 Good evening. Welcome everyone to the ANU and the third panel discussion in the Vokes 2016 Federal Election Series. My name is Michael Brissenden. I am, as you may know, currently the host of the AM program on the ABC in the mornings on radio but before that I was the Defence and Security Correspondent for a couple of years and before that I've been a Foreign Correspondent and Political Reporter for the past 30 years, posted in places like Russia, Europe, the US. So I've been reporting in one way or another on these sorts of issues for a very long time. Now every Tuesday night until the 2nd of July here in the Malonglo Theatre, ANU Public Policy Experts will discuss the key issues of the 2016 Federal Election. The ANU Election Series is presented in partnership with PolicyForum.net which is based here at the Crawford School of Public Policy. PolicyForum is the Crawford Schools platform for analysis and discussion about the region's public policy challenges. And the podcast of tonight's panel and every panel in this series will be available. Visit anu.edu.au and click on the 2016 Federal Election Series banner to find out more about that. I also invite you to join the Twitter conversation using the hashtag OZPOL at our ANU. Now tonight we're all joined by three of this university's leading security and foreign affairs experts to look at how the 2016 election might change the way Australia deals with the rest of the world and the way the rest of the world deals with us perhaps. Our guest coming from the end here is Professor Rory Medcliffe. Now he's had more than two decades of experience across diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks and journalism including a formative role as the director of the International Security Program at the Lower Institute. Rory is currently the head of the National Security College here at ANU and importantly was on the expert panel that helped draw up the 2016 Defence White Paper which created a lot of news a couple of months ago. Dr. Jill Shepard is a political scientist and survey researcher in the ANU's Australian Centre for Applied Social Research Methods. Jill is a primary author of the ANU poll, a survey of Australia's attitudes towards major issues. Her current research projects explore the role of ethnicity and pre-immigration background on Australian political activists and voting behaviour in federal elections. And of course Michael Wesley is Professor of International Affairs and director of the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU. Michael has held appointments at a number of national and international universities and was previously the assistant director general for transnational issues at the office of national assessments, executive director for the International Policy at the Lower Institute for International Policy and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. So what CVs we have in front of us? So I'm going to ask a couple of questions and then I think at some point we'll throw it open to the floor. I'm sure many of you have questions that you would be keen to hear some answers to as well. Rory, I thought we'd start with you and have a look at the white paper and focus on the white paper because while defence and national security generally are considered to be fairly bipartisan, both sides do approach it very seriously and both sides try not to make it an issue as such. But the white papers have been quite interesting and I think in 2009 was the first time that we really, the red government really came out focused on China and expressing an opinion that China was a real threat. That was drawn, wound back a bit in 2013 and that has been developed again in 2016. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about how China, its place in the region and how that's affected our defence thinking and our defence strategy. Sure, thanks Michael and I think the key question for me then is how do we connect that evolution of thinking about defence and the power balance in China to I guess the interests of voters to the election. So I guess the short version is that from I guess around the late 2000s from around the beginning of the Kevin Rudd period there was an increasing recognition of China not as a threat maybe but as a source of risk to Australian security of great uncertainty in the region and that's really only continued since then alongside the economic opportunity story. Now in 2009 in that defence white paper interestingly a lot of the big ambitions for a more robust Australian defence force especially the idea of 12 submarines were first articulated but in the end that turned out to be a case of I mean the opposite of diplomacy in a way so speaking loudly and carrying a small stick which is not the way to do it. I like to think we've moved a bit further in the opposite direction since then and I think the whatever criticisms you would make of the new white paper there's now a costed pathway to actually building and acquiring the capabilities Australia needs to be I guess a more credible security player in its region including 12 submarines. Yeah and 2013 was essentially a political papering over to sort of somehow deal with the fact that the government was cutting defence spending while the security environment was getting more troubling. So I'd like to think we've got a more balanced product now and one that I think Labor actually quietly has endorsed so I'd say obviously the big point of difference in the political debate about defence policy is obviously the Greens not Labor. And what about them? Well interestingly I mean that's fine I don't want to take too much of the limelight here Michael but the speech by the Greens leader last week the Lowy Institute was a bit of a landmark in some ways it was in some ways a serious foray into foreign and security policy by the Greens as a third force or as a significant minor party you know I welcome and applaud that. I think the challenge is that Mr. Dinatale identified problems or criticised particularly the US alliance fine and the age of Trump it's an understandable position to take but also said and Australia should cut essentially cut defence spending there's a fundamental contradiction there that I think the Greens or any other third force are going to have to come to terms with which is if we rely less on the alliance we're going to have to begin a conversation with voters about the fact that they will probably need to spend more on defence not less. It was an opinion that you don't hear from mainstream politicians in Australia, well I think I've heard that for