Thammasat University students interested in ASEAN studies, Australia, political science, international relations, diplomacy, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 20 May webinar: Special ASEAN Roundtable: ASEAN-Australia Relations for the Next 50 Years.

The event, on Monday, 20 May at 3pm Bangkok time, is presented by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of ASEAN and Australian interactions.

Students are invited to register for the Zoom webinar at this link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3817152447722/WN_ULos7oUtTsuX8wu6ZKGwbQ#/registration

The event webpage explains:

About the Webinar

The ASEAN Studies Centre at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, in partnership with the High Commission of Australia in Singapore, will organise a Special ASEAN Roundtable on “ASEAN-Australia Relations for the Next 50 Years”. The roundtable will discuss a newly published report titled “Comprehensive Strategic Partners: ASEAN and Australia After the First 50 Years” by Australian, Singaporean, Cambodian and Indonesian analysts on the past, present and future of the ASEAN-Australia connections.

A high-level panel comprising H.E. Allaster Cox, Australian High Commissioner to Singapore; Ms Karen Ong, Deputy Director-General of the ASEAN Directorate at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Professor Nicholas Farrelly, Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Tasmania; and Ms Sharon Seah, Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS will discuss the report’s findings. The discussion will cover contemporary issues including the Quad and the emergence of new minilaterals, as well as new AUKUS developments.

Mr Choi Shing Kwok, Director and CEO of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute will moderate the discussion.

About the Speakers

H.E. Allaster Cox is the Australian High Commissioner to Singapore. […]

Ms. Karen Ong has been the Deputy Director General at the ASEAN Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) since June 2022, covering issues across the three pillars of ASEAN Community. […]

Professor Nicholas Farrelly is a Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Tasmania. […]

Ms. Sharon Seah is Senior Fellow and concurrent Coordinator of ASEAN Studies Centre and the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. […]

An article posted in March on The Strategist — The Australian Strategic Policy Institute Blog noted:

Why ASEAN-Australia summits matter

The ASEAN-Australia leaders’ summit in Melbourne offers the opportunity for Australia to embrace ASEAN’s ‘inclusive regionalism’ and the organisation’s centrality in mediating the Indo-Pacific struggle between the great powers.

With the Albanese government’s $2bn investment facility, Australia’s engagement with Southeast Asia is starting to look serious. The new Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility to catalyse Australian investments in clean energy and infrastructure gave  Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a big-ticket initiative to grab the attention of fellow leaders at this week’s ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne.

The investment facility—a recommendation from the government’s Southeast Asia economic adviser Nicholas Moore—is a welcome sign of the government’s commitment to overcoming a glaring weakness in Australia’s international economic engagement. We keenly await the government’s full response to the Moore Report.

From a longer-term perspective, however, there is much more to the Summit than commerce. An equally important issue hanging over the discussions is Australia’s positioning in the changing Indo-Pacific and whether Canberra has the imagination to adjust our strategic posture to meet those changes.

Our first special summit in 2018 received only five lines in the 698-page political memoir of then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, and the Australian community continues to be preoccupied with China, and the US-China dynamic. This summit provides the opportunity to consider why Southeast Asia is so fundamentally important to us—and why the going might not be easy.

Geographic and economic imperatives make the Australia-ASEAN relationship vital in itself, but it is also the starting point for developing new possibilities for Australia’s strategic future.

There are no downsides to strengthening Australian interaction with Southeast Asia.  This is the region of Asia closest to Australia, where the major powers, including Washington and Beijing, assume us to be active. Engaging effectively with ASEAN can only enhance Australia’s wider influence. Also now, when the Indo-Pacific seems to be increasingly multipolar rather than American-led, it makes sense to define Australia internationally in terms of our tighter collaboration with ASEAN, as well as being a US ally. But there are challenges.

Certainly, Australia has assets with respect to ASEAN.  Apart from being ASEAN’s first dialogue partner 50 years ago, we possess strong scholarly and diplomatic expertise on Southeast Asia and our universities have been leading providers of Western education to the region.

Recently, however, the Australia-ASEAN relationship has transformed and many in the Australian community have not registered this. Our GDP was once larger than the combined total of ASEAN countries, and Australians tended to frame relations with the region as development assistance. Today the ASEAN figure is well over twice ours, larger than that of India and more than four-fifths the size of Japan. The Japanese leadership acknowledges that their old client relationship with the region is over. As for China, many ASEAN countries rank this economy as their top trade destination. Since 2020, ASEAN has achieved the status of being China’s top trading partner.

Despite such dramatic statistics, some commentators continue to refer to Southeast Asia as Australia’s ‘backyard’ and official government statements still speak of ‘development assistance to the Pacific and Southeast Asia’ as if the two regions are comparable.

Australia was more important to Southeast Asia in 1974 than it is today. Although ASEAN is our second largest trading partner, we just make it to eighth on their top ten list. China’s current dominance is well known. But South Korea, a minor player a few decades ago, today has twice our trade with Southeast Asia. With respect to investment, we are a very small player, with only 3.45% of our total investment stocks abroad going to the region. While Southeast Asia is attracting funds from many other countries, including in Europe, our outward investment tends to stay in the Anglosphere. It is good that the recent Moore Report addresses this investment gap—a gap that also damages Australia’s political influence.

That influence cannot be taken for granted. Five decades ago, we were the close ally of the region’s dominant power and viewed as a leader in economic development and democratic government. Today democracy has lost some of its shine—and the Singapore survey of Southeast Asian opinion leaders indicates China is seen as the country with most ‘political and strategic influence’. Australian contributions to the region continue to be seen as constructive, but many wealthy states are vying for the region’s attention. As a destination for tertiary education, Australia remains strong, although there are now fewer Southeast Asian leaders with Australian degrees.

While the focus on ‘climate and clean energy’ and the ‘blue economy’ at the March summit should be welcomed, deeper engagement with Southeast Asia means more investment, scholarships, and development initiatives. There are also vital differences in strategic culture that need to be taken seriously.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)