Asean-Australia Summit ends with deals, deals, deals!

Hello friends!

The Asean-Australia Summit is done. There’s a lot of money talk, which is definitely not the purview of this newsletter but some real smarties covered it and I’ve quoted them here. I’ve also taken a look into what some specific countries achieved while meeting with Australian PM Anthony Albanese or business leaders. Honestly, I found the summit to be way too finance-oriented and totally boring. But I can’t deny that if I were into such things I’d be very happy with how it all turned out. 

Also, I’m like 45% of the way to shifting over to Beehiiv so I think maybe by the end of next week we’ll be over at our new home! Am also planning to take a week or two off in late March or early April on account of having to get a real job for a while and planning all that out. But, updates are to come on both. 

Let’s crack in!

🇦🇺 Good friends and better deals with Asean

You’d think no one had any friends prior to Australia becoming a nation-state, the way we bang on about ‘mateship.’ Maybe we can give ourselves a free pass this week because it is remarkable to commemorate 50 years of chat between Australia and Asean, a bloc that looked entirely different in the 1970s and an Australia that has grown far more confident in its place in the world during that same time. 

It’s a lucrative friendship. The $2 billion Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility, announced Tuesday, will see Australia​​provide loans, guarantees, equity and insurance for increasing Australian trade and investment in the region, especially supporting its transition to clean energy and developing infrastructure,’ as per the Conversation. This piece lays it out all nicely. 

Call it Australia’s ‘baby BRI,’ Greg Earl writes for the Interpreter. A $2 billion Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility will ‘underwrite Australian business in the region.’ Earl notes Australia’s biggest companies haven’t really cracked Southeast Asia the way many probably have hoped to. The money stuff isn’t for me but I did have a laugh at this line: ‘Given Albanese is fond of declaring portentously that “Southeast Asia is where Australia’s future lies” as though that is a new idea, EFA [Export Finance Australia] is also being asked in effect to repair a 30-year policy gap.’ 

It does seem, with the intractability of the South China Sea and the conflict in Myanmar, that we’ve decisively entered a dark age of economic focus (and my personal boredom). It has been heading that way for a while, of course, but these last couple of years it’s increasingly ho-hum. Bilaterals still reign supreme on the juicy stuff. 

The statement

The three-day summit ended Wednesday with a joint statement focusing on peace: “We recognise the benefits of having the South China Sea as a sea of peace, stability, and prosperity. We encourage all countries to avoid any unilateral actions that endanger peace, security and stability in the region,” the statement said, as per Reuters. 

The summit also touched on the Gaza conflict: “We condemn attacks against all civilians and civilian infrastructure, leading to further deterioration of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza including restricted access to food, water, and other basic needs … We urge for an immediate and durable humanitarian ceasefire."

🇻🇳 Let’s level up this friendship

Vietnam continues collecting comprehensive strategic partnerships like they’re Pokemon, signing a very excited Australia on. “Elevating our ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership today places Australia and Vietnam among each other's significant partners,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra yesterday, as per Reuters. The partnership will look at ‘climate, environment and energy, defence and security, and economic engagement and education,’ a joint statement said.

The ABC has a longer piece here digging into the relationship and it sounds pretty good! I’ll never forget the day we spoke about former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull heading over to Hanoi and was thrilled to learn about a great Vietnamese snack — the banh mi. Never mind that it’s the lunch of choice from Cairns to Hobart. The Australian people, including a sizable portion with Vietnamese roots, have always been a bit ahead of successive governments here and I’m pleased to see them catching up. I’d personally like to see it translate to some wiser visa laws for Vietnamese nationals visiting Australia, but that’s too big for this newsletter to solve.   

🇲🇾 Anwar ups the pressure on Aust govt over Gaza

Anwar Ibrahim’s Australia tour is set to pay off. The Malaysian Prime Minister has been banging on about keeping foreign investment high after a bumper year in 2023, and it seems Australia will do its part. He told Bernama (via Reuters) he has secured 24.5 billion ringgit (US$5.17 billion) in investment, including data centres and resource mining. 

But what is more interesting, I think, is comments Anwar made in Canberra on the Australian government’s response to Gaza and especially the ditching of funding to UNRWA after those atrociously spurious claims (we shan’t get into it here). Anwar has been one of the world’s most outspoken leaders in support of the Palestinian cause for a long time, whereas Australia’s current leaders were once and have seemingly forgotten that after moving into the Lodge. But, what is interesting, is how much leverage Anwar has here and how he is trying to use it.

“I have appealed to Prime Minister Albanese to see that notwithstanding investigations — they can carry on, they're not stopping — but assist UNRWA,” he said at an address at the Australian National University yesterday, as reported by the ABC. [That's] because UNRWA is the most effective on the ground to help the besieged civilians.”

“Unfortunately, the gut-wrenching tragedy that continues to unfold in the Gaza Strip has laid bare the self-serving nature of [the] much-vaunted rules-based order. The differing responses by the West to human suffering defy reasoning,” he added.

This is a common refrain in Australia where public sentiment on Palestine has shifted dramatically. Albanese won’t listen to Australian voters, but Anwar is too powerful to ignore. There’s one heavy-hitter, a good friend and neighbour of Anwar, who if he were to lean on Australia I think could put the Labor government in a true pickle, but he isn’t so keen. 

🇵🇭 Marcos, Albo see each other 

A fascinating piece here from ANU’s Maria Tanyag on ‘geopolitical rivalry as hypermasculinity contests.’ The Philippines is often characterised as hypermasculine — and, therefore, has a fantastically robust subgenre of analysis from the big brains about gender and representations of gender, ooh I love it. This is a great addition to that, looking specifically at the language used between Australia and the Philippines as the two inch towards an upgraded partnership. That relationship is focused on security and heightened language in both Manila and Canberra makes for an interesting read here.

Tanyag’s piece comes after Marcos Jr addressed both chambers of the Australian parliament last week. There, Marcos vowed to protect Filipino sovereignty and not allow anyone to “take even one square inch of our sovereign territory,” he said as reported by the Associated Press. “Not one single country can do this by itself. No single force can counter them by themselves. This is why our strategic partnership has grown more important than ever.”

Back in Manila, there are two major headlines. The first is the sign held by Australian Greens Senator Janet Rice in the first interesting thing the party has done in a decade. During Marcos’ address, she held up a sign questioning the human rights record of the Philippines in recent decades. The move was welcomed by critics back home, but Senator Robin Padilla, who yesterday said everyone should get off the back of his pal Apollo Quiboloy for human and sex trafficking allegations, wants Rice declared a persona non grata by the country. That’ll show her she was wrong about the government! 

Marcos will also head home with $1.53 billion in investment commitments from Australian firms. Those infrastructure projects are looking very attractive to Australian companies, by the sounds of things, Rappler reports. 

🇮🇩 We’ve got an agenda bigger than Asean here

The only people who love President Jokowi’s new capital plan as much as the president are the Australians. Ooh, we are gagging for it. Not with the bags of cash needed, mind, but we want to help real bad. A MoU signed last week between the Nusantara project and Australia’s National Capital Authority (a body that, as a native Canberran, I am incapable of talking about reasonably) will see Australia assist in the development. “The Australian government will continue working together with its Indonesian counterpart for Nusantara’s development. We will continue to work together to develop a master plan designed for accessible city mobility, sustainability and safety,” Deputy Australian Ambassador for Indonesia Steve Scott said during the signing event, as reported by the Jakarta Post.

The big, BIG Australia-Indonesia news will be the security pact expected to be signed later in the year. That didn’t really come up this week but we’ll be talking about it forever so no rush.