How to build the next generation of ASEAN-Australia leadership capability

From modest beginnings in 1974, ASEAN and Australia’s diplomatic relations have brought to life a wide variety of agreements, understandings, and processes, as well as networks, friendships, and even intimacy over the past 50 years.

The countries of Southeast Asia and Australia now enjoy a multi-faceted partnership that is, in most respects, in remarkably good health. Relations are more complex, interesting, valuable, and future-oriented than we sometimes tend to appreciate.

It is important that we look for areas where improvement is necessary, or useful, but what we have right now is worth celebrating.

In an anniversary report titled “Comprehensive Strategic Partners: ASEAN and Australia after the first 50 years”, produced with my Indonesian, Cambodian and Singaporean co-authors, we argue that, when things have gone best, Australians have listened and engaged for the long-term, without being too presumptuous about how regional diplomacy should be conducted.

According to leading Australian foreign policy thinker, the late Allan Gyngell, Australians learned to do this style of regional diplomacy – multilateral, patiently negotiated, attentive to the cross-cultural context – by engaging consistently and thoughtfully with the growing ASEAN community.

Indeed, the recent ASEAN – Australia – New Zealand Dialogue held in Malaysia, the 16th in a robust trilateral series, is an example of what happens when long-term investments are built upon, step-by-step, generation-by-generation, with an awareness of differences, but also with shared ambitions to continue to work together.

There will always be the fanfare of leader, minister and senior officials discussions. Yet, we also have literally hundreds of other regular and more low-key engagements between Australia and ASEAN – many are ASEAN-wide, others are strictly bilateral, some fall somewhere in-between. Usually, they involve some mix of academics, think-tank analysts, civil society advocates, government officials, the media, and businesspeople.

One of the reasons that we can talk so openly and critically on these occasions about what we can do better is because many things are already, in many different ways, very good.

We should also emphasise the quality and value of  inter-generational leadership in ASEAN-Australia relations. A careful analysis shows that, over generations, Southeast Asians and Australians have actively sought opportunities to share perspectives and then decide on a joint path forward.

As a sign of things to come, at the ASEAN-Australia Summit in Melbourne, in March, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the establishment of the ASEAN-Australia Centre, which will play a crucial role in helping to curate this diplomatic and people-to-people landscape.

It will be excellent to have a primary node for coordinating activity on the Australian side, and it is also very helpful that the new Centre will be significantly better resourced than its predecessor functions in government.

Further innovation is also required at the edges of the official system of ASEAN-Australia cooperation. For instance, the interlocking security, political and humanitarian crises in Myanmar are daunting, apparently irresolvable. All the mechanisms of formal diplomacy struggle.

And yet, in tentative but essential ways, there is fresh diplomatic and policy effort being put into creating better outcomes for the people of Myanmar. We all know that will not be easy, quick or inexpensive, but the fact that there are well-informed and well-placed people all thinking about what could be done differently is a very important signal of how we will see solutions emerge over time.

It is also important to recognise that our diplomatic work should draw on the contributions of next generation leaders, analysts and decision-makers. My own career working between Southeast Asia and Australia has been sustained by the fact that many years ago I was welcomed to informal diplomatic engagements by my senior colleagues.

Through the support of Australian pioneers of regional second track diplomacy, including Tony Milner and Des Ball, I met people like former ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong from Singapore, legendary Indonesian policy-broker Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Thailand’s famous political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the great team at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, and the full range of ministers, diplomats, dealmakers, military officers, and contrarian professors.

When I started out, I was green but eager – I cherished everything I learned along the way. There are people I met many years ago with whom I still collaborate on many things, including, for example, Lina Alexandra, my Indonesian co-author on the ASEAN-Australia 50th anniversary report.

Thinking of today’s young leaders, we now have a proliferation of other mechanisms that bring the next generation together, including the ASEAN-Australia Strategic Youth Partnership, the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association, New Colombo Plan, Australia Awards, the Westpac Asian Exchange Scholarships, a wide range of Australian university alumni groups, and so much more.

My recommendation is that aspiring leaders should engage in these forums for informal diplomacy, build long-term relationships, keep turning up, and seek to bring a positive, open attitude. Curiosity and generosity are always useful attributes. Where possible we should all be looking for new ways to institutionalise and systematise what we are doing well.

ASEAN diplomacy, at its best, is about refining the structures for how diverse people can work collectively in ways that still allow for ambiguity and even some level of productive contradiction. Thinking ahead to future anniversaries in ASEAN-Australia relations, the celebrations will be so much sweeter if we plan towards building leaders across generations, and work proactively to manage tomorrow’s risks and opportunities together.

Professor Nicholas Farrelly is a Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Tasmania. This is an edited version of his keynote remarks at the 16^th ASEAN – Australia – New Zealand Dialogue in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 24 October 2024. He was recently announced by Foreign Minister Penny Wong as a member of the inaugural advisory board of the ASEAN-Australia Centre. These are Professor Farrelly’s personal views.