Australia’s Asian destiny is clear

Reluctant celebration: More and more Australians are uncomfortable with celebrating Jan 26 as National Day as it marks the advent of British colonialism in 1788. — AFP

QUEEN Elizabeth II is dead. Long live Victoria.

Queensland, Tasmania, Northern Territory, Western Australia and New South Wales too, for that matter.

Those who turned to the website of Sydney’s Lowy Institute this week for the latest edition of its well-followed annual Power Index may have noticed the following lines at the bottom of the institute’s home page: “The Lowy Institute acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which the institute stands, and pays respects to their elders, past and present.”

The think-tank’s tip of the hat to the Gadigals, the original inhabitants of the area in New South Wales where now stands Australia’s business capital, is a part of wider trends that urge a look away from the nation’s white colonial heritage, to a history before colonialism, and, in the other direction, a future tied to the region it inhabits.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it would stop using pictures of the British monarch on A$5 notes. An indigenous design honouring “First Australians” will take its place. King Charles III may yet appear on some coins, but the last of the bank notes that had the monarch on them will disappear.

Likewise, more and more Australians are uncomfortable with celebrating Jan 26 as National Day as it marks the advent of British colonialism in 1788. Victoria state cancelled its Australia Day parade and many believe it is only a matter of time before the wider nation picks another day to celebrate its nationhood.

While some of this no doubt reflects modern day “woke” attitudes and a growing taste for republicanism, the Australian appetite to plant itself firmly in the region and lay claim to be of it, is taking on new momentum. Some of that has already manifested in immigration data. Nearly three out of 10 Australians today are foreign- born, and Asians predominate in the intake.

Australia was settled in the late 18th century as a British colony, and the first legislation passed there was for a white Australia policy. That instantly set up Asia as a “threat”. Nevertheless, an Asian streak in its orientation was evident from very early on. Australia had a trade commission in Shanghai in the 1920s, and in Japan the following decade.

Following the disruptions of World War II, it built strong economic ties with a Japan then led by premier Nobosuke Kishi (the late former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s grandfather). As colonial parent Britain turned increasingly towards the European Common Market, the Gough Whitlam government set the stage for China recognition, and eventually the dumping of the white Australia policy.

In recent times, the nation owes much to Paul Keating, who as prime minister from 1991 to 1996, advanced respect for aboriginal affairs and pushed engagement with Asia with phrases like “We get our security in Asia, not from Asia”.

Turning into a republic will probably hasten that process. As the decision on the A$5 note shows, the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 could one day come to be seen as a key fork in the journey of Australia as a nation, breaking its umbilical cord to the United Kingdom and setting things up for a new direction.

That said, some elements of Australia will need fixing.

The Covid-19 epidemic that began in 2020 exacerbated racial suspicions, and a survey by the Australian National University suggested that 85% of Asian Austra-lians experienced some form of racism during the pandemic. Chinese Australians bore the brunt.

Although the high-profile Malaysia-born Penny Wong, Foreign Minister in the current government whose part-English, part-Chinese ancestry contributed to optically reducing the racial imbalance lately, a 2018 report by the Australian Human Rights Commission estimated that 95% of the most senior leaders in Austra-lian business, politics, government and higher education had an Anglo-Celtic or European background.

That said, an undeniable commitment to multiracialism and tolerance has seeped into Aussie society. When a Muslim gunman held people hostage at a Sydney cafe some years ago, one of the trending Twitter threads was #illridewithyou, as Australians reached out to Muslim compatriots to assure them that there would be no xenophobic backlash.

Indeed, the changing racial mix will inevitably weigh on future national strategy and external policy.

A look at the top five countries of birth for foreign-born Australians as reported by the 2021 census shows England in lead position with 927,490 people, followed by India with 673,352. China, not counting Hong Kong and Taiwan, accounted for 549,618. New Zealand was just behind with 530,492, and the Philippines was fifth with 293,892.

Canada, another former British colony that currently seems even more welcoming of immigrants – especially Asians – recently published an Indo-Pacific strategic doctrine that in effect lines it up as a sort of second deputy sheriff to the United States in the Indo-Pacific, a label for which Australia surely must be given first claim.

As much as its changing social face, Australia’s strategic interests are fully enmeshed with Asia now. It was Asean’s first dialogue partner so many decades ago. With first Japan, then China, supplanting Europe as its top trading partner, its economic interests are rooted in the region as well – hence its emphasis on freedom of navigation in the seas and in the air.

Canberra once misjudged China’s economic rise; the 2003 foreign policy White Paper described China as “much less powerful” than Japan, and estimated it would take more than a decade for China to pass Japan’s economy in size. But China passed that landmark in 2010, and became Australia’s top trading partner in even less time.

It has no intention of now misreading China on the strategic front, and the nomenclature reflects it.

Even as late as 2012, when the Julia Gillard government published its Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, it was referring to the region as Asia-Pacific. By 2017, that had changed and, following the US lead, Canberra switched to the “Indo-Pacific” coinage. That nomenclature comes loaded with its own subliminal meanings, particularly the underplaying of China’s centrality to the region.

In a remarkable speech delivered on Jan 31 at King’s College, London, Foreign Minister Wong asserted that Australia today is a modern, multicultural country, home to people of more than 300 ancestries and the oldest continuing culture on earth.

“Australia sees itself as being in the Indo-Pacific, and being of the Indo-Pacific,” she said. “It matters most consequentially to all of us because it is the region in which the reshaping of our world is centred. As security and economic dynamics that have held for decades are shifting, the strategic environment is changing. We all have a role to play in this reshaping.”

As she sees it, Australia sees investment in future defence capabilities such as nuclear submarines as essential for deterring conflict and maintaining a strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific. Hence, the Aukus agreement – the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – and arrangements like Quad – an informal strategic forum comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States – that link it strategically to all these countries.

In our modern, tightly woven world, what happens in Europe reverberates in the Indo-Pacific, Wong concluded in that speech. And what happens in the Indo-Pacific reverberates in Europe.

That last thought is also a theme that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been promoting. And when Wong’s Indian counterpart, Dr S. Jaishankar, tells Europe to “grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”, he is not saying anything much different, except that he adds on the suggestion that Europe should have awakened to the so-called China threat years ago!

Some years ago one would have spoken of Australia’s peculiar dilemma – the United States for security, China for prosperity. Today, Canberra no more squats on those horns. The broad directions are getting increasingly clear; no more will economic considerations prevail over security. The colonial moorings are important still, and both Aukmin, the joint ministerial meeting with the United Kingdom, and Aukus, the trilateral which also brings in the United States, are important underpinnings. But so too, wider quasi alliances such as the Quad as well as the tightening embrace of Japan on security matters.

This is not to say that all Australian voices speak as one; Keating, for one, seems increasingly at odds with his nation’s bipartisan consensus that seeks to draw a line on perceived Chinese assertiveness. Nor does he believe that Taiwan is vital to Australia’s interest. Others like Bob Carr, the former New South Wales premier and former foreign minister, would like to see more nuance in Australia’s China policy. Important as they are, such voices are blowing in the wind. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network

Ravi Velloor is an associate editor at The Straits Times.