You’ve got to feel sorry for Australia’s public international television service, Australia Network. Launched by the Keating government in 1994 under the name Australia Television, its short life has been blighted with funding cuts, death threats, name changes and a failed outsourcing effort. Its most recent adventure was the messy tender tempest to determine who should be awarded the new contract to manage the network.

A growing electronic blitzkrieg by Beijing - blasted by Barack Obama as ''state sponsored'' hacking and now extending to the jamming of Australia's radio news broadcasts in Asia - threatens to derail delicate negotiations for the ABC to win television rights in China.

More money for young artists and indigenous languages, a new location incentive to increase the competitiveness of the local film industry, plus an overhaul of the Australia Council are among the initiatives in the much-delayed national cultural policy announced on Wednesday...The policy also points to the important of arts and culture in diplomacy, with a revamp of the Australia International Cultural Council, encouraging arts organisations to build international links.

The Australian government should put more money into football diplomacy as Australia prepares for the 2015 Asian Cup and use the Asian Cup to strengthen Australia's ties with Asia, an Australian think tank said in a latest report on Friday.

The football tournament, which will be hosted by Australia for the first time, is expected to attract 45,000 visitors and have a potential television reach of 2.5 billion viewers. The Lowy Institute for International Policy, in a paper released on Friday, says the tournament will present a big opportunity for Australian businesses to network with Asian investors and consumers.

Once upon a time migrants left their old countries and severed ties with their homelands, but today with cheaper and more frequent travel and communication that facilitates and defines what we have come to know as globalisation, migrants maintain ties with the countries they came from.

Few Australians are aware that Indian contingents fought alongside the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli that is so central to the founding myth of Australian (and New Zealand) identity. As cricket legend Rahul Dravid noted in the 2011 Bradman Oration at the Australian War Memorial, appropriately enough, 1,300 Indian soldiers lost their lives at Gallipoli. Indians fought alongside Australians also in “El Alamein, North Africa, in the Syria-Lebanon campaign, in Burma, in the battle for Singapore” during the Second World War.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is not only leading his country's biggest ever trade mission to India, including Rolls-Royce and BP, he is also showing how to mix business and politics by announcing faster business visas, lifting of limits on Indian students and promoting cultural links. In the federation that is Australia, our biggest missions are now led by state premiers and while the numbers are great, the political level lacks real clout.