a very long time. So in that sense it was quite startling really that a leader of a political party would be prepared to go out as an election campaign and say that. I think as a provocation to debate it was worthwhile but we won't go far in that conversation until parties start to craft credible alternatives to the defence and security policies we have now and they cost money. And Michael we were talking before we've had three defence white papers in seven years or something. We haven't had a foreign affairs white paper for a long time and you're an advocate for one of those, why? Yeah look I think the world is becoming a much more complex place. Australia has a number of interests that go in different directions. We've got a primary security relationship with the United States. We've got China as our major trading partner and an increasingly important player in the world. We've got very complex relationships in the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia as well as a number of global interests as well. And I think without a coherent document that sets out Australia's general approach to how it's going to approach and reconcile these different interests our foreign policy becomes a little bit ad hoc and a little bit reactive and I don't think we can afford to do that for too much longer. It will come to a stage when our foreign policy interests start to overlap and start to contradict each other. It seems there's been in terms of defence white paper there's always seems to be an appetite for another one. It doesn't seem to be the political momentum pushing for a foreign affairs white paper. Yeah and it's quite strange because really Australian governments of the past both Labor and Coalition have been very keen on these. So if we go back into ancient history back to 1988-89 upon becoming Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said about creating and really articulating a very clear foreign policy that really guided Australia's foreign policy through really a time of great change, a time of great turmoil and uncertainty was the end of the Cold War. A lot of regional relationships were changing. We had the Tiananmen massacre in China. We had a range of different issues that we were dealing with. And then on coming to power the Coalition in 1996 Alexander Downer said about doing exactly the same thing of bringing all of the Coalition's approach to international affairs and all of Australia's interests together into a foreign policy white paper which he then updated in 2003. And that got us through a very tumultuous and difficult time as well. The year that the white paper came out, the original white paper came out we had the Asian financial crisis. We had the September 11 attacks occur in 2001. And arguably through that time not only our diplomatic partners but pretty much everyone within Australia and particularly in the Australian government knew exactly where the Howard government stood on foreign policy issues and knew what the load star was and where we were going. Arguably with Labour after 2007 and then the Coalition after 2013 we haven't really had a coherent sense of what the big picture is for both sides of politics. And Jill do you have a view about why that is? Why is it that the current crop of governments and politicians, generation of politicians don't seem to be quite that interested? Well by way of background I did offer to come and sort of, you know, lob some grenades and disagree with both Rory and my hood or not. And I'm well on my way to do that. I was really struck first of all by Rory saying, you know, Rory sort of summary of the last defence white paper and that it talked about China as being a risk if not a threat. But you know something that we sort of need to keep one eye on. And that at same time we should expand our military capability. In the same sort of period we've seen public support for defence spending really drop and this real acceptance among the Australian public that China is not a risk. And I think that's exactly what you say. These economic opportunities that the trade potential has really in least the public mind outweighed that kind of military risk. We think in economic terms. We don't think in military terms. So in terms of why, you know, support for particularly a foreign affairs, white paper may have stalled. I mean Michael has a much better insight into the sort of, you know, political workings, the political economy of this you might say. In terms of votes, there's nothing there. And as Rory pointed out as well, the both parties are fairly set on this fairly boring but non-controversial path. You know, we say, oh wouldn't we love for some disagreement between the two major parties and the Greens offer us this. And we go, oh maybe not that disagreement. Maybe turn it down a notch. But maybe this will be the impetus. Maybe this maybe something like that kind of, well I guess the firework that the Greens have let off last week, maybe this will spur the major parties to at least reaffirm that kind of ostensible bipartisanship. I think that the big question is how responsive are the parties going to be to public opinion and to what extent should we see leadership or I guess an attempt to frame the debate. And these things can sometimes be at odds. And of course sometimes it depends on where you stand on an issue whether you want to see leadership or whether you want to see responsiveness to public opinion. And I think on defence there's a bit of both. I mean I think there's obviously different polling out there and of course I completely respect the ANU's polling. But the polling that the Lowe Institute conducts as well for example is another barometer of public opinion and I think it tells a very mixed story on precisely the things that we're talking about here. Actually I wouldn't say comfort with China but ambivalence about China for example. If the public opinion is that much against defence spending then why is there a broad bipartisanship now between Labor and the coalition aiming at a 2% target? So perhaps they're looking at different polls, I don't know. I think this is possibly an issue that's just been carved off as allowing for leadership and not having to be responsive to public opinion which I think, you know, substantively is a good thing, right? You guys can speak more strongly to that than I can. I think what it does though is that it really compromises the capacity to have a debate about it. If we're going to have debate in terms of border protection and border security and, you know, of regular asylum seekers that's probably