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Diplomacy has always been seen as a state-centric matter that views state as the only actor in international relations. Nevertheless, since the end of the Cold War, this belief has been challenged with the growing role of multinational as well as sub-state entities in international political arena. Malaysia-Australia relations have been shaped with numerous issues and challenges. Despite their bumpy political ties in the past (especially during the prime ministership of dr. Mahathir Mohamad) other spheres of the relationship remained unaffected. As such, a case study is conducted by looking at Sabah-Australia relations in terms of paradiplomatic practices. This research is qualitative in nature. Initial findings indicate that historical imperatives as well as trading interactions are two forms paradiplomatic practice that has contributed to strengthening of Malaysia-Australia relations.

Since gaining independence in 1963, Sabah economy has expanded gradually and become more diversified. From an economy that is heavily dependent on agriculture, fishery and forestry sector, the economy's GDP is currently also contributed by other important sectors like services, mining, and quarrying, manufacturing, and construction. Despite the expansion, the state is still far away from reaching high-income status. In this regard, this paper argues, to reach high-income status faster, the economy must increase down streaming activities, support and facilitate the adoption of IR4.0 and give attention to creative economic activities. All these, together with other contributing factors such as huge investment inflow, bigger annual federal allocation, conducive policy for business, and investment among others will help in expanding Sabah's economy faster.

Malaysia was ranked the first position in the Global Muslim Travel Index 2019 (Global Muslim Travel Index, 2019). Besides, the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019 ranked Malaysia at 29th out of 140 countries overall (Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, 2019). In the same report, from Travel and Tourism Policy and Enabling Conditions’ perspective, Malaysia was ranked at the 11th position (Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, 2019). Government of Malaysia has, among others, announced year 2020 as the Visit Malaysia Year to attract more tourists. The first month of the year had showed promising numbers of tourists’ arrivals. However, towards the end of January 2020, CoVID-19 outbreak presents the tourism industry with a major challenge. Following the outbreak, some countries have banned the arrival of tourists from certain countries. Accordingly, this has somehow affected the hotel industry. Based on feedbacks from hotel employees, this paper examines the preliminary effects on hotel industry in Sabah, Malaysia.

Sabah, Malaysia is moving steps forward by announcing the gazettement of some areas as geoparks. Part of the areas include the district of Ranau, Kota Marudu and Kota Belud. Some of the areas involved if not all are under a national park program prior to this. This gazettement undoubtedly has the potential to bring economic benefit to the state. It has the potential to increase land value, stimulating economic activities especially in the services sector via tourism activities, enhancing protection for environment and as a mean to control aggressive use of land for development. On the other hand, there are some concerns of stakeholders. Issues such as potential restriction for farmers to do agriculture related activities and relocation of village among others are potential concern among communities in Ranau, Kota Marudu and Kota Belud. In this regard, in order to examine the real concerns of various stakeholders, some series of roundtable discussions and interviews have been undertaken. Based on the preliminary assessment, very small number of individuals have worry about the geopark idea. Majority look at it positively.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which is now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans Pacific Partnership (CP-TPP) opens door of opportunities as well as challenges to Malaysia. The agreement has become subject of heated debate in Malaysia as well as other countries due to the reason that it may bringsome new elements which are not in the other earlier Free Trade Agreements (FTA) on which Malaysia has signed. Competition policy, government procurement, labor standard and WTO-Plus commitments in the agreement which is TRIPSPlus element which may affect access to medicine among others are among the contentious issues. This study focuses on one issue that is whether or not TPPA will bring significant effect on Malaysia’s export. In assessing the potential impact of the TPPA on Malaysia’s trade, the study uses gravity model to estimate the effects. The study found that FTA has positive effects on Malaysia’s export of beverages and tobacco (SITC-1), mineral fuels, lubricants and related materials (SITC-3),manufacturing goods classified chiefly by material (SITC- 6), machinery and transport equipment (SITC-7), miscellaneous manufactured articles (SITC-8) and commodities and transactions not classified elsewhere in the SITC (SITC-9) but negativeeffects on the export of food and live animals (SITC-0) export of animal and vegetable oils and fats (SITC-4).

Mainstream economic arguments posit that liberalization is the route latecomer economies should pursue to achieve income convergence between countries. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) offers a useful platform to test if trade liberalization has been accompanied by income convergence since the grouping have been among the most aggressive in promoting the removal of trade restrictions in the world. Owing to data limitations involving Brunei and the transition economies of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, the assessment is confined to the founding members, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The current paper tested the income convergence hypothesis by deploying some innovative and powerful unit root tests, such as the Fourier augmented Dickey–Fuller (FADF) and the Fourier ADF with structural breaks (FADF–SB) methods. However, the results show a positive causal relationship with 10% of the two-country pairings. Sixty percent of the two-country pairings showed no causal relationship at all, while the remaining 30% produced inconclusive results. These findings suggest that other variables, such as government focus on the science, technology and innovation infrastructure to promote structural transformation may be more important than trade liberalization efforts to reduce inter-country income gaps.

Food security in terms of food sufficiency has become a concern and subject of interest in Malaysia. Malaysia as a whole and Sabah in particular is not self-sufficient in terms of rice production for its own population. Sabah as a land abundant state does import rice from neighbouring countries to fulfil its domestic demand. This paper estimates the level of rice supply in Sabah before Malaysian formation and present for each single people in the state. Several ratio such as the production-per capita (PPC), consumption per-capita (CPC), import dependency ratio (IDR) and self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) are being computed to estimate the self-sufficient level. In addition, this paper highlights that Sabah should improve its self-sufficient position.