Australian election favourites vow pivot to Asia

SYDNEY: Australia will see a “step change” in engagement with Asia and a more “considered” policy toward China if Labor wins the next election, the party’s would-be foreign minister vowed.

Penny Wong – who would become the country’s first Asian-Australian top diplomat if her party continues to lead the conservative government into the May 18 vote – signalled the election would bring a foreign policy pivot to Asia.

Promising policies that would see more Asian languages taught in Australian schools and an increase in Aussie diplomats abroad, Malaysian-born Wong also signalled her wish to have a more constructive relationship with Beijing.

“We don’t pre-emptively frame China only as a threat,” she said, drawing contrast with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s administration.

Like Labor governments before, she promised a “more considered, disciplined and consistent approach to the management of Australia’s relationship with China”.

Successive Australian administrations have struggled to balance a vital trading relationship with China and the Chinese government’s authoritarian reflex.

That balance has become more fraught as Xi Jinping has consolidated power and looked to exercise China’s regional clout to take advantage of waning US influence.

Wong acknowledged that the relationship with China “may become harder to manage in the future”.

“At times our interests will differ. And challenges in the relationship may intensify... We must be grounded in the realities. China is not a democracy nor does it share our commitment to the rule of law.”

But she said the realities of the region were changing: “Those realities include the fact that China will remain important to Australia’s prosperity.”

“It is not simply a matter of a ‘diplomatic reset’. Fundamentally, we are in a new phase in the relationship.”