The Centre's Founding Director, Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths, was recently invited to deliver the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library Anniversary Lecture at Curtin University.

His lecture, titled, 'The World After John Curtin: Geopolitics and the planet', reflected on the challenges facing Australia and the world today. The abstract for his lecture reads, 'John Curtin’s famous declaration at the end of 1941, when he pivoted Australia towards America, is celebrated as a cool assessment of geopolitical realities at a moment of existential peril for the nation. Eighty years later, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, what would visionary Australian leadership see as the greatest threat to our national security? Recognising it requires planetary thinking, a whole new revolutionary consciousness that has developed in our own times. After Curtin died in office in 1945, the world – indeed, the planet – changed dramatically in ways that no-one could foresee or even imagine.'

You can watch 'The World After John Curtin' via Youtube below, thanks to Curtin University Library.

Inside Story has published an edited version of Tom's lecture.