Issues in Australian Foreign Policy July to December 2019

Abstract

The trajectory of Australia's foreign policy during the 2010s was set remarkably early in the decade. Over a period of just five months, beginning in April 2010, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abandoned his Emissions Trading Scheme, Rudd's Labour colleagues subsequently dumped him as leader in favour of Julia Gillard, and Hugh White's essay Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing was published.1 These events decisively framed three enduring and unresolved national questions that defined the past decade of Australian foreign policy: how should we respond to climate change?; are our political leaders still capable of delivering large-scale reform in the national interest?; and how do we navigate a world in which our key security partner and our key economic partner are not the same? Like the many previous chronicles of Australian foreign policy published in this journal, this review tracks key developments in Australian foreign policy over a six-month period. Yet because this six-month review is the last of the 2010s, it is even more tempting than usual to contextualise these contemporary developments in relation to the past decade. This essay seeks to demonstrate how little distinction there is between these two tasks. As the cataloguing of notable recent events and episodes proceeds, it will become increasingly evident that the three questions identified above — and very often the wicked interaction of them — offer just as useful a framework for understanding the key issues in Australian foreign policy over the last six months of 2019 as they did in the first six months of 2010. The story of Australian foreign policy in the 2010s, therefore, is one that features a Sisyphean attachment to the same small set of questions, albeit with one crucial twist. Rather than diminishing over time, the urgency and importance of each question has ratcheted up, as the implications of failing to adequately address them become clearer to the average Australian voter, whether via stories of Chinese foreign interference on the front pages of newspapers and social media feeds, by being forced to endure a seemingly endlress cycle of leadership spills, or through the presence of drought, wildfires, or smoke outside their doors. To be sure, Australia grappled with these questions prior to 2010. But they crystallised in form during those pivotal months of 2010, precipitating a decade of near stasis in Australia's response to them, despite the rapid and permanent transformation of our strategic environment. “The comforting familiarity of the post–World War II era has ended,” Allan Gyngell counselled in the October issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, “and the strangeness of our international environment, including China's centrality, is here to stay.”2 Set against this transformed external environment, Australia's intractable domestic divisions appear even more damaging and indulgent. The events of the past six months testify, yet again, to how Australia's inability to settle the big political questions at home impinges on its ability to conduct a coherent and effective foreign policy abroad. In response, this essay concludes by briefly contemplating how the notion of identity — defined, in essence, as the answer to the corporate question “who are we?” — functions as a lens both to help understand why these entrenched divisions persist and how they might be resolved. The chief task of this essay, however, is to document the key issues in Australian foreign policy over the second half of 2019. It does so across four sections. The first section examines Prime Minister Scott Morrison's official visit to the United States in September. The second section details the consensus that has emerged that Australia has entered a “new phase” in its relationship with China and the dynamics that accompany this. Climate change-related issues are addressed in the third section. Finally, section four focuses on an important foreign policy speech Morrison delivered soon after his return from the US, the varied responses it prompted, and what it portends for how international issues are likely to be translated into domestic politics in Australia. As these four sections unfold, Australia's inability to conduct a foreign policy able to break free of the restraining tethers of the three questions outlined earlier will be progressively exposed, raising questions for our ability to adapt most effectively to the world of the 2020s. On 22 July the White House announced it would welcome Scott Morrison and his wife Jennifer for a state visit in late September. It was only the second such invitation Trump had extended during his Presidency — he hosted French President Emmanuel Macron in April 2018 — and the first such honour extended to an Australian Prime Minister since George W. Bush invited John Howard to Washington, D.C. in 2006. Trump appears to view Morrison as a personal ally, seeing something of himself in the way Morrison's championing of “quiet Australians” led him to an unexpected victory in Australia's Federal Election in May 2019.3 Morrison, meanwhile, with his knockabout, jocular disposition and conservative credentials, is seen as being a good diplomatic match for the volatile President.4 The two leaders dined together in Osaka, Japan, in June, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting, and met again at the G7 leaders meeting in Biarritz, France, in August, which Morrison attended at the invitation of Macron.5 On both occasions, the US-China trade war and Iran were the focus of Trump and Morrison's discussions. As Morrison jetted to Washington, D.C., these topics remained at the top of the agenda.6 In fact, Iran had probably displaced US-China trade tensions as the most pressing issue, following the 14 September drone attacks that damaged a pair of oil installations in Saudi Arabia. