 Good morning everybody, my name is Barry Colfer and I'm the director of research here at the IIEA. I'm really pleased to welcome you to this special webinar. We're really delighted to be joined today by Kate Clayton, who is research officer at the TROBE University in Melbourne, who has been generous enough to take time out of her schedule to speak with us. What worth this event is contending with time zones, so I'd like to thank Kate for joining us rather late in the day, and I'd like to thank our audience for joining us rather early in the day if it's unusual time of half nine local time. I must say I've really been looking forward to this meeting and to hearing from Kate, obviously Australian Ireland are tied together for generations. It's a great mix of kinship and business and association between the two countries. And it's really great to have this opportunity to be together and to talk about the recent important election in Australia, which has ushered in a new phase in Australian and indeed regional politics. Kate is going to speak to us for about 20 minutes or so. And then as is customary this will be followed by questions and answers with you our audience and with myself, the chair. And as you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. And as always, please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you. I'll come to as many of them with Kate as possible once presentation is finished. A reminder that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. So let me introduce Kate Clayton to you before handing over. Kate Clayton is a research officer at the Latrobe University in Melbourne Research Centre, excuse me, at Latrobe Asia is tripping over the word a research centre based at Latrobe University Melbourne. Kate's research focuses on security policy, geopolitics and climate change in Australia and the Indo-Pacific. And her work has been featured in a wide range of impressive publications, including the conversation, the Canberra Times, the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and the Perth US Asia Centre to name but a few. Kate is also a frequent media contributor, and it's contributed to outlets including ABC News and The Age. Kate is Chief Operations Officer at Young Australians in International Affairs. Kate holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Melbourne, a BA from Natrobe University. Kate has also studied at Chongqing University in China. Kate, it's a real pleasure and I'll hand you the floor for 20 minutes. Kate, thanks so much Barry and the team at IIEA for having me here tonight. So before I begin, as is custom in Australia, I'd like to acknowledge the wandering people of the cooler nation, the lands on which I'm hosting from today. Sovereignty in Australia was never ceded. We are the only Commonwealth country that didn't sign a treaty with the Indigenous people. Australia as a settler colony has never signed a treaty with First Nations people. We are a white Anglo country in Asia, and this has shaped our foreign and defence policies. So geographically, Australia is in the Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific is similar geographically to Asia, but it's more of a strategic redefining of the region, demonstrating the shift in balance of power in the region. The Indo-Pacific isn't a new term. It dates back to the 1900s, used by Germany as well as Japan. But since the 2010s, the term has regained popularity, particularly with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and you're seeing this presentation, there is a kind of over-saturation of multilateral dialogues in the region that I'm sure I'll get tongue tied with throughout the session. But the Quad States, Japan, the US, India and Australia are the kind of key proponents of this Indo-Pacific, and that's at the centre of Australia's foreign policy and many of the foreign policies in the region. So many people think that it was the US and Australia that really pushed this new reconception to the Indo-Pacific, but it was former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's term as early leader that really pushed the term. For Australia and the US, I would say the Indo-Pacific is a way to redefine the region away from China and towards other regional powers, primarily India and Indonesia. It's also a way to justify it as well as anchor their own existence in a region where they don't really look like everyone else. One of the things that I think the Indo-Pacific is the most useful for is how it centres the oceans in its strategic frame in. The strategy seeks to join the Indian and the Pacific oceans, emphasising the importance of the maritime in this new geopolitical era. It also means that climate change, or in theory, be the centre of Indo-Pacific policies, has a strategy that focuses on the ocean, must also focus on climate change. So this brings us to the Australian election just over a month ago. Labour leader Anthony Albanese was elected to be the 31st Prime Minister of Australia after over a decade of Conservative Liberal Party leadership. During that period, Australia and the region underwent enormous change. Here in Australia since 2020, in the past few years alone, we've seen catastrophic flooding, bushfires, borders closed and reopened after long closures, and just as everyone has experienced now rising costs of living. All of this has been alongside the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an increasingly competitive and insecure Indo-Pacific region. Like elections globally since COVID, this election felt a lot more high stakes than previous ones. So the election has been described as the khaki election, in which national security conflict and defence heavily influenced election discourses. Khaki elections have a long history in Westminster systems. Australia's political system is known as the Wash Minister, so it's a combination of both the US and the UK governments. The term was first referred to in the 1900 British election during the Second World War, and by having a khaki election in Australia, it drew upon the Liberal Party's historical track record as the National Security Party. The khaki election is the culmination of the Scott Morrison foreign policy strategy that placed national security and defence at the centre of Australia's international relations. This was matched with consecutive cuts to aid and diplomacy, seeing Australia's place