{"id":33525,"date":"2017-08-14T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T20:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=33525"},"modified":"2017-08-12T18:51:25","modified_gmt":"2017-08-12T08:51:25","slug":"oz-foreign-policy-temperature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-foreign-policy-temperature\/","title":{"rendered":"Oz foreign policy temperature"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The snow on the Brindabella Range was icing Canberra\u2019s wind as I slipped into Old Parliament House to take the temperature of Oz international policy and check the strategic weather forecasts.<\/p>\n

The prophets of the ANU\u2019s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs were holding their annual \u2018Australia 360\u2019\u00a0<\/a>(PDF) foreign affairs stocktaking. The academic gurus had to give the last 12 months of Oz policy a temperature grade\u2014hot, cold, lukewarm …<\/p>\n

The consensus tended towards tepid. This column loves a metaphor, so there\u2019s our theme.<\/p>\n

The shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, kicked off with a prediction of sunny days ahead<\/a> under a future Shorten Labor government. If her forecast arrives, everyone in Canberra better find a copy of Julia Gillard\u2019s white paper on Australia in the Asian century. If you tossed it into the recycling bin when Abbott arrived, fear not. While the PM\u2019s department was Orwellian and deleted the paper from its site, Defence still has a sense of history and has the Gillard white paper here<\/a> (PDF).<\/p>\n

Wong said a Labor government will take tone and temperature from Australia in the Asian century<\/em>, adding these four items:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Climate change: renewed energy and vigour in negotiating international agreements.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. China: a policy that begins with what China actually is, rather than peering at it through the lens of risk management. No \u2018reflexive negativity\u2019 about the Belt and Road Initiative\u2014embrace it case by case according to Oz interests.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. US alliance: \u2018the US is of paramount importance to us\u2019. The alliance needs to be built around shared interests in global stability, peace and security. \u2018We need to ensure that it is both sensitive to the changes underway in the Asia Pacific region and conducive to creating a more confident, vibrant and robust regional security dialogue.\u2019<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Foreign aid: re-establish aid programs that give real benefits to struggling nations, \u2018especially in our own region\u2014Timor-Leste, PNG and the South Pacific\u2019. My aside: While Tony Abbott went at<\/span> aid with an axe<\/span><\/a>, Julia Gillard started the cuts. If Labor goes big\/bigger\/biggish on aid, it\u2019s ditching Gillard\u2019s heritage in favour of Kevin Rudd (and John Howard), who delivered aid\u2019s<\/span> golden age<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now to the ANU temperature reports.<\/p>\n

    Meeting on the 50th anniversary of the day ASEAN was founded, Matthew Davies said Oz\u2013ASEAN relations are lukewarm, trending upwards towards the ASEAN summit<\/a> in Sydney in March.<\/p>\n

    Dr Amy King worried that things have got chilly with China: \u2018Australia has gone very negative on China.\u2019<\/p>\n

    By contrast, James Batley felt balmy South Pacific breezes (\u2018warmish, going even warmer\u2019). At last year\u2019s Pacific Islands Forum, Malcolm Turnbull promised a new Oz strategy for the islands, a weather system that\u2019s yet to arrive. More, please, in the foreign affairs white paper and, presumably, at the Pacific Islands Forum summit, if the prime minister gets to it. Ministers have been out and about in the South Pacific, and the Governor-General, Peter Cosgrove, is a useful deployable asset. Batley\u2019s list of significant events in the previous 12 months:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The French territories\u2014New Caledonia and French Polynesia\u2014gained full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum. The regional diplomatic system is in flux, and the new French role will have unpredictable consequences for the forum.<\/span><\/li>\n
    2. RAMSI was wrapped up<\/span> after 14 years<\/span><\/a>, a huge event for Australia in the region, for Pacific cooperation and for Solomon Islands as a nation.<\/span><\/li>\n
    3. PNG\u2019s election returned Peter O\u2019Neill to power, a prime minister who has \u2018changed the way PNG is governed, centralising and reducing accountability in the system\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Looking at climate change and the South Pacific, George Carter said the islands are using climate issues to reinvent their diplomacy and get fresh streams of finance and aid. The forecast: always tropical.<\/p>\n

      Surveying the United States, Geoffrey Wiseman was lukewarm. America, he said, has \u2018crowned a fool king\u2019 who\u2019ll run a \u2018military-centric foreign policy\u2019. Australia has given Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, but he\u2019s like the broken clock\u2014only right twice a day.<\/p>\n

      On China and the South China Sea, Greg Raymond said Australia has found the Goldilocks position\u2014not too hot, not too cold, continuing air patrols and naval transits as we have for decades \u2018but not launching a program aimed at trying to contain China\u2019.<\/p>\n

      Mixing the metaphor, John Blaxland sees Australia\u2019s glass half full while Hugh White worries about the emptiness of the glass. Blaxland blessed our luck in living next to ASEAN as a \u2018proto great power\u2019. Despite the froth and narcissism of Oz politics, he said, Australia is doing \u2018remarkably well\u2019 in Asia.<\/p>\n

      Hugh White\u2019s response is that Australia \u2018is in the midst of a huge shift in the way Asia is working and we\u2019re still pretending it\u2019s not happening\u2019. Australia hasn\u2019t confronted a binary choice between China and the US, he said, but rougher weather looms: \u2018We haven\u2019t faced that choice yet, but we might have that choice in the future if the strategic rivalry between China and the US continues to escalate as it has over the past few years.\u2019<\/p>\n

      From the audience, ASPI\u2019s maven, Rod Lyon, commented on the clustering around tepid\/lukewarm, showing Oz foreign policy can\u2019t do everything simultaneously: \u2018Are we just struggling to prioritise and focus?\u2019 Ever a mighty metaphor man, the Lyon judgement over coffee crammed it into one line: \u2018Australia doesn\u2019t have enough butter for all our toast!\u2019 Warmed my day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The snow on the Brindabella Range was icing Canberra\u2019s wind as I slipped into Old Parliament House to take the temperature of Oz international policy and check the strategic weather forecasts. The prophets of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":33526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,41,416,601],"class_list":["post-33525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asia-pacific","tag-asian-century","tag-australian-government","tag-foreign-affairs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOz foreign policy temperature | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-foreign-policy-temperature\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oz foreign policy temperature | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The snow on the Brindabella Range was icing Canberra\u2019s wind as I slipped into Old Parliament House to take the temperature of Oz international policy and check the strategic weather forecasts. 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