Join Asia Society Australia at King & Wood Mallesons in the week of the historic ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Sydney for ASEAN 360°. A comprehensive briefing covering the trade and investment, geopolitics and social issues facing the region.Delivered by business, government, academic and media experts based in ASEAN and Australia, this lunchtime panel discussion will provide a deep dive into the critical issues for Australia – ASEAN, for senior business and policy leaders’ shaping our engagement with the region.
Date: Monday 12 March
Time: 12.00 -2.00pm
Venue: King & Wood Mallesons, Level 61, Governor Phillip Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney
This event is open to members of Asia Society Australia and invited guests only. If you are not a member and would like to attend, please contact programaustralia@asiasociety.org for more information.
For more on the event see the official website.
Our Panel
Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, Asia Society Global Co-Chair & Ambassador-at-Large, Singapore
Ambassador Chan chairs the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities in the Singapore University of Technology and Design. She is Chairman of the National Arts Council, a Member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights, a Member of the Constitutional Commission 2016 and Deputy Chairman of the Social Science Research Council. Ambassador Chan is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the National University of Singapore and a Member of the Yale-NUS Governing Board. She serves as a Member of the Advisory Council of Temasek Foundation Connects and also as a Member of the Executive Board of the China Cultural Centre. She is Global Co-Chair of Asia Society, and a Member of the International Advisory Panel, AXA Group, GIE AXA, Paris (France).
Previously, she was Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States and Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations with concurrent accreditation as High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico.
Ambassador Chan received a number of awards including The Public Administration Medal (Gold); The Meritorious Service Medal; The Distinguished Service Order; Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Newcastle, Australia; the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom); and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom). When Ambassador Chan left Washington at the end of her appointment, she received the Inaugural Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award, the Inaugural Foreign Policy Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award 2012 and the United States Navy Distinguished Public Service Award.
Dr Melissa Crouch, Senior Lecturer, UNSW
Dr Melissa Crouch is a Senior Lecturer at the Law Faculty, the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research contributes to the field of Asian Legal Studies, with a focus on Comparative Constitutional Law; Law and Development; and Law and Religion. She is currently Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Grant on “Constitutional Change in Authoritarian Regimes” (2018-2020). Melissa is the author of Law and Religion in Indonesia: Conflict and the Courts in West Java (Routledge, 2014). She is the editor of several volumes including ‘Islam and the State in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist Relations and the Politics of Belonging’ (OUP 2016), and The Business of Transition: Law, Development and Economics in Myanmar (CUP 2017). Melissa leads the UNSW Law Southeast Asia engagement strategy, and is the Myanmar Academic Lead for the UNSW Institute for Global Development.
Anna Green CEO, ANZ Bank Philippines
Anna is a senior banker and qualified lawyer with over 15 years of experience working across a range of simple and complex financing projects in Asia, the Pacific, Europe and Australia, in both developed and developing markets.
Currently CEO for ANZ in the Philippines, Anna has held key advisory roles within the Bank, in private legal practice and in government, leading large cross-border global financing transactions.
Prior to this, Anna was Chief Executive Officer for ANZ Laos. With the deep cross-jurisdictional expertise she has built with respect to risk, compliance and regulatory specific issues, Anna is regularly called upon by industry and government leaders to speak on economic and risk related issues in the ASEAN region.
Before joining ANZ, Anna worked for large international law firms Clayton Utz and Shearman and Sterling in both Australia and the UK specialising in Corporate, Project and Commercial finance.
Dr Aim Sinpeng, Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney
Aim’s research interests centre on the relationships between digital media, political participation and political regimes in Southeast Asia. She is particularly interested in the role of social media in shaping state-society relations and inducing political and social change. She is the co-founder of the Sydney Cyber Security Network and a Thailand country coordinator for the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre.
Aim has served as the Expert Contributor for Varieties of Democracy and Bartelsmann Transformation Index, which measure degrees and types of democracy, and is currently a Research Associate of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. In 2014, she was awarded a Young Southeast Asian Fellow by the prestigious Southeast Asia Research Group in recognition for her promising scholarship on Southeast Asia. Her previous works examine popular movements against democracy in democratizing states, particularly in Thailand.
Jewel Topsfield, Journalist
Jewel was recently Fairfax’s Indonesia correspondent. She is an award-winning journalist who has been with Fairfax Media for 10 years. Most recently, she was education editor at The Age for five years. Prior to that, she was the launch deputy editor of the National Times, Fairfax’s online opinion site. She also spent three years in the Canberra Press Gallery covering immigration, education, the environment and water
ASEAN Special Summit update
Simon Merrifield, Head of ASEAN-Australia Special Summit 2018 Taskforce
Simon Merrifield leads the Australian Government’s preparations for the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit, to be held in Australia in 2018. He is based in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra. Until late 2016, he served for three years as Australia’s first resident Ambassador to the Asssociation of Southeast Asian Nations, based in Jakarta. He is a career diplomat and was previously Senior Spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra. He has spent half his working life in South-East Asian countries, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia.
Melissa Crouch 