in the world shrink as the border Indo-Pacific region manages US-China competition as well as climate change. The security pact recently signed by China and the Solomon Islands exposed the cracks in the Liberal government strategy, allowing the opposition leader and now the winning party, Labour, to draw upon their experience in diplomacy, regionalism and climate change. The Labour Party, our new government, have a long tradition of a more regionalist foreign policy, while the Liberal Party prefers bilateral international relations as a middle power with a strong tradition of multilateralism. Australia under the Labour Party has embedded itself into Indo-Pacific institutions, so we have ASEAN, the East Asia Forum, Pacific Island Forum as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Corporation, which was founded by former Labour Prime Minister Bob Ork in 1989. It's still pretty early days in the election, it's been just over a month, but already we've seen the Albanese government really embrace the Indo-Pacific region. Only three hours after being sworn into office, Albanese flew to Tokyo for the Quad Leaders meeting, and on that plane ride over to the Quad, he made his first international call as Prime Minister and it was to Boris Johnson. I think this is evidence of where the new government is putting its international focus, simultaneously the US and UK, increasing our relations with those traditional allies, but also the Indo-Pacific and I think it's going to be quite difficult, not difficult, but a challenge for the government in terms of how you juggle your relations with great powers, but also really anchoring Australia in the broader Indo-Pacific. So the new regional agenda of the Albanese government has been led by our new Foreign Minister Penny Wong. As a fellow international relations nerd, if I say Penny really stands out from previous foreign ministers in recent history for her genuine love of diplomacy and the region, including Australia's place in the world and our engagement with the Indo-Pacific. Key speeches by Wong over the years reference key international relations figures in history and academia. And since the election, again, just over a month ago, Wong has visited Fiji, Samoa, New Zealand, and is currently in Vietnam and Malaysia, so I've already a really packed schedule and Parliament hasn't even commenced and that won't commence until July. Penny Wong has emphasized the list spin in her foreign policy, which is I think are really underrated and often forgotten skill as a foreign minister. I think it's also important to note here the importance of Australia now having a Malaysian born queer female foreign minister. As the recent census came out in the past few days and I think the UK one will say came out recently, 51% of Australians come from a migrant background, but they make up only about 10% of our Parliament. Furthermore, same sex marriage in Australia was only legalized in 2017, which was also the last time I was in the UK. So there was this unspoken rule in Australian foreign policy that has happened for the past few decades, but it's where the first state that a Prime Minister visits is Indonesia. So that couldn't quite happen the Quad meeting, but as soon as Albanese was back on his next plane, he went to Indonesia. So Indonesia is key to Australia's foreign policy political relations have struggled over decades issues between various leaders, but people to people relations remain incredibly strong. And it's our second closest neighbor with PNG being the closest on centering climate change, which is the whole kind of theme of this talk of its foreign policy. The new government has committed 200 million just to Indonesia for a climate infrastructure program. This will be key as Indonesia is going to be amongst the hardest hit by climate change, and they're already in the process of relocating their entire capital city, which would just be a logistical nightmare. In the Pacific, Australia is going to bid to host a cop with its Pacific partners as well as facilitate the Pacific climate infrastructure financing program. And overall we're predicted to see an enhanced diplomatic capability, defense and security cooperation with what the government terms effective climate leadership. Again, we're a month in, we don't really know what that looks like, but as I'm going to talk about a little bit soon, effective like climate leadership has to be matched with to point with domestic climate policy. As I said, this is all really great policy and it's welcomed in the region, particularly by the US, the UK and the Pacific. But one of the biggest challenges for the Albanese government will be domestic climate policy and maintaining this momentum on international climate strategy. Last year at Copping Glasgow, Morrison announced a 26% emissions reduction by 2030, which is not enough to hit any goals. Albanese has recommitted Australia to 43% by 2030 and in his ministry, key labour politicians have been tasked with environmental portfolios and he's ordered an intelligence review of the security threats posed by climate change. This is a welcome shift after a sense of climate frustration, marked Morrison's leadership, his inaction during the 2020 bushfires where Morrison was holidaying in Hawaii as homes burnt was especially notable. At the beginning of this year we had catastrophic flux in New Zealand and New South Wales Queensland, where 22 lives were lost homes and infrastructure was destroyed and supply change issue called national food shortages. As I'm presenting now there are massive protests in Sydney and climate change. I grew up in regional Australia where often I had school days canceled due to bushfires, and I even missed important senior exams as fires had burned the train lines and I couldn't make it to school. So for Australia climate change is a frontline issue, the recent Lowy Institute poll that was launched just today indicated that the majority of Australians want to see see global warming as a serious issue, and that if we don't start taking steps now there'll be significant costs. So Australia is a resource rich country and we rely heavily on exports from coal mines. This is in governments trade off economic prosperity and security of exporting coal over renewable energy and keeping greenhouse gas emissions low. As the world's highest greenhouse gas emitter of coal per capita. This is