense to buy one of these dot cards and then decide later that you want to purchase one of these colors in a full tube or something. So it's a great way to try them out and not have to buy a whole tube of something that you may not really like that shade very much. Although it's a little bit hard here in some of these tiny areas to tell whether or not the color is really the kind of color you want that phthalo blue both of the phthalo blues the red shade and the green shade are some of my very favorites. You can't see a whole lot of that from just that little bow but there you go right doing what I can to share the colors with you. As I was thinking about what color to use for the little face on this guy I'm pulling out a little of my quinacridone gold because I wanted to look a little flesh tone facey but I'm mixing in a little bit of quinacridone burnt orange so I'm getting a little bit of a different color by doing that just tapping in a little bit of a darker color into a color that's already there while it's wet. Jump over here and do some more of my flowers spread some more of that color around and you can probably tell there's not a whole lot of color disappearing from that dot card I'm gonna get a lot of paintings done from that dot card. This is one of the things that I do take with me when I go places if I'm gonna do any flying I'll take one of the dot cards on a plane and I'll take my Bible journaling and do some painting that sort of thing so it's a real convenient little thing that you can take with you just let it dry before you put something else on top of it or your dot card will get stuck to something because it'll be wet paint for a little bit until it dries. You can also reduce these so if you have the paint tubes for them and you want you find that you love one of the dot cards that you've purchased you can always put another dot on there and add more paint to it so there are times when I have to replenish my yellows because I use my yellows a lot. Now here I'm using the pearlescent shimmer over top of these little critters because I can actually put some shine on to anything I want using that pearlescent shimmer and it makes it twinkle you can't really see much here but it does make anything twinkle you can mix it in on a palette or you can just paint it over top of things like I did after it's dry. I wanted to add a little bit of ground underneath of them little atmosphere around them mostly because I have that big white llama and a big white llama doesn't look as white when it's just against more white so I'm gonna put some color around it and it's going to transform it to make it look a little bit brighter and a little bit a little bit like it's different than the background so I'll put a little bit around the outside on both ends and I'm just going lighter than I want to first because I can always add more and I want it to be real soft but I can add another little bit of color if I want it to be a little stronger and it's always safer to go with lighter than to go with darker right away. So here is my finished card I kept it really simple and just layered it onto a card base and left it super simple and easy. You can see more cards made with these two stamps that's over on my blog. I colored these both with watercolor and I also did these and the unicorns in Copic so you can get to see both of them. Alright thank you so much for joining me for this video you can click on my face to subscribe there's a watercolor class there some more videos you might want to see and I'll see you guys next time. Take care. Bye bye.


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Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome. I'm Michael Fully Love, the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this special event with the British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. With us here at 31 Blyth Street today, we have a small but high-powered audience, including the Foreign Secretary, Australia's Foreign Minister, Senator Maurice Payne, the Permanent Undersecretary of the FCDO, Sir Philip Barton, the Secretary of DFAT, Catherine Campbell, and High Commissioners George Brandus and Vicki Tradell. Welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, it's hard to think of two countries with more in common than Australia and the UK. We share a language, a history, and a sense of humour. We're both old democracies and free societies. Our diplomats work closely together in the great councils of the world. Our servicemen and women have fought alongside one another from the Boer War to the Iraq War. In the secret world, we share intelligence through the Five Eyes. We trade and we do business with each other. The Australian diaspora in Britain is large, as is the British diaspora in Australia. And Australians feel remarkably warm towards the United Kingdom. When the Lowy Institute asked Australians last year, which countries they trusted to act responsibly in the world, nearly nine in ten said they trust the UK. It's always an honour, therefore, to welcome the British Foreign Secretary to the Institute, especially in a week when momentous events are taking place in both the Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Today's event will be absorbing but brief, a bit like an ashes test, if you'll excuse me, Foreign Secretary. Shortly, I will invite the Foreign Secretary to give her speech, and after that, I'll put some questions to her, including audience questions. If you'd like to submit a question, there's still time, please send it to eventsatloyinstitute.org. I'll come back in a few moments to introduce the Foreign Secretary, but first, let me welcome Senator Maurice Payne. We're very pleased to have Australia's Foreign Minister back with us today at Bly Street. I know that our British friends won't hold this against us, but Maurice and I met 30 years ago through the Republican movement. Maurice has represented New South Wales in the Senate since 1997 and served on the front bench since 2013. In 2015, she was appointed Australia's Defence Minister, and in 2018, she was appointed Foreign Minister. She also serves as the Minister for Women. I'm very grateful that after hosting the Foreign Secretary for the last couple of days and participating in the Yorkman talks this morning at Admiralty House, Maurice has agreed to give some welcoming remarks to this event. Minister, the lectern is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Markle, and it is indeed a great pleasure to be back here at Lowy. Thank you so much for the opportunity and the invitation that may also begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land in which the Lowy Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. Welcome to our small contingent in the room here today, including our DFAT and British officials who have done such a great job of bringing together this visit and this Auckland. Thank you all very much for what you have done. It is my pleasure to introduce today's address by the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Minister for Women and Equalities, and my good friend, the right Honourable Liz Truss. I've come to know Liz over the past few years as Trade Secretary, as Foreign Secretary now, and we both share a great passion for gender equality. So I was delighted when Liz became Foreign Secretary in September. We met in New York then. We met again in Liverpool at the G7 Plus at the end of 2021, and I'm very pleased that she and Secretary Wallace have been able to join me for the first two-plus-two ministerial in Australia since the COVID pandemic began. Our interactions yesterday and today during our Auckland consultations have been very warm, very productive and very cooperative alongside Minister Dutton and Secretary for Defence, Ben Wallace. In defining the relationship between our two nations, it is tempting to reach for stories from our history, stories of mateship, stories of sacrifice together, and that's fair enough. Our history