not helpful. Can we come to that issue now because when we're talking about public opinion we're talking about an issue that certainly both of the major parties believe very strongly that the public supports their positions. It's a very contentious issue obviously with some sections of the country but there does seem to be a level of bipartisanship on that issue. The Labor Party certainly seems concerned not to be seen to be any different from the government that the government is spending certainly in the last couple of weeks as a lot of energy try to suggest that they are. Why, firstly why is this issue so powerful in the community and is there really a difference between where the parties stand the major parties stand? Okay, I think first of all please interrupt me if you think I'm missing something or got something wrong. I think there's a powerful kind of symbol of sovereignty there's something about our Australian borders that speaks to our kind of nationhood and that might be me freestyling a little bit that's sort of my gut feeling this regard. It's sort of the one thing that we can control is the security of our borders. In terms of why Labor is trading so close to the coalition line I mean I can sort of give you the technical boring political science explanation or I could just sort of say enough people are worried about it and enough people think that the Liberals have the monopoly on this that the coalition just head down, you know, batten down the hatches. If we don't talk about it people aren't thinking about it, people won't vote on that sort of, on that issue. Conversely the government wants to talk about it all the time. Absolutely, right, we've seen that last week with Doug. Can I just add that I think on this issue and perhaps on the defence issue as well the real challenge is to have a I think debate is the right thing but to have a sophisticated explanation of the policies and how do you manage that within an election process where there is a temptation to go to the three word slogans on both on all sides of the debate. Well one of the issues underlying all of this is how much the political leaders have manipulated these issues for their own political instances. Now I'd be interested to know what your views are on this because clearly in many cases it's advantageous for them to talk these issues up. Can I just come back to an issue that Jill raised? I think she's right. You know as Laurie Breton said to me many years ago when he was shadow foreign minister he said there's no votes in foreign policy mate, it's all about the trips I'm sure he wouldn't mind me passing that on but it's true but I think foreign policy matters in Australian electoral politics in a secondary sense so we don't mind electing people who have no background in foreign policy unlike American presidential elections people go to a great extents to show that they've got some experience in foreign relations. You know Rudd's an interesting exception there but I think foreign policy has a secondary effect in that it can be used to Australia government's general competence or incompetence and it was really interesting the way that Rudd used the Iraq wheat scandal in 2006 to really erode the Howard government's perception of being a safe pair of hands in the Australian population and I think conversely it shows that if you're competent managing foreign policy it's not going to get you any votes but it does kind of contribute to your aura of being generally a safe pair of hands. I think the interesting thing for me about asylum seekers and irregular arrivals is the fact that it is such a push button issue in the electorate and I think it has been used by parties to demonstrate their general safe pair of handedness if you like with the electorate. The really interesting thing for me is the willingness of both sides of politics in Australia to mortgage our foreign relations to this domestic political issue. With the Tobak the boats policy the Tony Abbott opposition showed itself absolutely willing to jeopardise our relationship with Indonesia and it didn't resale from that. I think that pushed the debate didn't it but changed the debate and it sort of changed the centre of the debate in a sense and still feeling that. And I think what's being missed here is that you know so I'm not being partisan here the Rudd government's negotiation of the asylum seeker centre on Manus Island and to a lesser extent on Nauru really changed the balance of our relationships with the South Pacific and I think has put us in a really difficult situation with Papua New Guinea which is really one of our most important relationships and put us in a very unenviable situation in dealing with that. Just before we open up to questions can I just ask you on the other national security issue on terrorism do you think that issue has also been manipulated as some claim fear a factor well I think if I can jump in on that one first Michael I think what's interesting is if you look at the succession or the change from Abbott to Turnbull you could argue that we have broadly the same set of policies in place as we had under Abbott in fact and I think we'd likely have the same set of counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism policies in place under Labor for that matter too but the rhetoric is different so I think when you use the term like manipulating the issue earlier I don't think you could accuse personally you could accuse Turnbull or Shorten of manipulating that issue to a large degree that accusation has obviously been made around the Abbott government but the policies are the same and I think the opportunity that political leaders have is to make this an inclusive issue rather than an issue that divides the community in that direction we weren't there a year ago but the rhetoric that Turnbull's used around recognising that actually terrorism is a threat to the Muslim Australians too and in fact that the biggest damage terrorists could do is not only to the lives that they might destroy or traumatise but the wider fabric of trust within the community I think that's the political message that leaders need to get out and that may I hope appeal to a broader spectrum of society than the obvious constituency that would say look we're concerned about our safety first and foremost rather than multiculturalism. Okay at this point if there are any questions? Thank you very much for that very interesting I just want to recount one bit of Australian political history and that is with Peter Andrews he was the former member of New South Wales and parts of the