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the strikes, which instantly reduced daily Saudi oil production by 60 per cent, in turn compromising around 5 per cent of global oil production.7 These developments were suddenly highly relevant for Australia, as less than a month earlier, on 21 August, Australia announced it was joining the International Maritime Security Construct in the Gulf “to assure the security of merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz”,8 joining Britain and Bahrain as international partners in the US-led effort.9 The trip began at the White House with a highly-scripted arrival ceremony on the South Lawn, after which Morrison joined President Trump and a throng of journalists in the Oval Office. The headline moment from this discombobulating session between the two leaders came when a journalist asked Trump to comment about a potential role for coalitions in relation to aggressive US policy on Iran.10 Trump responding by saying that he and Morrison would be discussing potential military action against Iran later that day, adding: “We all hope, and Scott hopes, we all pray that we never have to use nuclear […]”.11 Morrison immediately sought to dial back the rhetoric, promising to keep lines of communication open and to “take these things one step at a time”. But once Trump had “raised the spectre of nuclear weapons and Iran”,12 there was little Morrison could do to avoid the inevitable headlines that followed. Morrison handled the Oval Office meeting as well as possible, given the circumstances. In an editorial reflecting on the trip, the Sydney Morning Herald pinpointed Morrison's central challenge: “He […] had to build on his relationship with Mr Trump without falling into the trap of endorsing him unconditionally”.13 Trump either takes you to his bosom or rejects you. And as Macron found out, the line between these positions can be as thin as Trump's skin.14 Furthermore, as repeatedly demonstrated in the US domestic context, even if close personal engagement with Trump does not imply “guilt by association”, it certainly leads to the assumption of “policy position by association”. Whenever Morrison attempted to introduce nuance into the remarks he delivered — as he did, repeatedly — these blurry lines were soon re-etched by Trump's bold and uncompromising positions. In the presence of Trump, shades of grey rapidly dissolve to black and white. In Michelle Grattan's view, Morrison tied himself to Trump “to a remarkable degree” during his visit to the United States.15 From this perspective, the defining moment of the trip was when Morrison shared a podium with Trump to celebrate the opening of a new paper mill in rural Ohio built by Pratt Industries, the largest Australian employer of Americans. Billionaire Australian packaging and paper mogul Anthony Pratt, who frequents Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida Resort and “winter White House”, was on hand to introduce the President and the Prime Minister.16 “If it wasn’t for your presidency”, Pratt fawned, “this mill would not be here today” before Morrison and Trump emerged from behind blue curtains, waving, to the soundtrack of Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the U.S.A.”, a playlist staple at Trump rallies.17 The appeal of highlighting a joint Australia-US job creation story in the heart of rust-belt America is obvious. Yet whatever the original intent, this event morphed beyond a perfunctory joint appearance at a factory opening into a full-blown Trump rally, despite the protestations of the Prime Minister's Office to the contrary.18 The event featured all the crucial components of a Trump rally: a choreographed walk-in; a red sea of MAGA caps; “USA!” chants and raised mobile phones capturing the action; and even extemporaneous Trump crowd polling (“Do you like better ‘Made in the USA’ or ‘Made in America’? What do you like?”).19 Talking to journalists at the end of his US visit, Morrison insistently repeated the refrain that Australia was not under pressure to choose between Washington and Beijing.20 Yet the optics of the Ohio stop-over suggested something different: Morrison had been sucked into Trump's personal orbit. China's economic growth is welcomed by Australia and we recognise the economic maturity that it has now realised as a newly developed economy. This was the point of the world's economic engagement with China. Having achieved this status, it is important that China's trade arrangements, participation in addressing important global environmental challenges like the ones I just mentioned, that there is transparency in their partnerships and support for developing nations, all of this needs to reflect this new status and the responsibilities that go with it as a very major world power.22 Even so, Morrison's Chicago speech was significant for three reasons. Firstly, with the inclusion of a direct reference to China as a “newly developed Country” — a designation which, if accepted, would change the WTO rules that apply to China — Morrison's critique was sharpened.26 Secondly, this sharpening carried more weight because the speech was delivered in the United States at a time when Trump was waging a “trade war” with China. Morrison's comments echoed those being made by senior US officials. For example, when Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Australia to participate in the AUSMIN talks in early August, he pointed out how China “grew their country on the back of unfair trade rules”.27 Pompeo also pointedly rejected Australia's stated desire to separate its security and trade interests with his memorable jibe: “You can sell your soul for a pile of soy beans or you can protect your people”.28 Thirdly, and closely related, the personal and political connection between Morrison and Trump, epitomised by the Ohio “rally”, impinges on Morrison's ability to credibly present himself as an independent broker. Morrison's basic proposition — “as nations progress and develop then the obligations and how the rules apply to them also shift”29 — seems benign enough. And yet, such