is a crucial foundation. It gives us confidence in our partnership. It tells us something about ourselves and it brings our people together. But it would be a mistake to think that what binds us primarily today is a misty-eyed view of our past. Yes, our history has contributed to our shared values, those such as democracy, freedom, openness, respect for human dignity and for the rule of law. But as distinct sovereign nations, we each cherish these principles in our own way, in our own modern contexts. The ways in which our people instinctively embrace these principles today means they're as relevant for contemporary challenges opposed by circumstances, by critical technologies, by cyberspace and by coercion as they were during the Cold War or the ongoing threat of terrorism or indeed the world wars of the 20th century. A close UK-Australia relationship is vital in today's complex and fractious strategic environment. In which authoritarian regimes are behaving as though now is their time to increase oppression internally and coerce others internationally. We are faced with coercion, with disinformation, with cyber attacks, with a disregard for the rules and norms that have given us decades of peace and stability regularly. The Australia-UK relationship is primed for our present reality and focused on being in control of our respective futures, not dominated by the will of authoritarian powers. And that's why the strategic contest is so important. As liberal democracies, it is only natural that we stand in solidarity with each other in this contested global period. That means standing up for each other and for like-minded partners, defending our values and our principles, respect for sovereignty, open markets and adherence to international law. That applies whether it is China's actions against Lithuania or in the South China Sea, Russia's aggression on the Ukraine border, or the DPRK's testing of missiles in breach of UN conventions and sanctions. That's also why it is important that these Orchman consultations have taken place in person this week. Our two great nations are able to address multiple simultaneous challenges around the globe. It's why we are working ever more closely together and with all our partners, including across ASEAN, the Pacific, the Commonwealth and the European Union, to shape the kind of Indo-Pacific and world we want. That's why our discussions have focused on practical cooperation through measures that include a new Australia-UK cyber and critical technology partnership, a new infrastructure investment partnership in the Indo-Pacific. We'll also build resilience to disinformation that is designed to undermine liberal values and erode social cohesion. And we will work together to support the Indo-Pacific's health and economic recovery, including ensuring more secure, reliable and sustainable supply chains. The UK-Australia FTA signed last month is an historic moment in our relationship. It is a gold standard trade agreement. Our enhanced trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States, Orcus, will enable us to significantly deepen cooperation on a range of emerging security and defence capabilities, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cyber. These new areas of cooperation go to the heart of challenges affecting the peace, stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific. Before I finish, I'd like to remind everyone that in 2017, another UK foreign secretary spoke here at Lowy. But I don't know how to describe it. Colourful speech. Then Secretary Johnson said, after we leave the EU, I am confident that Australia will be at, or near, the front of the queue for a new free trade agreement with Britain, an agreement that could boost even further what we do together. Such remarkable prescience. Liz as former trade secretary deserves great credit for delivering that agreement, which came to fruition just last month. So Liz as that trade secretary and now foreign secretary, perhaps I can challenge you today to project the trajectory of our nation's relationship over the next five years. Thankfully, a large part of our future is indeed a safe bet. We will be strong allies. We will be steadfast friends. We will be working together to shape the kind of world that we want. And we will remain deeply competitive and parochial over the ashes and the netball. It is now my great pleasure to introduce UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Maurice, and thank you, Michael, as well, for welcoming me to the Lowy Institute. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people, and by paying my respects to elders past and present. It's great to be back in Sydney at the Lowy Institute with my friend, Maurice Payne. As the UK sets out on its future as global Britain, we now have full use of our trade, our defense, our diplomacy, and our development policies to be able, and I see Australia as a real inspiration in that, you know, with the work you do to promote free trade, freedom of speech, human rights, and the rights of women and girls as a leading nation. And our close bonds now are more important than they've ever been, and we are doing more and more together. And this is vital because of the growing threats that we face. The Kremlin haven't learnt the lessons of history. They dream of recreating the Soviet Union, or a kind of greater Russia, carving up territory based on ethnicity and language. They claim they want stability while they work to threaten and destabilise others. We know what lies down that path and the terrible toll in lives lost in human suffering it brings. That's why we urge President Putin to desist and step back from Ukraine before he makes a massive strategic mistake. Ukraine is a proud country with a long history. They have known invading forces before, from the Mongols to the Tatars. They suffered through the state-sponsored famine. Their resilience runs deep. If they have to, Ukrainians will fight to defend their country. Invasion will only lead to a quagmire, as we know from the Soviet-Afghan War or the conflict in Chechnya. Last week at the NATO-Russia Council, we sent a clear message to Moscow that any encouragement into Ukraine would bring massive consequences, including through coordinated sanctions hitting the financial sector and individuals. This week, the United Kingdom announced a new package of training support and defensive weapons for Ukraine to boost their capabilities. And we're working with our partners on high-impact measures, targeting the Russian financial sector and individuals. We're also strengthening our bilateral partnership, following high-level talks in London in December, and we're fostering new trilateral ties with Poland and Ukraine. We're also pushing for alternatives in energy supply so that nations are less reliant on Russia for their gas. We need everyone to step up. Together with our allies, we will continue to stand with Ukraine and urge Russia to de-escalate. What happens in Eastern Europe matters for the world. Threats to freedom, democracy, and the rule of law aren't just regional, they're global, and that's why we have to respond together. Iran's nuclear program has never been more advanced. China has been conducting military flights near Taiwan, and it's using its economic muscle to attempt to coerce democracies like Australia and Lithuania. Russia and China are working together more and more as they strive to set the standards in technologies like artificial intelligence to assert their dominance over the West and Pacific through joint military exercises and in space through closer ties. The International Institute for Strategic Studies argues that we're now seeing the strongest, closest, and best relationship the two countries have had for 70 years. And we're seeing the alignment of authoritarian regimes around the world. It's no surprise that regimes like Belarus, North Korea, and Myanmar find their closest allies in Moscow and Beijing. They don't look to these nations as partners, but as puppets. Moscow wants them to promote their propaganda and destabilize free democracies on their doorstep. At the same time, Beijing has forged a so-called Iron Brotherhood with Belarus. China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil and Pyongyang's largest trading partner. China and Russia have spotted an ideological vacuum and they're rushing to fill it. They are emboldened in a way that we haven't seen since the Cold War. As freedom-loving democracies, we need to rise up to face down these threats. As well as NATO, we're working with partners like Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Israel to build a global network of liberty. Aggressors are reneging on their commitments and obligations. They're destabilizing the rules-based international order and they're chipping away at the values that underpin it. But they have nothing to offer, the world is different. We're not defined to believe in freedom and democracy. We believe in individual liberty as the greatest transformative force on earth. When people have agency over their own lives, when they have freedom and opportunity, they achieve incredible things. