The Hon Kim Beazley AC

Mr Beazley was born in Perth, Western Australia. He completed a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts at the University of Western Australia. In 1973, he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship for Western Australia and completed a Masters of Philosophy at Oxford University.

Mr Beazley was a Minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments (1983-1996) holding, at various times, the portfolios of Defence, Finance, Transport and Communications, Employment Education and Training, Aviation, and Special Minister of State.

From 1995 to 1996, Mr Beazley was Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1996 to 2001, and 2005 to 2006. Mr Beazley served on parliamentary committees, including the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Joint Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

After his retirement from politics in 2007, Mr Beazley was appointed Winthrop Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at The University of Western Australia (UWA).

In July 2008 he was appointed Chancellor of the Australian National University, a position he held until December 2009.

In 2009, Mr Beazley was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia for service to the Parliament of Australia through contributions to the development of government policies in relation to defence and international relations, and as an advocate for Indigenous people, and to the community.

Mr Beazley took up an appointment as Ambassador to the United States of America in February 2010. He served as Ambassador until January 2016.

Mr Beazley is currently Chair of the Council for the Australian War Memorial. Other affiliations include advisor to TG & Associates, Lockheed Martin Australia and McKinsey & Co, Board member of United States Study Centre and advisory Board member of UWA Defence and Securities Institute, and Senior Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

HUGH WHITE AO
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF STRATEGIC STUDIES, STRATEGIC AND DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Professor Hugh White AO is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He studies Australian strategic and defence policy, and regional and global strategic issues as they affect Australia. He has been an intelligence analyst, a journalist, a senior staffer to Australian Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and a senior official in the Australian Defence Department, where from 1995 to 2000 he was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence.

He was the principal author of Australia’s Defence White Paper (2000). His recent publications include Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing (2010), The China Choice: Why America should share power (2012), Without America: Australia’s future in the New Asia (2017), and How to defend Australia (2019). He writes a regular column for the Straits Times of Singapore.

Hugh White is a member of The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre Advisory Board, and has been a part of the Hawke Centre's Program, including the Annual Hawke Lecture (2014), From the Great War to the Asian Century: what we can learn from 1914 about our place in the world, Hugh White: Hard New World – Our Post-American Future, and as a panellist for Borders and the Pandemic (2020).