claims lose impact when Australia is viewed as dodging its international obligations on immigration and climate change. The fact Morrison had scheduled the Chicago speech on the same day that other leaders, including Trump, had gathered in New York to attend a UN climate summit, reinforced this inconsistency.30 Foreign Minister Marise Payne attended instead, with Morrison travelling to New York to deliver his first address to the United Nations General Assembly a couple of days later (discussed further in section 3). Overall, Morrison's US trip was considered a success. He appeared to have a good rapport with Trump and navigated his public appearances with him without slipping up. Morrison also resisted any pressure to escalate Australia's military commitment in the Straits of Hormuz. On the one hand, the symbolism that emerged from the visit tying Morrison to Trump may prove problematic, especially internationally, but on the other hand, the pageantry of the state dinner offered a chance to reaffirm the US-Australia alliance, as well as to feed domestic media coverage that reinforced Australia's status and Morrison's access. But beneath these surface-level observations, it was apparent that the diplomatic “level-of-difficulty” of conducting such trips had increased substantially. Morrison repeatedly insisted that Australia didn’t have to choose between America and China. But treading this line in public, at time where Trump's zero-sum worldview is butting up against an increasingly assertive Chinese President Xi Jingping, requires both more concentration and more regular calibration that it did only a couple of years ago. Morrison knows this. He has recognised, like many others during the six months under review, that the nature of Australia's relationship with China has shifted. In his first major foreign policy speech as Prime Minister, Morrison observed how “Inevitably, in the period ahead, we will be navigating a higher degree of US-China strategic competition”.31 The present six-month review period is notable for the coalescence of agreement around the notion that Australia has entered a “new phase” in its relationship with China as a result of this heightened strategic competition.32 Indeed, the title of Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong's October address to the Australian Institute of International Affairs was “A New Phase in Australia's Relations with China”.33 And while the “new phase” may not have generated agreement on Australia's policy responses, it does signify collective acknowledgement of the heightened degree of difficulty Australia faces in engaging effectively with China, and the urgent need to identify how to do this. “The important thing”, recognised former Australian diplomat John McCarthy, describing the emerging consensus, “is that Australians are now engaged in thinking about our external posture.”34 Obviously, the spectre of China has not emerged overnight. A decade ago, David Hundt's instalment of this series covering July-December 2010 observed how “few issues could be discussed without reference to the China factor”.35 It is also true that many other states are in a similar position to Australia, as the changed strategic environment has been brought into sharper focus by China's increasingly assertive behaviour during Xi's second term.36 A desire to engage with such states helps explain why, in August, Morrison become only the second Australian Prime Minister, after Paul Keating in 1994, to visit Vietnam.37 So, while the “China challenge” may have been apparent for a considerable time, it has not been addressed with any real urgency until relatively recently. The essence of the “new phase” can be detected in how the key question being asked in Australia has changed. For most of the decade, Australians have required prodding to think seriously about China. The salient question is now more pragmatic and urgent: “how should Australia deal with China?” Four major essays responding to this question and directed at the informed public (rather than the academy) were published over the July-December 2019 period alone.38 And part of the reason our politicians are now paying more attention is that this question has become salient for an increasingly anxious Australian public, alarmed by a series of high-profile recent news stories of Chinese interference in Australia.39 Such stories continued to drive the debate in the second half of 2019. The rapid change in public sentiment is revealed in opinion polling.40 As Peter Hartcher points out, the turn to “a more sceptical view of Beijing's conduct and intentions […] has been sudden and savage”.41 Between 2018 and 2019, the proportion of respondents to the annual Lowy Institute poll saying they trusted China fell from 52 per cent to 32 per cent, the largest recorded shift in the fifteen years the poll has existed.42 The percentage of Australians who have confidence in President Xi to do the right thing also fell significantly over this twelve-month period.43 One reason for the shift, according to Lowy's Natasha Kassam, is that foreign interference has gained traction as an issue in Australian politics.44 The last three contributions to the Issues in Australia Foreign Policy series have all highlighted how stories of Chinese interference have cut through with the general public.45 This reporting period also featured several such stories. In July, pro-China and pro-Hong Kong students clashed at the University of Queensland, making international news.46 This was the most tangible local outworking of the Hong Kong protests, which started in June in response to a proposed extradition treaty with China. The protests continued over the entire second half of 2019, often involving marches of over a million protesters, and provided a constant backdrop to Australia's own tense China debate.47 In late August, the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, announced the establishment of a University Foreign Interference Taskforce in a speech to the National Press