course of rural New South Wales very high levels of polyeducated people who lived school before year 12 fertile ground for Pauline Hansen. Well Peter Andrews went out pretty hard as the member supporting refugees and supporting multiculturalism and supporting the immigration program and at the next election he got a primary vote I think of 50% and it seems to me from my experience of campaigning and analysing polls and so forth there's a lot of fear about refugees but it's actually while it's very widespread it's also quite superficial that good political leadership could actually change that. Now I'm not suggesting that in the middle of a federal election campaign it's something to do a U-turn but outside of an election context it's just an opinion that they haven't and even Malcolm Turnbull you know possibly sort of knows better and well done to the Greens who were coming out last week the way they did. Yeah absolutely and we can be too hasty in dismissing the compassion of Australians generally and when we ask more broadly about attitudes to immigration people are really expansively supportive it's just something about that idea of a regular boat arrivals that really snaps people into a sort of defensive mechanism and on Peter Andrews you're exactly right and I think you know we've probably missed and if we could have more politicians with that kind of I think capacity to explain sort of the moral basis for issues well sure we'd all be happier people right. And in fact in some of the rural and regional areas the view on integration and asylum seekers is particularly coloured by the fact that most of them quite a lot of them are moving there and taking jobs that others really don't want to do and are keeping some of those towns alive and a number of towns out way out west that otherwise would be you know pretty much dead. So that may also explain partly perhaps a different view about it in those areas. Anyway anyone, gentlemen up here? Firstly thank you for coming and speaking to all of us tonight, I appreciate your insight so far you've referred to Trump briefly and I guess I just want to address that, you had Kim Beasley come to talk to me a little while ago and he mentioned that Hillary was probably going to be the next president that's looking a little bit less likely now. So I guess generally where do you see Australia's foreign policy shifting to given the current US election and regardless of that the broader framework of Australia being stuck between the hard place that is America and the rock that is China as the sometimes unenviable middle power. The fact is whoever's elected to the White House you just deal with, Australian governments just deal with them, there's so much at stake in that relationship with the United States. We have had time and again in Australia governments elected of a different ideological kind of stripe than have been in the White House you think back to John Howard's election in 1996 when Bill Clinton was in the White House, you think back to Kevin Rudd's election in 2007 when George Bush was in the White House and generally because the relationship has such momentum you know so many strands to this relationship and Roy's absolutely right if we didn't have this relationship then we wouldn't have the healthcare system, the education system, the welfare system we've got because we'd be spending it all on weapons and military expenditure and intelligence so there is a huge amount at stake for us. I personally think that a lot of the alarmism around Trump is a little bit overdone I think back to 2000 where everyone went shock horror this idiot called George W. Bush is coming along and sure he made a few mistakes but you know the fact is that when your country is big and as prosperous and as powerful as the United States and you have so many global interests you know you can say a lot of things a presidential contender but then when you get into the White House you get hit by a very cold dose of reality and I think a lot of the settings of American foreign policy reassert themselves and someone like Trump needs professionals to come along and run US foreign policy, where is he going to get those from? He's going to get them from the same place that a Ted Cruz would have got them or a Jeb Bush would have got them so I think it's interesting that he's actually, unlike George W. Bush and unlike a lot of other presidential hopefuls, he has actually used foreign policy in the primary to actually energize his own voting base to in a way that I don't think we've seen well certainly I don't think we've seen ever in my lifetime and that I think is the thing that's really concerning people is because he's actually pinpointed this sort of very different position for the United States in a lot of key foreign policy areas Sure, but I guess I'd go back to an analogy might be Bill Clinton's election in 92 where you know he spent a lot of time in the election campaign again playing to his vote, his base on a very anti-China or a very China skeptical policy and he got in and he found that trying to enact those policies caused a great deal of turbulence and by about 94 he'd come around to a much more balanced, much more mainstream China policy so one can only hope that the Donald would do the same thing I think you have a bit more faith in him I'm a little bit more nervous I have to say I'm delighted that you're calm Michael I respect that but we do have to countenance the possibility that the real possibility that A he'll win and B he's not just another very conservative American president, he's something else a lot of the enormous I guess stable of talent in the American foreign and security policy community on the Republican side have signed a never Trump petition essentially we will not serve a Trump administration now one by one some of those individuals are beginning to sort of pivot a little bit or at least have been reached out to by the Trump camp but a lot will not will still not make that jump I mean people like Max Booth who was a the neocons, neocon in many ways has taken a moral stand against Trump so that gives you a sense of the way the debate has shifted now how do we respond I think I agree that Australia deals with the ally that it has and I think in some way some of the things that Trump is insisting of allies Australia's doing already we are an ally that tends to pull our weight that tends to contribute a lot more than many others so in that sense we've already gone part of the way part of the way there but I do think there will be real discomfort in the relationship under a Trump