‘Now,’ Ep. 23: Nick Bisley on Australia’s Response to Covid-19

It is a pleasure to welcome back Nick Bisley, an international relations expert from La Trobe University in Melbourne. We were keen to sit down with him in the virtual studio to examine Australia’s response to the global pandemic. We were most interested to understand the relative success of the Australian effort to flatten the curve of infections of the virus when it was clear that Australia had suffered a crisis of competence in dealing with the bush fires that had ravaged Australia in its summer. (Please listen to the ‘Now’ Series Ep. 18: an interview with Steven Slaughter ‘Australia Burning’: The politics of Climate Change in Australia”). The answers Nick provides are quite revealing of how Australia is well and badly governed. Nick is currently Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Melbourne and Professor of International Relations. Previously Nick served as the Executive Director of La Trobe Asia at La Trobe University. Nick is the author of many works on international relations, including Issues in 21st Century World Politics, 3rd Edition (Palgrave, 2017).