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, we know from the evidence of human history that democracies are the engine room of change. We see this in the ideas and innovations that fueled our fight back against COVID, from the University of Sydney's Edward Holmes publishing the COVID Gino, to Oxford's Sarah Gilbert and her life-saving vaccine, to our shared effort to distribute vaccines to those in need around the world. And we want to work together to tackle the big problems we face. That does include working with countries like Russia and China where it's necessary, on trade, tackling climate change, or bringing Iran to the negotiating table. But in doing so, we will stand up for what we believe in. In December, I welcomed G7 foreign ministers to Liverpool, together with Maurice Payne and some of our other closest allies and friends. We expressed our concern about China's economic, coercive policies, and we united to condemn Russia's aggression. Together, we showed our determination to stand shoulder to shoulder for freedom and democracy around the world. We're continuing that vital work this week with our Aukmin, our Australia, UK, foreign and defence ministerial meeting, the first that we've had since 2018. And we're determined to act together in three key areas. Firstly, we'll stand up for our economic security. That means calling out China when it blocks products from Lithuania or imposes punitive tariffs on Australian barley and wine. It means cutting strategic dependence in authoritarian regimes, starting with Europe's dependence on Russian gas. It means helping countries avoiding having their balance sheets loaded with debt. It's estimated that 44 low-to-middle-income countries have debts to Beijing in excess of 10% of their GDP. We're responding on all of these fronts, and we're strengthening our supply chains by taking our economic ties with like-minded nations to new heights. We took a huge step forward by signing our free trade agreement with Australia in December. This is a world-class deal that will remove all of the tariffs on goods both ways. It's going to be easier for our people to live and work in each other's countries, particularly those under 35. And we're building on this by working with Australia to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, reinforcing reliability of supply through one of the largest free trade areas on Earth. We're also working together to provide low- and middle-income countries with honest and reliable alternative sources of investment. In November, I launched British International Investment, helping to mobilise up to £8 billion a year of public and private financing to these countries by 2025, leveraging the firepower of the City of London. Yesterday, Maurice Payne and I agreed on a closer UK-Australia cooperation to boost opportunities for investment across the Indo-Pacific, particularly in areas like energy, climate change adaptation and technology. And we're working together to impose sanctions on human rights abusers and to keep those using forced labour out of our supply chains. Secondly, freedom must be defended, and that's why we are deepening our security ties. Last year, in our integrated review, the UK set out a new deterrence posture, including the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. We need to see everyone stepping up in this way. Too few of our NATO allies are meeting the 2% spending target, so it's great to see that Australia is also increasing its commitment to our collective security. The power of our partnership has been demonstrated time and time again. We will forever remember those from Australia and New Zealand who gave their lives for freedom on the historic battlefields of Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Pacific. The depth of our commitment remains plain to see today, from the Five Eyes Intelligence Partnership to the Five Powers Defence Arrangements with our friends Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand to the carrier strike group, which visited the region last year, led by HMS Queen Elizabeth. Our forces exercised in the South China Sea with ships and aircraft from Australia and other partners standing up for our mutual interests and supporting regional stability. And of course, last year, we finalised our landmark AUKUS partnership. With this deal, we've opened a bold new era in our long history together. And by joining forces with the US, we're showing our determination to protect security and stability across the region. We're helping Australia acquire a nuclear-powered submarine and also means deeper cooperation between our three nations on advanced capabilities like cyber, AI and quantum. We want to use this deeper expertise to help support stability and with partners right across the Indo-Pacific. I'm looking forward to more to visiting the shipyard in Adelaide, where the UK and Australia are building new Type 26 frigates. And Adelaide, of course, will play an important role in developing the new AUKUS submarines. This is a truly formidable and cutting-edge partnership and we're determined to continue strengthening it for the benefit of all. And finally, we're boosting our cooperation on technology. Technology is empowered people by enabling incredible freedom, but we know it can be seized on by others to promote fear. We can't allow the technologies of the future to be hijacked from malign ends, whether it's cyber attacks or building high-tech surveillance states through facial recognition software and AI. Global technology standards must be shaped by the free world. That's where we want to go further and faster by deepening our science and tech collaboration. Just as Australia has banned Huawei from its 5G network, we're stripping high-risk vendors out of our infrastructure and we're embracing Australian expertise, for example, to bring the state of the art 5G to London Underground. Delivering our strategic advantage in science and technology is an absolutely vital objective of the integrated review. And so I'm pleased this week, we're launching our new cyber critical technology partnership with Australia, aimed at tackling malign actors, strengthening supply chains and harnessing tech to support freedom and democracy. Building these partnerships and drawing other countries closer to the orbit of free market democracies will ultimately make us all safer and freer in the years to come. That's why it's time for the free world to stand its ground. We need to face down global aggressors. We should be proud of our ideas and our ideals, clear about what they have brought to mankind and even more ambitious for what we can do together in the future. 