Club.48 By mid-September, questions circled about the political affiliations of new federal Liberal MP Gladys Liu after the ABC reported that she had been a member of organisations linked to China's covert political influence operations.49 Liu's unconvincing interview with Andrew Bolt on Sky News only fuelled this speculation. In October, the Australian National University (ANU) released a public report documenting a serious data breach which had been first reported in June.50 ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt called the breach “an extremely sophisticated operation” but resisted attributing the attacks to any party, despite widespread media reporting blaming China.51 In November, Peter Hartcher reported an interview with Duncan Lewis, who retired as head of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in September. Lewis told Hartcher that “Espionage and foreign interference is insidious” and acknowledged that it was overwhelmingly China that the Australian authorities were preoccupied with.52 The day after Hartcher's article was published, Wang Liqiang, claiming to be a Chinese operative, made public his bid for political asylum through an article published in key Nine Entertainment mastheads.53 Speculation as to the validity of Wang's claims dominated the news in the aftermath of his interview, although by the end of November it seemed clear that Wang's claims were considerably overblown, if not entirely fictional.54 Australia's strategic environment is now more contested — across all three oceans. What is more, it is being contested in ways that go well beyond the conventional military terms I have just alluded to. Economic coercion, foreign interference, use of civil militias and cyber-attacks are among the sorts of tools and measures we have seen employed.57 Climate Change and its Discontents As indicated earlier, Morrison's US itinerary concluded with an address to the UN General Assembly on 25 September. Morrison framed his speech as an “opportunity to speak about Australia's response to the great global environmental challenges”.63 He prefaced his overview of Australia's actions in this domain by claiming that Australia “will continue to practice what we preach”. Climate change was not referenced directly until about halfway through the speech. “Australia is also taking real action on climate change and we are getting results”, Morrison argued. But the defensive nature of the speech was encapsulated with the comment that “Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary”. Immediately after returning to Australia from New York, Morrison jetted to Dalby where, against a barren, rocky backdrop, he briefed a team of reporters on his government's $100m program of additional drought assistance.64 The announcement itself was widely welcomed, but the press conference was also somewhat incongruous. Coming on the back of Morrison's assertiveness at the UN, the absence of any mention of climate change during the Dalby trip was a reminder of the government's eagerness to compartmentalise the debate. “[Morrison] talks of drought and climate change as if they are separate factors”, Phillip Coorey observed during the bushfire disaster that ravaged Australia towards the end of 2019 and well into 2020.65 Thanks mainly to these fires, but also a range of other contributing episodes, the disconnect in the government's approach to climate change that was only mildly apparent in Dalby grew more distinct and politically damaging as the year progressed. Amongst the most vocal critics of Australia's climate change policies have been our Pacific neighbours. The Fiftieth Pacific Forum Meeting at Funafuti, Tuvalu, from 12 to 16 August, exposed these fissures once again. The negotiations to develop the Forum Communique were fraught, with Australia eventually succeeding in having mentions of coal and the phrase “climate change emergency” removed from the final text.66 Vanuatu's Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu described the negotiations as fierce.67 He acknowledged that, while there was close agreement with Australia on most matters relating to practical assistance for the Pacific, “[o]n emissions reduction and dealing with your own climate, Australia is out there, they’re not with us”.68 In a joint press conference with Morrison to conclude the Forum, Tuvalu's (now former) Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga revealed what he had told Morrison during the negotiations: “You are concerned about your saving your economies […] I’m concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu and likewise the leaders of other smaller countries”.69 Some commentators recognised that Morrison's negotiating stance was at least partly a product of being boxed in at home. “Giving ground on the red-line issues would have risked re-opening the climate wars within the Coalition”, observed Melissa Clarke.70 Some poorly timed comments from Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack were a reminder of this. On same day that Morrison conducted his press conference with Sopoaga and Regenvanu, McCormack attended a business function in his electorate, where he responded to a question about the Forum from one of his constituents by sharing his frustration at the suggestion Australia “should be shutting down all our resources sector”.71 McCormack added that Pacific Island nations would “continue to survive because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit […]”.72 Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama — one of several Pacific leaders who publicly expressed displeasure at this comment — deemed the comments insulting and disrespectful.73 Ultimately, however, the episode did not prevent Bainimarama from visiting Australia in mid-September, where he continued to urge Australia to be “far more ambitious” in responding to climate change.74 A month later, Morrison travelled to Fiji for the second time in 2019, attending the PM's XIII rugby league matches and meeting again with Bainimarama.75 