By Fergus Hanson for ISN Security WatchA lively campaign has barely touched upon Australia's increasingly important and complex foreign relations, Fergus Hanson writes for ISN Security Watch.
Australians will go to the polls on Saturday, 21 August, and while election campaigning has been firmly grounded in domestic matters – as most modern elections are - what is striking here is the almost complete lack of focus on foreign policy.
A quick glance at the two candidates’ CVs explains why: Neither has had much of anything at all to do with foreign affairs.
Foreign policy novices
In April this year, in his first speech on foreign policy, opposition leader Tony Abbott opened with these disarming remarks: “As the leader of the party, obviously it’s my challenge to rise to areas of expertise and understanding that haven’t been my forte in the past. It’s always an interesting challenge.”
Incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard is also an unknown when it comes to foreign policy. She only came to power a few months ago without any background in international affairs. (On 24 June she was promoted from deputy prime minister after ousting her former boss, Kevin Rudd.)
After the leadership coup, foreign policy analysts were left poring over the scantest of evidence to try and decipher how she might operate on the international stage.
The contrast with the previous election is striking. As a former diplomat and the western world’s first Chinese-speaking leader, Kevin Rudd came to power promising a flurry of new international activity and quickly earned the moniker ‘Kevin 747’ for his hyperactive global travel schedule.
The state of play in foreign affairs
The fundamentals of Australian foreign policy, such as the centrality of the US alliance, are accepted by both sides. But there are considerable differences in nuance that will pose serious challenges.
In Afghanistan, Australia recently suffered the death of its 18th soldier; seven of those deaths came this year alone. Not surprisingly, there is some unease in the electorate about Australia’s continued participation in the war - particularly as America’s European allies begin to withdraw.
On the trading front, relations with Australia’s second largest export market, Japan, have soured after a diplomatic snub followed by the then-Rudd government making good on a promise to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over its ‘scientific’ whaling program.
Relations with New Delhi are also on the rocks after the Rudd-government reversed a decision by its predecessor to sell it uranium, and then mishandled a spate of attacks on Indian students living in Australia.
On climate change the Australian government’s credibility on the world stage has been blackened. Though the government talked the talk in the years leading up to Copenhagen, just months before his ouster, Rudd announced that he did not plan to introduce an emissions trading scheme in Australia until at least 2013. So much for climate change, in Rudd’s earlier words, being “the great challenge of our generation.”
And on Australia’s immediate doorstep challenges also abound. Fiji’s military dictator, Frank Bainimarama, is now firmly entrenched; Papua New Guinea (a former Australian colony) is experiencing a resources boom that will be hard to manage given weak governance; and Australia’s relations with Indonesia, while solid at a government-to-government level, need a lot of work.
It’s a crowded international agenda for whoever wins on 21 August. The big question though is how the future leader will respond.
Growing into the role
Gillard, who is just ahead in most polls, has moved on from her youthful flirtation with socialism and appears as committed to the US security alliance as anyone.
Her defense minister has ruled out any increase in troop levels to Afghanistan and tried to sketch a clear exit strategy, but he has also announced he is stepping down after the election.
Gillard has gotten off to a rough start on the foreign policy front. Her first failure was a proposal to have refugees trying to reach Australia by boat first register themselves in East Timor – a proposal East Timor rejected out of hand.
The biggest factor shaping a Gillard foreign policy could be her choice of foreign minister. Incumbent Finance Minister Stephen Smith had been playing understudy to his old boss, Kevin Rudd, but his hold on the job now seems tenuous. When she became prime minister, Gillard promised Rudd a senior ministry if re-elected, which many assume will be the Foreign Ministry.
Should that be the case, the public would expect some continuity with Rudd’s past foreign policy objectives: pursuit of a temporary UN Security Council seat, continued work on nuclear non-proliferation and perhaps even an attempt to revive his ill-fated Asia-Pacific Community proposal. Without a country to run, he might step up his activism, though it is difficult to envision relations with either Japan or India rebounding anytime soon.
Abbott, for his party, went somewhat further in outlining his worldview in an April speech to the Lowy Institute. He pointed to the centrality of the US alliance, but idiosyncratically said that the “Anglosphere was the heart of the Western alliance” - a notion Australia’s close friends in Asia might find rather quaint, if not offensive.
Abbott rejects Gillard’s plans to seek a temporary UN Security Council seat as a waste of time and effort, and has also proposed rebuilding relations with India by reconsidering the sale of uranium. He also said his government “would be prepared to consider doing more” in Afghanistan.
Just when it seemed like there would be no serious discussion of international issues in this campaign, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop debated against Foreign Minister Stephen Smith a week before election day. While it was a reasonably substantive debate, it tended to focus on box ticking, stock-standard foreign policy lines.
Reflective of the campaign’s lack of foreign policy attention, it was only in the Q&A after the debate that a journalist accused the two parties of not having “said anything substantial about China during this election campaign,” even though it is “the single biggest question in this region.”
Smith hit back, saying, “I'm very happy to respond to the first question I've received in the campaign on China.”It’s an extraordinary reality given the huge challenge the next government will face managing relations with an increasingly assertive China, which is also Australia’s single largest trading partner.
While both candidates are new to foreign affairs and there could be some initial uncertainty in the direction of Australian foreign policy, there is no reason to panic. One of Australia’s longest serving prime ministers, John Howard, came to office with little foreign affairs experience, yet he grew into a very active international player.
Fergus Hanson is a Research Fellow and Director of the Lowy Poll Project at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia.