40 years ago, Margaret Thatcher gave the Sir Robert Menzies lecture in Melbourne. She said, where freedom exists, I seek to expand it. Where it is under attack, I shall defend it. Where it does not exist, I shall try to create it. I cannot think of a better friend than Australia to work with on this vital endeavor. We can make great things happen. Thank you. Foreign Secretary, thank you very much. Thank you for giving an important speech that's already been widely reported around the world and thank you for agreeing to take some questions. I'm gonna kick off and then we've got some questions from our audience which I'll also put to you. Let me start with you, Crane. You said in your speech that Kremlin has not learned the lessons of history. But Vladimir Putin might reply that history tells him that the West, the free world, is not prepared to stand up to him. After all, eight years later, the Russian flag still flies over Crimea. Why are you confident that the free world will stand its ground, as you said? First of all, I think it's very important to note the commitments that Russia made. In the 1994 Budapest Agreement, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, Russia agreed, alongside the UK and the US, to protect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. So the claims that are being made by Vladimir Putin are completely wrong about what has happened. And it is true, and I made this point in my speech, that the free world has not been doing enough since the end of the Cold War to make sure that we are deterring aggressors. But we are very clear together with our allies in the G7, with our allies in NATO, that if there is an incursion by Russia into Ukraine, it would come at a massive cost. We are prepared to put very severe sanctions in place. We are also working to support Ukraine in terms of defensive capability. What I would say as well is that dealing with this immediate situation is, of course, an absolute priority. But the free world also needs to work together to reduce economic dependence on Russia, to put in place the agreements that help countries have alternatives in terms of trade and investment. So in the future it becomes harder for those aggressive regimes to use economic dependence as a way of getting what they want. So, yes, we are very ready to act in the immediate term, but in the longer term, this is why it's so important that we are investing in developing countries. It's so important that we are trading widely across the world using strong rules-based agreements like the CPTPP. That's the West way to protect ourselves from aggressors, is from a position of economic and defensive strength. Let's move to that long-term approach because I know that you're also very keen on allies and like-minded countries working much more closely together, cooperating with each other. And AUKUS is an example of that. When I heard about AUKUS, I was reminded of something that Winston Churchill said in 1940 when the United States provided Britain with 50 overage destroyers in exchange for access to British naval bases. And Churchill said that the two countries, the UK and Britain, the UK and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. Do you think that in the face of new challenges, we will once again see like-minded countries getting more mixed up together? Yes, and I think that's a good thing. And one of the points I made in my speech is we're seeing more working together by authoritarian nations. And it's vital that we do work together and that we rely on each other. And that's a course about important allies like Australia, like the United States, like our European allies. But we also need to make sure we're working more closely with India, with Japan, with Indonesia. These are all important parts, I think, of creating a much stronger alliance of those in the free world. What are the limits of liberty as an organizing principle for foreign policy? Because in the Indo-Pacific, for example, many of the countries that would be useful in balancing against China are non-democracies or quasi-democracies. Well, the way I look at it is I want a world where free democratic countries can survive and thrive. Survive and thrive. Now, there are many countries who are not, which are not free democracies, who want to live in that world, too. A world that's based on the rules. A world where countries hold true to their commitments, like the 1994 Budapest Agreement. So I think it's right that we form partnerships with all of those countries who want to see a fair rules-based world. Now, not all of them will share our exact way of life and our exact values. And I'm a believer in personal freedom in democracy. I do think it is the best way to organize a society. But I also believe in countries' sovereignty and countries' ability to make their own decisions. What I think is important is that the countries that we work with believe in the rules-based international system and fair play. What's the most important aspect of AUKUS from your perspective? Well, AUKUS is a comprehensive arrangement that is going to involve very deep work together in areas like artificial intelligence, in cyber, in quantum, as well as helping Australia acquire that nuclear-powered submarine capability. So to me, it's a comprehensive arrangement that is going to deepen that partnership. It's worth saying, though, that it's part of a broader picture. We also need to make sure we are preparing NATO for the new era, working much more in areas like hybrid, in areas like cyber, as well. So this is not... We want to work together to develop these capabilities and also share with our friends and allies around the world. I mean, of course, the ASEAN group is extremely important in that, for example. Can I ask you, how does the network of liberty square with Brexit? I mean, I think, like you at the time, I supported the Remain case, because I was worried that Brexit would hinder Britain, make Europe less liberal and weaken the West, and provide succor to the adversaries of the West, like Beijing and Moscow. Hasn't Brexit undermined the network of liberty? I don't agree with that. Brexit was a sovereign decision made by the British people who wanted that ability to determine our future without being part of the EU. And we now have full control, for example, over all aspects of foreign policy, including policies like trade policy and sanctions we previously didn't have. And some of the portents of doom about Brexit simply haven't come true. Not that economic consequences were claimed, but also, in terms of security, if you look at the response to the issues with Russian aggression on Ukraine, we've been working very closely with the EU. Key part of the G7 statement, we've been working very closely as part of the Quad with France, Germany and the United States. So our security relationship is extremely strong, but it is from the position of independent sovereign nation. Let me come to China. You referred to China a couple of times in your speech. Is the UK late to the game on China and on China as a strategic actor and perhaps as a strategic threat? I mean, I recall David Cameron and George Osborne were incredibly bullish about China back in the day. I know the tone in London has changed very substantially and even I think it was last week, we saw that story about MI5 identifying an agent of the Chinese government working at Westminster. Why has it taken so long for London and other European capitals to clock to the threat that China poses? Well, I give credit to Australia here. I think the situation with Australia, the economic coercion we saw, it was one of the wake-up calls as to exactly what China was doing and the way it was using its economic might to try to exert control over other countries. And I think there was a belief in the past that as China got wealthier, it was headed on a path towards becoming a freer, more democratic society. The reality is that hasn't happened and the situation we're in in the late 90s, the Chinese economy was a tenth the size of the United States economy. We're now in a situation with China with a much bigger economy, much