Another Pacific relationship which is likely to demand greater Australian attention in the coming period is with Bougainville, where in a referendum held in late November and early December, Bougainvilleans voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state. Voting was peaceful, ran smoothly, and took place in an atmosphere of hope and celebration. Yet as Kylie McKenna observed: “As the referendum is non-binding [with any decision on independence ultimately requiring the blessing of the Parliament of Papua New Guinea], Bougainville is now in the height of political uncertainty”.76 On 1 November 2018, in his first foreign policy speech as Prime Minister, Morrison declared the Pacific to be one of his “highest foreign policy priorities”. He spoke of wanting “to set right how we engage with our Pacific family — our Vuvale, our Whanau”.77 A week later, he further outlined the steps Australia would take to initiate “a new chapter in relations with our Pacific family”.78 The resulting “Pacific Step-up” remains Morrison's signature foreign policy initiative. For a long time, Australia has not placed the same importance on climate change as its Pacific Neighbours have wanted. But the “climate rift” between Australia and its “Pacific family” has taken on extra resonance recently given it is undermining the Pacific Step-up.79 The Pacific Step-up constitutes the clearest illustration of how Australia's failure to address the three enduring and unresolved questions of the decade has jeopardised its ability to pursue its foreign policy objectives. The Step-up is undoubtedly a response to China's growing influence in the region, but the fact that a sudden surge in attention was necessary is indicative of Australia's strategic complacency. Now, having belatedly decided to “Step-up”, the success of the initiative is compromised because Australia does not prioritise climate change to the degree our Pacific neighbours are increasingly demanding, a policy stance which in turn derives from the broken domestic politics on this issue. In an essay published in July questioning why Australia's Pacific influence was waning, Jenny Hayward-Jones pointed out the inconsistency at the heart of our engagement with the Pacific. “Australia is the principal aid donor and security partner in the region of the world most vulnerable to climate change, but has not exercised leadership on climate change in its diplomatic, aid or security planning.”80 Katerina Teaiwa, writing in the same issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, also called out the domestic inconsistencies of Australia's response to climate change: “Australian politics does not align with Australian science or Australian policy advice”.81 Teaiwa also highlights how Australian attitudes to the Pacific have tended to remained mired in old stereotypes. Morrison's final trip to the Pacific in 2019 was for a family holiday in Hawaii. The trip proved even more controversial than the earlier visit to Tuvalu. This time, however, it was the Australian public who were left outraged, and not Pacific leaders. Bushfires had been raging for months when Morrison escaped in mid-December. A month earlier, on 12 November, Sydney registered a “catastrophic” fire danger rating for the first time. And just days before Morrison left for Hawaii, the smoke pollution in Sydney was creating international news, as 100 fires burned across New South Wales alone.82 Morrison's family holiday became the subject of unusually high levels of scrutiny for a number of interconnected reasons.83 Firstly, despite media accurately reporting that Morrison had flown to Hawaii with his family, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) repeatedly insisted that this reporting was false.84 This only intensified media and public speculation as to Morrison's whereabouts. Then, on Wednesday 18 December, Australia experienced a heat record, with average temperatures reaching 40.9 degrees. This record was broken, by a full degree, the next day, just as Morrison's presence in Hawaii was confirmed via social media posts from Australian tourists who recognised their PM. That night, two volunteer firefighters with young children died. On Friday, Morrison announced he would come home early. Morrison was subjected to severe criticism for his absence.85 The trip caused the national debate on the question of whether the bushfires were linked to climate change to explode. This debate had already been running hot through the fire-and-drought-filled spring. In an interview on ABC radio, McCormack responded to questions about the role climate change was playing in the bushfire crisis by saying that fire victims “don’t need the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time, when they’re trying to save their homes […]”.86 While less overtly partisan than his Coalition partner, Morrison steadfastly refused to engage on the link between climate change and the fires during this period.87 As the bushfires worsened, however, the domestic battle pitting climate deniers and climate activists grew increasingly shrill. Australia's insistence on using Kyoto “carryover credits” to help meet the 2030 Paris target provided another point of contention. By taking this position to the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid in early December, Australia's reputation as a leader in multilateral fora took another hit, not least because of the incongruity of Australia being seen to avoid taking serious action on climate change while it was burning.88 There are now two separate problems for the government — and therefore the rest of us — about these bushfires. The first concerns the determination among senior figures in the government to not link them to climate change. The second is about the adequacy of the government response.90 Shortly after returning from the United States, Morrison delivered the 2019 Lowy Lecture. “We have entered a new era of strategic competition” began the Prime Minister, “a not unnatural result of shifting power dyna