At the Britain-Australia Society’s President’s Reception 2026, held at Australia House, Chair Damian Walsh sat down with Society President Lord Hague of Richmond and HE the Hon Jay Weatherill AO, Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK, for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of the bilateral relationship and the world around it.
The discussion opened on early years education and Australia’s under-16 social media ban, with Weatherill making the case that the policy has handed parents and schools “permission” to have a conversation they were previously fighting alone.
Hague agreed, pointing to Britain’s own plans to follow suit and warning that “media that is designed to be addictive… is in the end probably not compatible with democracy.”
From there the conversation moved through the depth of the UK-Australia relationship, the AUKMIN dialogues, the joint UK-Australia AI Safety and Security memorandum, and a candid assessment of AI as both the great strategic risk and the great scientific opportunity of the coming decade.
Hague was blunt about the mismatch between regulatory pace and AI’s rate of capability growth: “it takes years to make a law, but it takes only a few months for AI to improve maybe tenfold.”
The pair also covered:
• The Iran conflict and its knock-on effects for Ukraine and Taiwan deterrence
• The emergence of “middle power” (or, as Hague suggested, “constructive power”) diplomacy
• Three years of the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, and the new UK-Australia Economic Security Dialogue
• Gender equality, conflict-related sexual violence, and the shockingly low 8% of FTSE 350 and ASX-equivalent CEOs who are women
• The global rise of populist politics, and why both speakers see the answer in delivery rather than rhetoric
Closing the evening, Weatherill thanked the Society for giving the Australian diaspora “a home away from home,” while Hague reflected on eight years as President and the instinctive trust that underpins the UK-Australia relationship at every level.