more able to coerce other nations. And as I said, we've looked to Australia as we formulate some of our policies around how we deal with those issues. In your speech, you talked about how democracy should be less economically dependent on countries that don't share our values. And that's obviously a good idea and desirable, but China, for example, does three times more trade with Indo-Pacific countries than its nearest competitor, the United States. Is it realistic for countries like Australia and the United Kingdom to diversify away from an economy the size of China's? Well, I look at it in positive terms as we are diversifying towards countries that follow the rules. For example, on areas like intellectual property or forced technology transfer. So one of the reasons why we want to sign up to the CPTPP is that has strong rules basis so that UK supply chains will, UK companies, when we are sourcing products, we will know that they have good environmental standards. We will know that there are good labour provisions in place, we will know that intellectual property is protected because that's part of the CPTPP agreement. So the way I see it is more making those supply chains more resilient by working with countries who share that rules-based approach. You want to join the CPTPP. Would the UK like to join the Quad as well? Well, we are looking at all kinds of groupings that we could potentially be part of. But it would take the Quad members to want to have the UK as part of it. OK. All right, I'm going to go to the audience, but I am going to squeeze in one question about domestic politics, if I can. The last time we hosted a foreign secretary at the institute, as Maurice noted, he went on in short order to become Prime Minister. Should we expect to see that phenomenon again, do you think? Well, our Prime Minister, as he said, spoke at the Lowy Institute. He became Prime Minister. I was delighted to serve as his trade secretary, delivering on the promise he made here at the Lowy Institute. And I'm now working from his foreign secretary. He is doing an excellent job. Britain has one of the first countries to get people vaccinated, to deliver a successful booster campaign. We've got the fastest-growing economy in the G7. And that is what is important to people. All right, let me put some questions from the audience to you, foreign secretary. First of all, back on Ukraine, I have a question from the chairman of the Lowy Institute, Sir Frank Lowy. He says that in your speech, you urge Vladimir Putin to desist and step back from Ukraine before he makes a disastrous, strategic mistake. What would NATO do if Russia invaded Ukraine? And should Russia be concerned about that? Well, what we have been clear is there would be severe consequences. Should Vladimir Putin stage an incursion into Ukraine? Economic consequences, in particular. And that would have a very damaging effect. And the other point I would make, which I made in my speech, is it would not be easy. The Ukrainians will fight this. This could end up as a quagmire. And I think that should be seriously considered by Russia. But of course, Ukraine isn't a member of NATO. So it's not in the same position as, for example, the Baltic states where there would be direct action in the case of any conflict. OK, we have a question from Susanna Patton, who's a researcher at the Institute. Susanna asks, how do you see the evolution and the purpose of the Five Eyes Intelligence Network? And she says, she asks, it appears to be emerging as a grouping to coordinate policies as well as to share intelligence. That is a very fair point. It is base of those things. It's a very, very valuable intelligence network that both the United Kingdom and Australia are part of. But I think what we're seeing in foreign policy in general is more overlap between different areas of policy, whether it's economic and trade policy, diplomacy, intelligence, communications. All of those things are interlinked. So, yes, it is a useful forum for policy, too. I have a question from Laura Jays of Sky News. What role will the UK play in maintaining the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific and helping to curb China's growing aggression? Well, first of all, we are playing a leading role, for example, in organisations like the World Trade Organisation, to make sure the rules are adhered to, but also to update the rules for the modern age. The WTO was created before... Well, before the... In particular, we see so much use of technology in the internet. So, we need to make sure that it's updated to reflect the way things work now. I think the CPTPP is an important part of creating a better rules basis. And, of course, by joining that, the UK is helping bolster that organisation. We have a question from Evelyn Nordhoff in the Australian Defence Department on China's activities in the South Pacific. She asks, how can Australia and the UK work together to protect the democracies of the South Pacific and reduce their coercion by the CCP? I think one particular area is maritime security. The UK has already carried out a deployment of the carrier strike group in the region. There is more we can do to cooperate on maritime security with Australia, but also other nations in the area. We have also a question from Mary Jardine Clark from Greenwich House on... And she mentions that we've seen a growing presence of US defensive forces rotating through Australia. Might we see home porting for UK naval assets in Australia? Well, we're certainly looking at what more we can do, and this is a comment the Defence Secretary made earlier, to have a visible presence in the region, as well as a greater degree of diplomatic engagements, as well. Finally, Foreign Secretary, I might ask you one more question about the United States, if I can, which is at the center of any network of liberty. We've seen a lot of inconsistency in Washington's approach to the world. During the Trump era, for example, the President was very unconvincing in his commitment to the idea of collective defence, as enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Some people think Mr. Trump could return to the White House in 2024. Are you worried about the fractures in the American polity about how that affects America's credibility and influence in the world? Are you concerned at all about the trajectory of the United States? Because, in a way, the whole of the rest of the network of liberty is hinged off the United States. Well, the United States is very important. Other countries are also important. One of the reasons I'm here in Australia is very important partner of the United Kingdom. I've mentioned India and Japan as other absolutely key parts of working more closely together in areas like the economy and security. One comment I would make about the United States is that I want to see more engagement on trade and the economy. Because if countries don't have an alternative to strings-attached investment, that is a problem. So we are working with the United States on investment partnerships. They've got the Build Back Better World program. But I think more economic engagement. The UK and Australia, by working to promote free trade and doing that, it would be fantastic to see the US doing more and also the European Union doing more to make sure that countries have those alternatives. Foreign Secretary, it's been a pleasure to host you today at the Institute. We've run out of time. Thank you for giving an important speech that will be studied closely and for taking our questions. The Foreign Secretary has said that she's an admirer of Arya Stark from Game of Thrones. And like Arya, I would say that Liz Truss is one to watch. Foreign Secretary, we look forward to hosting you at the Institute again in the future. Thank you. Thank you also to Australia's Foreign Minister, Senator Maurice Payne, for joining us and to everyone in the audience for tuning in. For now, it's goodbye from the Lowy Institute. Thank you very much.


