Australia’s ambitious Southeast Asia strategy pushes ahead
NICHOLAS FARRELLY |
Australia – whatever the imperfections of its international engagement – has worked closely and expansively with Southeast Asia for over half-a-century. Australia was the first formal Dialogue Partner for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1974, and became its first Comprehensive Strategic Partner, the highest rank of relationship, in 2021.
Today Australia’s largest Embassy worldwide is in Jakarta. The Australian government devotes enormous resources to working with Southeast Asian countries: bilaterally, multilaterally and on other angles.
One reason for this commitment is that Southeast Asia is big and growing quickly: the 11 countries of ASEAN have a population of just over 700 million. Southeast Asia’s economy is now much more than double the size of Australia’s. After China, Australia’s largest trading partner is the combined ASEAN region. When you tally up regional military forces, the strongest in Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand – are formidable in different ways.
There is also the scale of linkages between our people: over 1.1 million Australians have family connections to Southeast Asia, 4 million Australians travelled to ASEAN countries last financial year, and well over a million Southeast Asians travelled to Australia. There are also around 200,000 Southeast Asian students in Australia right now. And Southeast Asia is high-tech too: by 2030 the region’s digital economy will have galloped past $1 trillion annually.
We also know that Darwin and Perth are closer to Jakarta than to Sydney. We source plenty of commodities and other goods in the region – just look at petrol and diesel right now.
Across the range of security issues identified by Australian governments this century – whether it’s people smuggling, narcotics trafficking, scam centres, or terrorism – there tends to be a nexus in Southeast Asia.
Then, if you want to think about Australia’s security in over-the-horizon conflict and humanitarian scenarios, including the prospect of regional war, it is understandable that some of Australia’s most serious planning relates to access and access denial across the archipelagos of Southeast Asia.
In any major contingency, close partnership with Southeast Asia would be essential to Australian defence, but we should not that for granted. Just look at the joint effort put into the recent Australia-Indonesia Treaty on Common Security, signed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Prabowo Subianto in February.
Australian engagement with Southeast Asia will always be complex work. The region has one-party states, various flavours of liberal and illiberal democracy, dynasties, monarchies, a sultanate; as well as hundreds of languages, all the world’s religions. To understand the complexity we can begin, as so many do, in the comfort of the glitziest neighbourhoods of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, or Bangkok: good coffee, latest iPhones, global connectivity, English as lingua franca.
But we cannot ignore the other complex realities of Southeast Asia. Myanmar’s GDP per capita is only a bit over $1000 while Singapore’s is around $100,000. Abject poverty is now rare in much of the region, yet hundreds of millions of people across Southeast Asia still struggle to keep up – hardships now exacerbated in many instances by the global energy crisis.
In the most tragic situations, like those faced by the Rohingya in westernmost Myanmar, conditions on the ground are among the most difficult anywhere. And all of that – the glamour of Marina Bay Sands and the hardscrabble of Maungdaw in Rakhine State – is within the one Southeast Asian region, a single ASEAN Community. No wonder ASEAN diplomats and other officials often privately express their exasperation.
As a long-term, trusted and supportive partner, Australia can draw on old Commonwealth links with Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. It is no surprise that early in the current energy crisis Prime Minister Albanese abruptly travelled to all three countries and received the warmest possible welcomes. And we all know that Indonesia presents our largest and most complex regional relationship.
Of the Australian Prime Minister’s only other international travel so far this year, he has visited Jakarta and Dili. The elevation of Timor-Leste to full ASEAN member status is a big development, and one Australia has backed with financial and other support. Excitingly, the Timor-Leste government has ambitions to chair ASEAN on the next alphabetical rotation, meaning 2029. The Philippines, this year’s ASEAN chair, is another crucial partner for Australia in so many areas, and the PM will also be there later in 2026 for the usual cycle of ASEAN events.
Certainly, countries in Southeast Asia appreciate the idea that a valued partner like Australia can bring its whole national system together. This is one reason that regional elites have warmed to Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 led by former Macquarie Bank CEO Nicholas Moore. Southeast Asians generally welcome our ambitions for closer cooperation, intuitively understand that Australia should take Southeast Asia even more seriously, and wonder about why some of the data, especially around investment, has tended to lag.
The early indications from this strategy’s implementation are also good. Since 2024, Australian trade with Southeast Asia has increased by $2 billion. Export Finance Australia has grown its transaction value with Southeast Asia by 40 per cent, and the region now accounts for a quarter of all its transactions globally.
There are also over $20 billion in opportunities for Australian business identified by the new regionally-based Deal Teams, and investment from Southeast Asia into Australia has increased by more than $650 million in the past few years. New investments in Southeast Asia by Australia $4.5 trillion superannuation sector will eventually follow. The establishment of the ASEAN-Australia Centre, a government-supported broker of region-wide relations, is a further positive development.
It all adds to the capability marshalled around the resident Ambassador to ASEAN, a post Australia’s had since 2013, now buttressed by a large, robust DFAT team focussed on Southeast Asian multilateralism. We even have an Australian officeinside the ASEAN Secretariat complex in Jakarta – a rare and special privilege.
Indeed, no other region comes close to Southeast Asia in terms of the number and consistency of senior Australian diplomatic representation.And that’s even before we start tallying the senior Australian Defence, Intelligence, Economic, Trade, and Development officials working across Southeast Asia.
We also have our other unofficial networks of relationships and influence, such as the ASEAN Australia Strategic Youth Partnership, formed by New Colombo Plan alumni. Many of our Universities are also very active players, with the RMIT campus in Vietnam and Monash in Malaysia showing what is possible with decades-long investments.
Given the scale of these opportunities and connections – including with the huge Southeast Asian alumni cohorts of our major Universities – it is hardly surprising that Australia’s engagement with Southeast Asia has evolved sometimes erratically. Aspects remain ad hoc.
It is frustrating, for instance, that expanding Indonesian language instruction in schools remains an impossible task. Tim Watts, who is the government’s Special Envoy for Indian Ocean Affairs, is to be commended for pushing hard to finalise parliament’s Asia capability review.
As we await outcomes of this crucial work, this is a moment for a fresh and full stocktake of Australia’s ambitious engagement with Southeast Asia. Pushing even harder on the government’s Invested strategy and the ramp-up of coordination by the ASEAN-Australia Centre are part of what is needed to connect more Australians and Southeast Asians to the shared opportunities ahead.
AUTHOR
Nicholas Farrelly is a Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Tasmania, a member of the ASEAN-Australia advisory board, and co-author of Comprehensive Strategic Partners: ASEAN and Australia after the first 50 years. This is an extract from remarks delivered earlier in May 2026 at the Griffith Asia Institute and the Queensland Art Gallery in the Perspectives:Asia series.
View the recording of the event here: https://ow.ly/QAzu50Z23ah