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Australia seeks to bolster relations with ASEAN

Australia is seeking to bolster ties with ASEAN member countries as the regional grouping introduced its Indo-Pacific geostrategic concept at the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok last week, emphasizing its centrality in the region

Sita W. Dewi (The Jakarta Post)
Canberra
Wed, July 3, 2019

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Australia seeks to bolster relations with ASEAN

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span>Australia is seeking to bolster ties with ASEAN member countries as the regional grouping introduced its Indo-Pacific geostrategic concept at the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok last week, emphasizing its centrality in the region.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) recently invited journalists from seven ASEAN nations to meet government officials as well as representatives of various agencies and civil society groups under its International Media Visit program. The meetings gave the institutions the opportunity to showcase their engagement with their respective ASEAN counterparts.

Australia has recognized the Indo-Pacific geostrategic concept in its security and foreign policy white papers in recent years, as one of the first nations to do so.

Government officials and opinion leaders agree that the time is ripe for Australia and its closest Asian neighbors to strengthen cooperation in various areas, especially in view of tensions surrounding the trade war between the United States and China, as well as Brexit, though a government official said Australia, at this point, was “remarkably unscathed to any large degree”.

“In the last decade or so, a lot of economic focus of the globe [has been on] the Asia-Pacific region, [it is] very much becoming the center, [while] the prominence of Europe and the US is not as strong as it was,” Assistant Trade and Investment Minister Mark Coulton told the visiting journalists at Parliament House in Canberra recently.

The ASEAN region is Australia’s third-largest trading partner, accounting for around 15 percent of Australia’s total trade. In 2017, Australia’s trade with ASEAN countries grew by 9 percent over 2016 to reach A$105 billion (US$73.6 billion), greater than its two-way trade with Japan or the US. In 2016, two-way investment between Australia and ASEAN was A$224 billion — higher than the two-way investment between Australia and China, according to Australian government publication ASEAN Now.

“We need to spread our risks out,” Coulton added, further revealing Australia’s expansive trade agenda in the Southeast Asian region and beyond.

Australia has signed bilateral trade agreements with a number of ASEAN countries, including the landmark Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA), which is expected to greatly boost trade and cooperation between the neighbors.

Coulton, who was part of the Australian delegation in bilateral talks with ASEAN members on several occasions, was upbeat that Australia and ASEAN — as a grouping or individual nations — could build mutually beneficial relations amid shifting influence of global powers.

“We see [our] role as a partner of ASEAN […]. We’re not [only] about goods, minerals or agricultural produce; a lot of our discussion [in bilateral talks also revolved] around education and training […],” he said.

Australia has been recognized for its education system, particularly vocational training, he added.

The ASEAN Summit in Bangkok was followed by the Group of 20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, during which US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a bilateral meeting to discuss the ongoing trade dispute. Whether the meeting results in immediate deals remains to be seen.

Questions have been raised as to how the Indo-Pacific strategy recently revealed by ASEAN would help the region mitigate the consequences of the trade war.

“The key question is: What is ASEAN’s strategy for engagement with the region around it?” said Ben Bland, director of the Southeast Asia project at Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute.

“It’s a time for hard choices,” he pointed out. “Australian and Southeast Asian leaders have said ‘we don’t want to take sides’. To me, that misses the point entirely, because neither China nor the US are asking anyone to take sides on every single issue.

“This is an era of tough choices. Don’t pretend that there’s only one choice or that you don’t have to make any choices,” Bland said.

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