Now Abba Carey, head of Nigeria's Inspector General of Police's Intelligence Responds Team, Deputy Commissioner of Police and a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police has been mentioned as a beneficiary in the international fraud case, linked to Ramon Abbas, also known as Hush Puppy. But this has got analysts and security experts token. Nigeria's social media celebrity T. Rehman, Lauren Wah Abbas, popularly known as Hush Puppy, was arrested in Dubai in June 2020 on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity. He has pleaded guilty for the fraud he committed and told U.S. prosecutors that disappeared Abba Carey received part of the proceeds of crime. As the U.S. demands the arrest of Abba Carey, Okereke Chinwike, who doubles as a public and security analyst, say Nigerian police should be reject for bad acts to be extracted. As Abba Carey explains his stand after being accused of wrongfully arresting one Vincent on the request of Hush Puppy for Rafi, he denies the claims saying he only introduced the accused to a cloth seller who in turn paid $300,000 to the latter. Meanwhile, a security expert Terence Quanum describes Abba Carey as a hardworking policeman who fights good security interests. United States authorities say Abba Carey allegedly worked with Rema Nabas, also known as Hush Puppy, to punish the latter's partner with whom he defrauded a Qatari of $1.1 million.


The moment that systems become very large and complicated, what you have to do is to have simple rules that allow very complicated transactions to go through with a great deal of rapidity. Hi, my name is Richard Epstein. My main position is as the Lawrence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University Law School. I'm also the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecture at the University of Chicago. So I work actively in three different cities pretty much every year. I'm here to talk about something which I wrote when I was a faculty member at the University of Chicago and which was prepared with the help of Roger P. Lone as my editor at the Cato Institute. And it's a book, I guess, whose most dramatic feature is its title, Simple Rules for a Complex World. And the reason the book has that particular title is that it's designed to essentially address a paradox about how we think about the law in modern times. The most common argument that one hears as you try to find the case for an ever larger regulatory state is that the more complex society, the more complex the regulation it turns out that you need. And in my view, the correct situation is exactly the opposite. The moment that systems become very large and complicated, what you have to do is to have simple rules that allow very complicated transactions to go through with a great deal of rapidity. So if you're talking about, for example, how you organize a wedding, you can have all sorts of negotiations about bride and groom, guest list, and so forth. But if you're trying to figure out how you put together an ATM system or a debit card system and so forth, and you try to have that level of individual negotiations, it turns out that everything will fall on its face. So in those particular cases, what you have to do is to build up a complicated system such that the user interfaces are apparent and all the steps that take place with respect to its operation proceed pretty much in an automatic fashion. So if you're trying to figure out, for example, how it is that you organize a wedding, people are actually going to be concerned about who's the bride and the groom and who's going to be invited and so forth. But if you're trying to deal with a credit card system, the entire thing would actually start to collapse if, in fact, you said before you take out your money, you have to explain to some government administrator the purposes for which you use it, otherwise the permission to withdraw from the account will be denied. What this suggests in effect is that when you have these kinds of complicated systems, you have to have a minimum of discretion in terms of the way in which they operate. So the paradox is this. The larger the system turns out to be in terms of the number of people that it wishes to reach, the simpler the rules have to be in order to put it together. So what happens is, in face of this kind of fundamental insight, what you see is a huge and determined effort at every level of government to have more laws and more regulations under those laws so that it turns out that we literally have to worry about this veritable swamp in which we can all put our feet only to sink and to die. The question, therefore, is can we think of an alternative way to think of the system, which depends less upon administrative discretion, less upon rulemaking, less upon full level of political participation, and more on a stronger system of private rights. And the book Simple Rules for a Complex World was designed to develop in fairly detailed ways the alternative vision of the universe that is the legal universe that I think in fact would do far better than the one that we have. Now when people start designing as I'm attempting to do here alternative universes, there's always going to be a charge that you become deeply utopian in the way in which you're doing things, and if you try to do something which has never been attempted before, what you're sure to do is to fail. And indeed, that is a very strong argument against most forms of regulation, but it's not an argument that could be raised against the positions that I'm taking here. What I do in this particular case is not to try to create new sets of arrangements that have never been tried before, but rather to look at long-established common law patterns and long-established regulatory patterns dealing with the power of the state to take, well, a taxation or through eminent domain and to put them into a single coherent whole. And the origins of this system go back a very long way. Some portions of it date to Roman law. Some portions of it date back to the English common law as it evolved. And some of it relates to sort of the organization of early constitutional practices which are recorded at the time of the founding after some influence from people like Montesquieu on the one hand and Blackstone on the other. So the argument here is I'm not going to start from scratch as I articulate the system.  In order to do that, you have to be able to understand where it is that you begin. And classical writers on this subject used to talk about trying to figure out a set of rules in the state of nature, and more modern writers start to talk about this as being what are the rights and duties that people ought to have towards one another in the original position. I actually like the state of nature language because what it does is it asks you to figure out how it is that you put the rules together and to organize them before you have a state so that the creation of statehood becomes a function of how these rules interact rather than assuming at the outset that you have a well-established state in place and then allow that to dictate whatever rules it wants to the people at hand. And if you start from this particular situation, there are always two things that you have to worry about right at the get-go. One is how do you decide to place rights in people, and secondly, how you place rights in external things that exist on the earth. And for this, the classical solution is one that I think we widely accept today, at least presumptively, which is the rules having to do with individual autonomy on the one hand and the rules with respect to first possession on the other. Let me explain briefly what's it about. When you're trying to create a system of rights for a large number of people who are strangers one to another, what has to happen is you have to have signals such that each person know where his or her responsibilities begin and where his or her rights end so that you can have a way of people to interact with strangers, even if they don't know the peculiarities one to another. And the rule of individual autonomy or self-ownership essentially takes the proposition every person owns his own body. And to that, there turns out to be the very necessary exceptions of what happens to people before they reach full age and maturity. And they are, of course, not owned by their parents. The parents are essentially guardians with respect to their children required to take into account the interests of both before they decide the actions that they're going to take as part and parcel of a family unit. And that works pretty well for the most part, because they're natural inclinations based upon biology, which essentially say that parents are always invested in their children by virtue of their common genetic origin and so on. But with strangers, you don't have that stuff. And what the self-ownership rule does is it replaces the only other two alternatives that anybody can think of. One of them is an alternative which creates an arbitrary despot who tells everybody what he can and cannot do.  