presidency and I do think that a lot of what I think sensible Australian policy makers have been trying to do quite quietly in recent years which is build a web of other relationships in the region including with Japan because interestingly you know for all the criticism of the Japan relationship you could argue that it goes a little way to being a kind of a hedge against an America that's less engaged with the region I think that architecture of Japan India, Indonesia, Singapore as we've seen recently a whole lot of other powers in the middle will become more important for us if America is a different base. It doesn't put us in a very difficult position because over the last few years we've become much more enmeshed in or we've welcomed a far more involvement of American defence capabilities in Australia itself that's been a concern to some of our regional neighbours now if America starts becoming Trump America that puts us in a much more difficult position. I don't actually agree that the I mean I think the enmeshment with the alliance obviously raises questions and it should raise questions in the minds of the Australian public but apart from China I actually haven't seen evidence that the neighbours are particularly worried about it but there might be different views. But it could be hypothetical because the Americans could become less present. I'm perhaps more optimistic on Trump or less pessimistic is probably a better the kind of opportunities but also the threats that I sort of would see regarding Trump at the moment is he cuts across ideology and partisan boundaries in a way that is kind of jarring and he started off as sort of this relative dove in the campaign and then his rhetoric sort of flips and flops and now we don't know how to sort of pigeonhole him as a foreign affairs entity or as a foreign affairs kind of phenomenon and so there's a huge amount of unknown, right? And unknown is terrifying. Classic autocratic behaviour. Oh that's good, we can all sleep tonight. I did see I was in the US last week and I wasn't so worried about Trump until I saw CNN every night and now I'm mildly terrified but I also saw some really fascinating research while I was there that a lot of his supporters are incredibly moderate. They're just people who feel really disenfranchised who feel like for so long there's been a Bush or a Clinton or some kind of elite and it seems so bizarre to talk about Trump as a non-elate but there's this disconnect and so dare I say the parties have brought this on themselves it doesn't help us at all, it doesn't help Australia. I was just wondering, given it is such an amount of unknown with Trump if he was to come in, which Australian party would foster that relationship or would be the best place to deal with that relationship? I don't even know. I don't think you could... Which election are we talking about tonight? Well it's fun more fun than ours, right? Look I think you know, both parties have really been competing with each other probably for the last six or seven years to see who could be closer to the United States. We had Julia Gillard go to Washington and give that incredibly gushing speech and then of course Tony Abbott and now Malcolm Turnbull. Look I think that both sides let me put it this way. I think the experience of Mark Latham in 2004 shows that there are real electoral consequences to any Australian political leader who is seen to be jeopardising the relationship with the United States. I think that's been a very clear message that has been loud and clear for both major parties in Australia and so for that reason there would be a lot of work going into developing the relationship with the Trump administration. So Trump himself of course the personal relationship is important but getting to know the administration officials, getting to know the secretary of state and all of those people, look I agree Rory there have been a lot of high profile people like Max Boote have said never Trump but you know the American administrations are very pragmatic about picking people out of the bureaucracy and competent people who will serve and serve the United States and for that reason I also am quite encouraged by the fact that Trump doesn't stick to any particular position, he flips and he flops. You know this is not an ideologue, this is someone who will say and do what he needs to say and do in order to get by and I think he'll do that in foreign policy. Thank you. Well my name is Patricia Carl and I'm one of the greens candidates for the federal election so I have to ask a question and I'm very interested in what you've said tonight, thank you. I really like hearing you talk about how we're developing relationships elsewhere and I'd like if it's possible for you to comment on our role to be able to be that abridging nation because we have a foot in so many camps are you able to comment on that, thank you. The middle power. Okay look I mean I think that's an enormous opportunity Australia has and I think not only our location, our geography the fact that we do have a good web of regional relationships although far too few embassies internationally if anyone from that portfolio is listening. You know DFAT is still hopelessly underfunded TIC but having said that having said that I guess what I would argue is that I differ with this view that it's all about the US and China that we're somehow in between the US and China, we're in a multipolar region now. There are other countries that matter whose interests and self-respect and so on is just as important actually to them as China's is to it so I guess I'd like to see Australia as a bridge in a more multipolar regional context in the Indo-Pacific and globally. Now the big question is how does the relationships we have, the big bilateral relationships we have, how do they affect our ability to be that bridge and I guess take Trump out of the conversation for a moment but I think generally the alliance with the United States has not been an impediment to Australia being a good partner with other countries in the region and I think you'd have to ask them what they think of the alliance but I think generally it's a bit of a myth that some would say we either choose between the alliance or good regional partnerships. So I think there's huge opportunity there and I think the principle of that for any party is the right principle and it's an influence multiplier that Australia can have. Good evening, it's great to listen to such an eminent panel as compared to Christopher Pine and Albanese on Konda talking defence last night. Just bringing