The Australia-ASEAN Dialogue

In the twenty-first century, the strategic importance of Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—ASEAN—to Australia’s regional interests has been brought into focus by the rivalry between China and the United States. Now the United States sees ASEAN as a “cornerstone” of its Pacific Asia policy, and China perceives it as “connecting” with or a “supporter” of its grand strategy. Both the United States and China are attempting to win over ASEAN rather than intimidate it. Nevertheless, Southeast Asia is too often overlooked by Australians when they think about the importance of Asia; and the functions, centrality and possibilities of ASEAN are little understood. It is also remarkably sad that unspoken and deeply rooted mutual skepticism has dominated Australia-ASEAN relations. While Australia tends to dismiss the force of ASEAN, Southeast Asian states tend to dismiss the role of Australia in regional affairs. Such mutual skepticism is not healthy, nor is it productive. Moreover, such mutual skepticism lacks a sophisticated and balanced understanding of the Australia-ASEAN relationship.

There is no doubt that Australia and ASEAN have developed a productive working relationship over their 40 years of Dialogue Partnership. Their many intersections of engagement—through formal ASEAN processes, free trade agreements (FTAs), memoranda of understanding, and across a range of sectors including education, tourism, cultural heritage, and the arts—have been documented over the last decade.¹ After the Asian Financial Crisis (1997–98), and the formalization of processes such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, 1994), the East Asia Summit (EAS, 2004), and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meetings-Plus (ADMM+, 2011), Australia has been keen to maximize future economic opportunities—through bilateral and multilateral FTAs, for example—and to play its part in securing peace and stability in the region—through leadership of initiatives such as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992 and (though controversially) INTERFET (International Force East Timor) in 1999, plus a multitude of arrangements such as those in place with the Australian Federal Police. This expanding network of formal engagement is valuable on both a functional basis and in terms of guaranteeing Australia’s ongoing goodwill and cooperation with its region. Over 40 years these reliable and steady ties have become, a Malaysian economist observed, like “a long dependable marriage.”² It is an image that can conjure a picture of either close mutual understanding or of a fairly dull union bound by routine and duty.

Australians have been known to agonize over their engagement with Asia. To shift its abiding Asia-anxiety, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans suggested in the early 1990s that it was time for Australia to “seek security with Asia rather than from it.” How has this predicament of belonging influenced and shaped Australian engagement with Asian regionalism? Australia’s contributions to the building of regional architecture are not in question here. Rather, it is argued that Australia’s participation in the emerging regionalism of post-Cold War Asia has been defined implicitly by a focused and sustained attentiveness to the evolving strategic and economic milieu of Asia, and in that regard, the growing power and influence of China. To that end, Australian policy makers have consciously sought to construct a regional architecture favorable to Australia’s efforts to engage deeply with the world’s established and emerging powers, and where peaceful and cooperative relations between China and the United States could be nurtured and advanced in the interest of regional peace and stability. It is the imperative of big power diplomacy and less so engagement with Southeast Asia, argued here, that has historically animated and defined Australia’s contributions to regionalism in Asia, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

The Australian government places great emphasis on the East Asia Summit (EAS) as the key regional grouping in the Asia-Pacific region. It celebrates Australia’s role as a “founding member” of the EAS, which was established in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. The EAS has become increasingly prominent in the region, and Australian foreign ministry officials publicly state that it is the regional institution of the highest priority. Why does Australia put so much emphasis on the EAS? And what are the implications for Australia’s relations with ASEAN? This chapter explores Australia’s emphasis on the EAS and the implications this has for Australia’s role in the broader regional architecture,¹ and its relations with individual ASEAN states. Australia’s prioritization of the EAS is partly due to the membership of particular states (particularly China and the United States), which are strategically significant and important trading partners. Australian officials refer to the “security agenda” and potential for confidence-building measures in the EAS. However, the chapter argues that while Australia should certainly remain engaged with the EAS, it must be careful not to neglect relations with ASEAN states—its closest neighbors, which provide important opportunities for closer economic and strategic cooperation. In particular, indications that Australia may want the EAS to be more independent of ASEAN might not bode well for Australia-ASEAN relations. The Australian government should also remain cognizant of the limits to the EAS given the tensions and rivalry among particular members.

At varying levels of intensity, Timor-Leste has repeatedly been a focus of the Indonesia-Australia relationship since the early 1970s. While other Western governments were supportive of Indonesia’s forced annexation of Portuguese Timor during the Cold War, Australia was the only country to offer de jure recognition of Indonesia’s occupation. Yet by 1999, bilateral tensions were at an historic peak as Australian-led peacekeeping forces entered Timor-Leste in the wake of a UN-backed referendum, which saw 78.5 percent vote for independence. Fifteen years later, relations with its two giant neighbors remain the focus of Timor-Leste’s foreign policy orientation: Indonesia is its largest trading partner, and Australia remains its largest bilateral aid donor.