Clearly, that's not stable. There'll be lots of overthrows and rebellions. Or you can say, no, we don't believe in hierarchy, but we believe in sharing. And so each person has a claim on the talents and resources of everybody else. But if you then try to figure out if everybody is as it were cross-collateralized with everybody else, how does anyone decide what to do with his or her own life? And this would apply to personal relationships like marriage, and it would also apply to various kinds of business relationships. So the only efficient system is one that I like to describe as one of natural necessity, that you end up with each person having the capabilities of controlling their own body. And then the next question is, how does this relate to external resources? Because you have to find a place to stand and food, tea, and all the rest of that nice stuff, which allows you to survive as a biological entity in need of 2,500 calories per day. And the rule that has always been used there from ancient times is the rule of first possession or occupation, the way in which you acquire title to land as you sit on it and mark its boundaries with various kinds of devices, the way you take ownership of a chattel like a seashell, for example, is to pick it up and put it in your pocket, and the way in which you take ownership of animals is you put a lasso around them so that, in effect, everybody now knows that they're yours. And the whole point of this particular egotistical enterprise is it means that each person now is the owner of determinate things, and once you have determinate ownership, it then becomes possible to figure out, hey, how these things are going to be protected because you know who's going to protect them. It gives notice to the rest of the world that they are allowed to keep off, and it gives the owner of the thing the right to use and to develop it so that, in effect, things that have value can now have their labor mixed with them, such that the combination of natural resources on the one hand and human labor on the other can create things of ever greater value. The situation, however, that I've talked about is incomplete because it doesn't explain how it is that you develop human cooperation. And the third of the simple rules is one that starts talking about the fact that you can combine either capital or labor or material objects with those of any other person through the arrangements of contract. You could have an outright sale. You could have a lease. You could have a partnership. You could form some kind of an association. And by virtue of making these changes, all self-interested individuals necessarily have to benefit somebody else in order to get themselves to go along, but they also benefit themselves for otherwise they would not do it. So essentially a system of voluntary transactions like that yields what economists like to call positive some games, a voluntary transaction makes everybody better off to it and nobody worse off. And then you might ask, what about strangers to the transaction? Well, there's an important notion implicit in this argument called that of the positive externality. If I can enter into a transaction with B, C, and D that all of us are better off and we don't trench upon the rights of any other person, now that we're better off, other people have more opportunities for trade themselves so that essentially the greater wealth of one individual creates greater opportunities for other and everybody else is in exactly the same position when they enter into these voluntary transactions. So that essentially if you could keep this system in place, what will happen is you'll have a steady spiral of improving wealth. Now in order to keep it in place, you need a fourth set of rules which we commonly call tort rules and those are rules which either enjoin you or punish you by way of damages. If essentially you try to violate any one of the first three rules having to do with individual self-ownership which you could violate by murder or molestation, having to deal with first possession which you could violate by theft or having to do with contracts which you can violate by making it physically impossible for people to transact with one another or by lying to one person about the status of another such that the defamation that you engage in will drive people off. So you have all of these kinds of arrangements and if in fact you could keep this system going in and of itself it would give you a very nice focal point for the way in which life size, human interactions ought to take place. But as I mentioned before, all of this is done without the creation or intervention of a state. And the one thing that we've become clear about it is that there will always be some people who have an incentive to deviate from these common solutions for short term advantages. And if you don't have a state above you then in effect each person has to be his own judge as to whether to enforce a particular right or not to enforce it. And as John Locke said about this arrangement it's very difficult to ask people to become impartial judges with respect to their own institutions and their own interests. So what you then have to do is to create a state and the issue is how do you create it? And the first thing you have to ask is how you fund it. And it turns out voluntary contributions generally will not work. And so therefore you must develop systems of taxation. And as I argue in the book, generally speaking the system of taxation that puts least strain on the public imagination is a flat tax which all people contribute to in proportion to the amount of wealth that they have in the society in question. So essentially the more you get out of the system the more you have to put into the system. If you get greater prosperity you now have a larger contribution to make. And conversely if it turns out your fortunes become somewhat less for favorable you now have a smaller contribution to make. The system has a minimum of discretion and it should give you essentially the kind of information and resources available so that you could then start to enforce the kinds of rights that you're talking about here. Now it also turns out that you cannot exist only with private rights. You have to figure out how it is you create various kinds of public infrastructure. And for that sometimes you have to exercise the power of eminent domain so that you could acquire that kind of resource which stands at the bottleneck of a situation such that if you had to pay a fortune which would dissipate the collective project. And the solution that one reaches in that case is you force the state to pay just compensation to the resource holder so he's not singled out for adverse treatment. And then what you do is you take public revenues in order to fund the rest of the project. And since you don't have the holdout problem you can create through public intervention a viable system of infrastructure, highways, defense and courts and so forth by putting together the taxation power with in fact the eminent domain power. Well then you must ask what is it that you'd like to spend these particular resources on? And in simple rules for a complex world the major argument that I'd make is for the most part you would like the government to act under circumstances where it creates what are technically known as public goods. Those goods which if you provide them to one person you must necessarily provide them to another. And the theory about these goods which are commonly provided is that people voluntarily will not do so on their own and if you restrict the state government to those cases you have a pretty good chance of making sure that there'll be relatively little disagreement as to what we need so that you could reduce the level of political strife associated with determining these goods. Nobody should be perfectly idealistic about that where you place a road or where you place