it back you talked about the Foreign Affairs White Paper. I know in 2013 we released a national security strategy now given Indians non-alignment 2.0. What's the thought of actually whoever is elected releasing something like that as opposed to these individual white papers? We can all jump in on white papers. I'll just say briefly I want to find things to disagree with my colleague Michael on but the Foreign Affairs White Paper isn't one of them. I think we're well overdue for a Foreign Affairs White Paper. It's been 13 years and the world has changed a lot since then. The document you refer to is more of a non-government document and the most is something that the government can deny was its white paper but which nonetheless provides a blueprint I guess the consensus of experts about the direction the country should take. That's a nice fallback if you can't do the real thing but I think Australia can do the real thing. I'll be provocative and say oh god another white paper. I appreciate that cynicism. And is there just on foreign policy apart from I guess the winding back of the foreign aid budget in the last couple of budgets. Is there a substantive difference in the way both sides approach this? I mean I don't sense there is but I think if you think there is. What's interesting to me is so far and we know that there's four weeks to go Michael and that there'll be six weeks to go. Five and a half. Do we have a better bid on that? So a lot of the stuff hasn't come out yet but what's remarkable is just how little foreign policy has played in the election campaign so far. I mean I applaud Labor's pledge to put back what was it a six percent cut that the coalition had announced in the budget but that's not really a foreign policy. It's not really even an aid policy. It's just you know we'll put back what they cut out. And I really do think it speaks to a kind of lack of vision on both sides. A lack of a willingness to think in big picture terms about what you know the foreign policy would look like. It used to be the case that particularly whoever was the opposition would come out with a fully blown framework for what our foreign policy would be and what it would look like. And I wonder whether both sides of politics are a little bit intimidated by how complex and how difficult the outside world is. I think that's probably true but as you said you had five and a half weeks to go. You never know. Something might change. There was a question right on the far side over there. It's up there. Sorry. Okay. I can throw it as you can catch. I just have a question about what an ideal Pacific policy might look like. Sort of a subset of that question. I feel like Australia's invested a lot in success in the Pacific and we're actually at a point now where we're starting to see a bit of that. You know Fiji's had a democratic election. You know the Labor sending countries in the Polynesian areas are really you know taking off. But there's been a lot of different approaches to the Pacific in the last sort of three governments. And I was just wondering what the panel's views on a sort of an ideal approach would be. The Pacific has become very complex in recent years. We've got you know our one of the most successful things we've done in the Pacific. The Ramsey intervention into Solomon Islands. That's drawing down in the next year or so. Yes Fiji has become democratic but Fiji is hostile towards Australia. We have increasing numbers of external powers particularly Asian powers starting to make their mark in the Pacific and starting to complicate things. So Australia's not to mention the issues with PNG and potentially Nauru in relation to the asylum seekers and the detention facilities there. This is a very difficult situation. It's always tempting to say this is the most complex situation we've ever faced. But the range of vectors in the Pacific is very very difficult. I think a considered Australian policy needs to be one of deep and ongoing engagement with Pacific countries realising that Australia is sometimes not their favourite interlocutor but we are the essential partner for a lot of Pacific countries. When Fiji can be angry at us and Fiji can try and exclude us but when a tsunami hits Fiji who do they call to come and help out? So we've got to do that but we've also got to realise that the Pacific is becoming much more complex. That the organisations of the Pacific, the regional organisations some of which don't include us are going to play a bigger and bigger role and we need to develop partnerships with some of these other countries that are becoming more and more consequential. I think there are elements of all of that in our Pacific policy at the moment and I understand that DFAT is developing up a comprehensive Pacific strategy which I applaud. And I think I'm optimistic about the Pacific and Australia's policy there. Yeah look I'm not optimistic. I think one of the things we forget and it's partly, I mean this is a Canberra audience tonight, I think everyone's here because they're interested in the issues but you have to bear in mind that I think a large part of the Australian public, the voting public, are not that interested in the Pacific. If it was a matter of public opinion rather than leadership I'm not sure you would find massive constituencies clamouring for Australia to be highly invested in supporting and providing security to all of the small states in the region even though it is in our interest to do so. So I think there's a leadership pressure I think on all sides of politics in Australia to make the case for Australia to be a good neighbour in the region and to be a generous and supportive neighbour in the region but don't assume it's actually what the voters want. I think in the years ahead if you look at the whole horizon of challenges and risks and threats that Australia will face and actually our limited resources to deal with them all. I mean it's only a matter of time before we intervene again in the South Pacific in some way or other you know tensions in Boganville could arise again, who knows. Is it what the Australian public is ready for? I'm not sure that our leaders are preparing the ground for that. I would name one or two honourable exceptions. I think the current foreign minister is very personally interested, knowledgeable and passionate about the region but you know chances are that some future foreign minister might not be and I think Tanya Plibersek is as well so we're lucky but in the long run someone like Kevin Rudd for example wasn't particularly interested in PNG so we can't count