ASEAN–AUSTRALIA RELATIONS: LOCATION, POSITION, AND TIMING Malcolm Cook The last two years have seen the ASEAN– Australia dialogue partner relationship reach a new level of engagement. In March 2018, Sydney, Australia hosted the ASEAN–Australia Special Summit, the first ASEAN–Australia Summit to be held outside of Southeast Asia. Nine of the ten Southeast Asian political leaders made the long trip down under to Sydney. Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte sent his foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano. For a number of the Southeast Asian leaders, this was their first-ever official trip to Australia. The special summit delivered the Sydney Declaration, a lengthy and detailed joint statement that reflects the depth and scope of the existing engagement.1 In August 2019, the two sides followed up and released in Bangkok the fourteen-page 2020–2024 Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN–Australia Strategic Partnership. ASEAN–Australia Dialogue Partner relations were elevated to the status of a strategic partnership at the first ever ASEAN–Australia Commemorative Summit in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in 2014, held to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of ASEAN–Australia dialogue relations. In May 2020, Australia and ASEAN agreed that the regular ASEAN–Australia Leaders Summits, held on the sidelines of the November ASEAN Summits, which had commenced on a biennial basis in 2016, should become an annual event. Australia is the sixth of the ten ASEAN dialogue partners to be granted annual summits after Japan, China, the USA, South Korea, and India. Russia, the European Union, New Zealand, and Canada do not have regularly scheduled summits with ASEAN leaders. In June 2020, Australia became the sixth dialogue partner to hold a bilateral ministerial-level 120
REGIONAL ISSUES
meeting with ASEAN to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and support for ASEAN’s pandemic response. China, Japan, the USA, Russia, and the European Union were the five dialogue partners to get in ahead of Australia. South Korea participated in the ASEAN+3 ministerial and leaders’ meetings addressing the pandemic. Australia, along with China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand, have committed to signing the ASEAN-based Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement by the end of 2020. India pulled out from RCEP in late 2019, while the USA, the European Union, Russia, and Canada were not invited by ASEAN to join the RCEP negotiations, as these dialogue partners do not have bilateral preferential trading agreements with ASEAN. Australia became ASEAN’s first official dialogue partner in 1974, followed a year later by New Zealand and in 1977 by Japan, the USA, the European Union, and Canada. Developments over the last two years show how strong these dialogue partner relations still are. Despite being the second-smallest ASEAN dialogue partner by population—much larger than New Zealand but much smaller than Canada—Australia is, by many counts, the fourth most engaged ASEAN dialogue partner ahead of the USA, India, Russia, the European Union, Canada, and New Zealand. Australia’s location on the southern maritime periphery of Southeast Asia and its position in the interstate system as a middle power focussed on East Asia explain Australia’s longest tenure as an ASEAN dialogue partner and Canberra’s enduring interest in supporting ASEAN and ASEAN–Australia relations. Recent regional strategic developments explain why the last two years have seen ASEAN–Australia
