Former prime minister Paul Keating has warned Australia's influence on the international stage is waning and the country is a much more marginal power compared to 20 years ago.
He called for a more nuanced foreign policy that takes into account the big seismic shifts in the world, saying Australia can't ever be caught up in a policy of containing China.
"Strategic hegemony by the United States in the Pacific is incapable of preservation and therefore we should be urging our American friends, because they are our friends, to recognise that the US has got to move from a framing and guaranteeing role to a balancing and conciliating role," he told the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