on leadership, we need to somehow bring the public into that conversation. I mean I would expand that cynical argument to aid generally. We sit here and we are a very Canberra audience and we do fall into this trap right where you know we bemoan cuts to the aid budget but outside of you know 2600 that's playing really well probably I would assume. I would think about my parents in heaven and it's I think even go further and it's probably playing well. We're going to spend money on our own people and that's the really blunt reality I think of a lot of these things. There are some of these issues that we need to just side off and they just need to be leadership issues we may say. Well I think we can take that argument too far. I mean look at the public generosity when things go wrong in the South Pacific and people being willing to contribute and I don't agree with you Rory. I think that if an intervention comes up again in the South Pacific I think Ramsey's a good example of most people not noticing and government's being able to make very good public cases for it when they need to. It depends on the scale I agree. I know Randy wasn't short term but it was a walk in the park compared to what we might have to do in P&G for example. Two billion dollars. Two billion dollars. Yeah but I think P&G some sort of Australian intervention in the years ahead to provide major security and stability in P&G would be an enormous ask and I think the public is not ready for that. I think Ramsey Ramsey was a reasonable sort of mid-level effort over a sustained period of time but I think if you asked the public to do it again I'm just not sure. Where does the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement fit into this landscape? Not neatly? Again I don't think a lot of Australians know what the TPP is to be honest. I mean I think most Australians would if they thought about a trade agreement they would think about the trade agreement with the United States, the Howard Government negotiated what the TPP means and what's in it for them. I just don't think there's much public resonance. I don't think there's much about the free trade agreements with China, Japan and Korea either for that matter to the extent that people think about it. They're probably opposed to it because they probably see cheap imports destroying Australian jobs but again I don't think it really resonates. I think that's an interesting kind of hinge though that in the past there's been a public at least and this is just gut feel but a public acceptance of bilateral trade agreements as being an unequivocally good thing. Opening up trade with Thailand or opening up trade with South America or sort of whomever but the TPP seems to have well it's hit a lot of roadblocks obviously. It's incredibly cumbersome in its detail. It's talking about a lot of things that I think people don't realise go into the guts of these free trade agreements or preferential trade agreements and so I think that they've hit a real in terms of public opinion hit a real obstacle for the immovable force. It doesn't have a lot of political support in the United States either at the moment so it's hard to really see where it's going to go. Personally I can't see it Congress isn't going to support it. Neither the presidential candidates are saying that Hillary Clinton may well do in the end but it's going to be difficult to push that one through Congress anyway. There was another question up here. Thank you. If Bill Shorten manages to win this election we'll have had six Prime Ministers, seven if you want to count word twice in the past ten years. How do you from a foreign affairs perspective, how do you think that affects how we're seen by the world and how we interact with the world? You know the joke they used to say about Italian governments? They're saying it about Australian governments. You've answered your own question basically. I think it's pretty bad. I mean look I think essentially most governments look at the change of leaders in a way that most governments looked at those changes of Japanese leaders over many years. They see the change of leaders but they see continuities in policy. We haven't seen wildly fluctuating policy between one Prime Minister and another. Sure Tony Abbott was more skeptical about climate change but in general the tenor of bilateral relations even with Indonesia and Asia over the Tobax policy. It was kind of managed. I think there is an essential pragmatism out there that whoever's really in charge of Australian foreign policy it'll be broadly the same. I disagree with you again Michael. I think it's true until you come up with some pretty significant exceptions. With the submarine issue whatever reality the perception is you change the Prime Minister, you change the country with which we've done the $50 billion plus deal. I think Indonesia certainly Malcolm Turnbull made Hay of the fact that he got a much better reception from Jacoa when he went to Jakarta because he wasn't Abbott. Now that may have been opportunism but I tend to think that perceptions about leaders matters perhaps even more than it did previously in these relationships. I think it's been a net negative for Australia that we've had so many in such a short time in terms of our reliability as a partner. One more. Rebecca? This one's for Rory and hopefully Michael might have a view too. Rory today you've called for in your op-ed an innovative national security strategy, Vice 1 that's draped in the flag and just nearly a shopping list. Do you think our bureaucracies here in Canberra are actually capable of coming up with a thematic response to the world's issues? Vice what our usual way is of comfortably existing in our stove pipes and probably not being too innovative with stifling layers of approvals that many of us in this room probably have to face. Can we do what you call for? You're not going to ask me to issue a blanket criticism of the Canberra bureaucracy are you because that's apart from anything else the national security college helps train the Canberra bureaucracy. So it would be a little rich. The point I was making and I think we've all thought and written about these issues is that the challenges facing Australia, whatever position you take whether it's the Greens position or whether it's one of the two main parties are much more complex and much more I guess about a nexus of the international and domestic than they've been in the past. We talk now about terrorism for example it's a domestic issue but it's also an international issue. You talk about the effects of climate