a public park in fact can be quite a complex determination for it with difficulty. But if you must pay those people whose property is taken in order to build it you will tend to build in those places where the private resources that have to be converted to public use are the lowest value so that you can maximize the overall gain from the operation of the system. One must understand however that there is no way once you need public intervention that you could build a system that operates without some degree of public discretion. Taxation doesn't tell you how much you can tax. Eminent domain doesn't tell you what parts of land that you have to deal with. What it does in effect is it sets an institutional framework so that when responsible political actors have to decide what to do there's likely to be less error than if you had greater discretion in the operation of the system. Now one last point which is the sort of seventh rule having to do not with eminent domain or with essentially the operation of taxation is the question which is extremely important today which has to do with the issue of how it is you understand and treat the question of income inequality. If one goes back to the kinds of rules that I've talked about what becomes very clear is that people have different natural endowments on the one hand or if in fact they are different degrees of luck in the voluntary bargains they enter into or the land for example that they're able to claim by first possession generally speaking things will start to get better across the board but they may get better on even rates so that some persons have far greater wealth than others. And the issue then is does one want to deal with the question of redistribution that is taking from those who are more fortunate and giving it to those who are less. And there are multiple answers to this which sort of indicates why it is that this is both a necessary operation on the one hand and an extremely dangerous one on the other. And the first of the solutions which I still think is the best is the voluntary solutions. You develop a set of social institutions through religious and charitable institutions which sort of say to those people who are very well off the last dollar to you means a lot less than it means to somebody else. You may pick to whom you wish to give it and the kinds of works that you wish to furnish but let it be understood that in a decent society we don't only look at libertarian rules we don't only look at eminent domain we don't only look at taxation we try to create institutions that facilitate benevolence. And in a modern society where there are high degrees of taxes one of the ways you can do this is through a charitable deduction such that in effect is like a matching grant from the government if you can find as an organization somebody who's willing to give you X thousands of dollars the government will kick in 40% of that by virtue of a tax break that is given to the owner. And you want to do that rather than direct government funding because once it's 100% within the political process you have no private monitoring on the way in which the giving is going to take place. It turns out however that some people would start to say that this may not be enough that the enormities that exist at the bottom of the income distribution is so great that some mandated state intervention is needed. And on that this is the way in which I would put it it's a maxim that I've developed not so much in the book but afterwards but it captures the general sentiment and it's called redistribution last. And what it means is if in fact you look at a current society what's in all what you will discover is that throughout its operation there are systematic and massive violations of all the six simple rules that I've talked about before. Taxes are highly progressive eminent domain is not always paid when government imposes extensive regulation on land use freedom of contract is systematically frustrated the ability to acquire property through natural labor and first possession is compromised for no good reason the tort law becomes wildly intrusive and essentially stops legitimate as well as illegitimate operations. Well all of these things turn out to go to the bottom line and to hurt the way in which the society is altered. So what you have to do under these circumstances is to make the decision that first you try to unravel the mistakes that have been made to further increase the size of the pie. What one has to understand is every time you engage in liberalization people who are thought to be beyond hope and redemption those at the bottom of the distribution will start to do better for themselves. If in fact you have a coherent way in funding public goods what it turns out is that the poor benefit disproportionately relative to the rich from public funding. So there's no way to build a sewer system unless you take care of the entire water supply in the city. Most of that's going to be funded by taxes which will be levied upon the rich and it turns out that the poor will benefit from the clean water maybe not quite as much as everybody else but very close to it. So if you can create a sound system of public goods and a sound system of voluntary markets you can reduce the redistribution problem to a mere shadow of what it's for the self is so that you're not so concerned as to whether or not you're gonna do this through compulsion on the one hand through volunteerism on the other because instead of having a problem that consumes a huge fraction 10, 20% of your society you have one which is down to two, three or 4% of your society which is much more manageable no matter what the techniques. This is not an idle pipe dream after the book was written there was systematic welfare reform in the latter years of the Clinton administration and the dramatic effect in terms of the number of people who were taken off the rolls was quite striking even though that was a relatively modest system to the kinds of structural reforms that I'm talking about here. So the point is as follows the paradox is this if in fact you have small intimate systems you can have huge complicated set of rules to govern very tiny populations because everybody's more or less in a position to monitor everybody else people know what their preferences turn out to be so they can figure out how to allocate goods there's often a common interest by blood and marriage and those systematic arrangements tend to work which is why it is as our good friend Tolstoy said every marriage is different from every other marriage precisely because these personality traits shape the operation but when you're talking about large anonymous population the rule of thumb is standardized rules with very simple characteristics unnecessary to secure the velocity of transactions that make things go so just let me end up with a homie example which shows you how this works suppose it turns out that you took as for example people like John Dewey took the position that you don't have a real bargain unless there's some give and take with respect to negotiations so that what happens is you think of the market as being two farmers bargaining over a farm fenced between them as to the price of a cap and then what you do is say okay we're now at Walmart and it turns out there are 14 people online ahead of you each of having 10 things in their basket and the way in which it goes is take the first thing I say I see you listed $1.39 for this bottle of mayonnaise will you take $1.25 thank you and you start looking at this and you're going to have to imagine the world in which every one of these customers in front of you are going to engage in these negotiations and you typically realize it can't work so that what is often thought to be villainy i.e. take it or leave it transaction is in fact the perfect transaction because the institution knows that if it sets the prices too hard everybody will leave it and by making them sensible you could roll with a cost by reducing the transactions cost and get those people through in record time and so this is the common mistake of many regulators on this one point they think that high transactions cost and few transactions actually are a sensible world in the tradition of the progressives like John Dewey whereas folks like myself think that large numbers of transactions with a minimum of transactions cost is a much better solution and it's simple rules for a complex world that get you into that favorable equilibrium thank you