The terrorist attack in Bali on October 12, 2002, “brought home to Australia the global reach of terrorism.”¹ The murderous attack on the innocent tourists partying at the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in Bali’s popular Kuta area came as a shock to Australia, but was perhaps not so surprising to those with specific expertise or information. “The attack,” according to former foreign minister Alexander Downer, “confirms what we have all long suspected, and feared.”² After 9/11 the question was no longer whether terrorists would strike again, but where, when, and how. In Bali, Australia’s new security threat materialized. For the Australian Government, terrorism differed from Cold War security concerns in that this threat was “transnational,” “of a previously unknown scale,” and was caused by a “different kind of conflict.”³ It not only differed from traditional international security concerns Australia had encountered in the Cold War, but also from the forms of terrorism that Australia had experienced in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Asian region is host to the largest number of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced people in the world, yet on the whole, the region is ill-equipped to respond effectively to this problem. One of the main difficulties is the absence of legal frameworks: most Asian states do not have specific refugee laws, and many continue to reject international refugee laws. The very act of crossing national boundaries means that forced migrants implicate at least two, and often many more, states in their plight, and so cooperation between states is needed to provide effective solutions. In the Asian region few bilateral or regional agreements on this issue exist. Consequently, forced migration has become a serious and protracted dilemma that impacts Southeast Asia politically, socially, and economically. For those people who have fled their homeland to seek asylum in the region, the journey can be a dangerous, expensive, and long process. ASEAN, as the overarching cooperative organization in Asia, is best placed to facilitate agreements in order to develop effective responses to forced migrants in the region. Historically ASEAN has not responded well to forced migration issues, but recent developments signal a greater awareness and the role it might play. This has coincided with a push by Australia to raise the profile of the issue in regional forums such as the Bali Process, and to create its own bilateral agreements and temporary solutions.

Since 1974, when Australia became ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner, Australia-ASEAN relations have experienced many ups and downs over regional and global economic issues. Some economic initiatives between Australia and ASEAN went well and others did not. Through these experiences, both parties gained a better understanding of what to expect from each other in the area of economic cooperation.

Clearly evident over the past 40 years, since Australia became ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner in 1974, is an evolving set of relations, notably including education. In turn, this sector needs to be set against the rich and multifaceted intra-ASEAN diversity, including religious, cultural and linguistic diversity, both within and between ASEAN member states, and levels of development, from wealthy, technologically highly developed nations such as Singapore, to very poor developing nations such as Laos and Myanmar (see Table 8.1). This chapter reviews the complex, changing relations between ASEAN and Australia in the education realm, focusing largely on higher education. This is not to diminish the importance of the school, or vocational education and training sectors, but rather a means to provide a sharper focus, as well as a reflection of the fact that higher education has been the most dynamic subsector within ASEAN-Australia relations in education. For much the same reasons, country data is also selective, with a focus largely on five key ASEAN member states—Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam—which encompass both the world’s largest majority-Muslim nation, as well as a range of levels of development and political ideologies.¹

On her visit to India in 2012, former prime minister Julia Gillard noted that Australia was experienced in negotiating agreements on uranium: “We’ve done it in the past, and we’ve done it on the basis that Australian uranium is only used for peaceful purposes.” ¹ Her visit to India was a milestone in overturning the Labor Party’s longstanding policy that banned uranium exports to nuclear-armed India. Little has changed since then even with Australia’s new federal government taking office in September 2013. In fact, given the rising prices of Australia’s natural resources, uranium exports are likely to be further catalyzed under Tony Abbott’s prime ministership given the emphasis on economic growth in Liberal Party policy. Gillard’s reversal of the ban on uranium exports also sets the stage for potentially expanding ASEAN-Australia economic ties. This is particularly so given the increasing energy demands of Southeast Asian countries, coupled with proposed civil nuclear energy projects to meet the demand, despite the initial shocks and aversion to nuclear energy following the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March 2011.

Australia and ASEAN have the potential to grow their existing AgriFood relationships toward a sustainable and mutually beneficial regional industry. This can be achieved through an improved understanding of each country’s food supply and demand realities and how each is expected to evolve over the next 50 years. The nature of AgriFood and the natural environment, climatic change and pollution, is inevitably interconnected and pays little attention to national borders. The most effective agricultural production systems require Australia and ASEAN countries to connect and collaborate to ensure sustainable and abundant food supplies for the region’s growing populations. Southeast Asian nations have already made a number of important strides in beginning to address the region’s long-term food security challenge. However the sensitive nature of food makes bridging the gap between an open and free regional market, and the temptation to protect domestic food markets, all the more difficult.

The Australia in the Asian Century white paper launched in 2012 recognized that Australia’s future is inextricably linked with Asia. It urged Australian firms to be highly innovative and to develop collaborative relationships with others in the Asian region. One such area of opportunity is Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF), which has become a global phenomenon, with regional IBF hubs developing across the ASEAN region. IBF is a growing niche Asian market that, if understood better, could assist Australia’s large infrastructure needs and allow Australian corporate access to new pools of offshore funding and tap into an alternative investor base. Subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), federal and state governments in Australia showed some increased interest in developing the IBF sector. This was in part due to the tightening of credit during the GFC, the need to access cheaper wholesale funds and a desire to make Australia a regional financial services hub. In 2008, the federal government commissioned a report on how to develop Australia into a financial center. One recommendation of the report, titled Australia as a Financial Centre—Building on our Strengths (also known as the Johnson Report),¹ was to encourage the development of IBF by arguing that the competitiveness of Australia’s financial services sector offers great opportunities for Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) to do business in Australia or to export their products to Asia. Then in 2011, there was an inquiry by the Board of Taxation into whether Australian tax laws need to be amended to ensure that IBF products have parity of treatment with conventional products.

The proverbial “man from Mars” would see immediately the fundamental importance of ASEAN to Australia. This is the region of Asia geographically closest to Australia—a region of growing states, with economies no longer small by Australian standards; a region offering great economic opportunities, but also where Australia must work hard to negotiate the defense, immigration, quarantine, policing, and other border issues that are considered of fundamental importance to the Australian national community. Today Southeast Asia is beginning to be viewed as the priority region by Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK)—the prime minister of Japan visited every ASEAN capital in 2013—and is taken increasingly seriously by the United States. Yet it might be argued that no external country has a larger stake in this region than Australia. The problem is that Australians—with a few notable exceptions—do not see things in these terms, and nor do many Southeast Asians. The chapters in this book provide not only an overview of Australia-ASEAN relations, detailing the history and throwing light on the breadth of our interactions with the region, but also help us to appreciate how and why the Australia-ASEAN relationship has been neglected.