change. It's both domestic and international so you can no longer have siloed policy responses to these issues no matter where you stand. Now is the Canberra bureaucracy up to it? I would turn the question around and say is our political class up to it because in many ways the bureaucracy is going to be responsive to our political class. The best thing the bureaucracy can do and this is partly because we're prisoners of the geography that Federation gave us is to get out of Canberra a bit more and basically take soundings from the much more diverse multicultural Australia and indeed much more private sector focused Australia that we've become because if there's one risk in this from a bureaucratic point of view it's that consultation is still generally done as sort of lip service window dressing or something after the fact of policy but I certainly wouldn't pin the blame on the bureaucracy for that. I think it's principally about the political direction that they get. A lot of this comes down to that though right so I mean this is sort of at the heart of everything I guess and what I'm trying to sort of inject to this discussion is how do we have these conversations so you know the idea of coming up with a wholesale foreign affairs strategy we never get the space and the fresh air to kind of have that conversation. Who's we? The country. I'm talking in very grandiose terms here but you're right the political class. They should do something about it. They should probably the media should do. Well I think we're in a university which is probably the best place to start. If you're going to create the space this is the place. I think we've got time for one more. You're in charge. You've got the microphone. Thank you very much for your insights this evening. There are in fact 39 days remaining of the election campaign. Long story that we shouldn't need to go into. My question pertains to the comment you made before about and evidence towards China amongst our electorate. If things continue to escalate in the South China Sea and particularly following the yet lost arbitration do you think that ambivalence will be tenable and if not then how do you think our political class as well should respond? People don't know what the South China Sea is or what it is or what is happening there and that's sorry. I think this is sort of the interesting, what I hope is an interesting contrast I made before with that complete disconnect between public opinion over the last ten years and the kind of themes that arose from the last defence white paper. At the risk of sounding like Henry Kissinger I think we've got to be very careful about allowing policy to be determined by short term movements in public opinion. When public passions are aroused or not aroused that should not be how we shape our foreign policy. We should be thinking very much about interests and general international stability and other issues as well. Foreign policy I mean public opinion obviously matters but as a more background factor you've got to make foreign policy in a way that resonates with the public and the public responds to but when you get governments making foreign policy according particularly to nationalist sentiment that's when you get real danger coming into international relations. And that really has never happened here. I mean we have never had a population that's been terribly interested in the broad sense in foreign policy and we've never really had governments who've used popular opinion to set foreign policy. The exception I'd make would be East Timor really really changed government policy. That was a nationalism that was genuine concern but I can't think of a really nationalistic issue. Well no seriously I mean I think that was the one thing that resonated with people about Indonesia and that had some pretty serious policy consequences at the time because the Hauer government was very very worried about how that was being perceived by people but it takes something like that a sort of populist issue like that to engage the broader electorate in foreign policy generally. But I think governments like that in China realise that when they try and kind of stoke up the nationalist card that it's a very very dangerous thing to do because it actually restricts their own freedom of action and so what we've seen in China in recent years has been a government that has been more than willing to clamp down on nationalist sentiment when it looks like getting out of control and really restricting what the Chinese government can do in relation to issues such as the OU or Senkaku Islands. I mean it is a two stage game. There is a domestic game and a foreign game and I just wanted to apologise to the extent that I am involved in stoking these short term policy public opinion kind of trends but I think Mark was absolutely right. Can I just say something briefly on this South China Sea issue and I think the bigger question, I think that's a perfectly valid question but the bigger question is the long term tensions within Australian public opinion, the ambivalence around the security influence of the rise of China and obviously the economic opportunities there. I think that again because we're sitting in Canberra we're not sitting in the bigger more complex Australia but I think we are seeing I didn't say that and I love Canberra but I do think that we tend to underestimate how fragmented Australian public opinion is becoming on a lot of these issues. I mean we had recently a statement put out by a group claiming to represent the Chinese community in Sydney. It clearly didn't represent the wonderfully diverse and complicated Chinese community in Sydney but a small group put out a statement basically insisting that the vulnerable government adhere to the Chinese line on China's territorial claims in the South China Sea. Now nothing is more likely to upset the self-respect of the wider Australian public than that kind of attempt to bring foreign policy into domestic politics and interests. So I think the strength of the Australian community will continue to be its diversity but it will be tested when we come to geopolitical tensions in the region or other tensions where the interests of the diverse Australian community intersect with what's going on in the wider world and I do think in a way we're reaching a point in the years ahead where we won't as a nation be able to hide from the tensions of the wider world anymore. Great well I think that's where we're going to leave it is it? Yep. Thank you very much very Canberra audience. Bless them. Please thank our Canberra.