despite the majority of Australians supporting reduced coal exports banning new coal mines more ambitious climate targets and expanding our renewable energy. The climate frustration was manifested in this election with the rise of teal independence who are conservative candidates, but they have climate focused platforms. One of the really interesting things about these two candidates just from an international perspective is that whilst they have a really big climate change focus. It doesn't translate into their foreign policy they don't really look at international climate change. They look at leadership as a key platform they look at traditional issues orcas and the quad, as well as China, but they haven't quite made the leap from domestic climate policy to international climate policy. So after slow and poor climate policy over the last decades there was this kind of collective sigh of relief across the nation, as Albanese was elected. That being said, as I mentioned earlier, the key challenge will be transferring this new climate momentum into domestic policy. Australian politics remains heavily hamstrung by mining lobbies who have impeded climate action for over a decade now, including the last time the labor government were in power. The domestic work on climate change will be key to unlocking climate action internationally. If we aren't seen to be making a concerted effort at home on climate change, our international climate diplomacy will be seen as hypocritical. Australia's climate in action affects not just Australians, these policies have global consequences. The Indo-Pacific will feel the effects of climate change first and hardest. Australia's reputation as a climate laggard under the liberal government has negatively affected our relationships with the region. This is seen in the Pacific where Australia has been called out for its weak climate targets, and some even blame Australia's climate in action for the recent Solomon Islands-China security relations. It's even hampered our relations with the UK. So last year, Australia and the UK signed the first free trade agreement. The European government wanted there to be Paris climate targets in the FTA. However, recently leaked documents revealed that the Morrison government pushed the UK to take the climate targets out. And despite the UK's really strong and quite exemplary climate leadership last year, something which I think Albanese could look quite closely to. The UK's desire for a post-Brexit free trade agreement with Australia hampered its own climate commitments. That phone call that I mentioned at the start between Johnson and Albanese emphasised a good change for Australia-UK collaboration. The leaders agreed that there was a strong alignment between their governments to an agenda, including security, climate change and trade. So hopefully we might see some climate commitments reintroduced into the free trade agreement, or at least unofficially. Another good development that features both the UK and Australia is the establishment of the partners in the Blue Pacific, which happened just over the weekend. So it's a partnership with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the US, France, another Pacific state. We're in earlier drafts of the partnership, but not much information is around just yet on why France are no longer in that agreement. So the partnership in the Blue Pacific is the culmination of many Pacific strategies. So recently the UK had its Indo-Pacific tilt. This was pre-cursed by Australia's Pacific step-up, New Zealand's Pacific reset, all of these big terms that essentially just mean more Pacific engagement. Alongside these regional Indo-Pacific strategies, Pacific leaders are pushing for their own group roaming of the region, one that centres Pacific voices and climate change as key to regional dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. The Blue Pacific concept aims to redefine the region from small island states to large ocean states. And again, this goes back to the oceanic nature of the Indo-Pacific as a concept. The partners in the Blue Pacific facilitates a more effective, efficient cooperation in support of Pacific island priorities, building upon the commitments made by each of the individual partner states. The group hopes to bolster Pacific regionalism, expand opportunities between Pacific and the rest of the world on issues such as maritime security, connectivity and transportation, health, education, climate, a range of issues. And I think this is a really good step for Australia, the UK and other partners, and goes back to Penny Wong's listening to the region. However, it's vital for the new Albanese government as well as the other partners of the partners of the Blue Pacific, so many multilateral acronyms, that their foreign policies don't hamper local Pacific diplomacy. The Pacific leaders are leaders on climate change diplomacy and have been for decades. And the best thing that the Albanese can do to support Pacific voices is to listen to them and to uplift and engage them. For example, if Australia is successful in hosting a COP with the Pacific, Pacific and First Nations voices should be at the centre of the conference. And this brings us to what might just be the hallmark of Albanese and Wong's foreign policy, and that's the announcement of a First Nations foreign policy. So we haven't gotten much information on this, but the new government, and I'm quoting Wong here, aimed to have a First Nations foreign policy that leaves the voices and the practices of the world's continuing, oldest continuing culture into the way we talk to the world and the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It will include appointing an ambassador of First Nations people as well as the establishment of an office of First Nations engagement within our Department of Foreign Affairs. I think this is going to be a big step for Australian foreign policy, and it looks quite similar to the indigenous foreign policy that we're seeing in New Zealand as well. And ultimately, it's going to be welcomed by our neighbours who have been asking for more First Nations engagement. As I mentioned above, Australia is a settler colony, we're located in the Indo-Pacific on unceded land. This has seen Australia seek out great and powerful friends for our security guarantee, including the UK and the US primarily. And this is what I think is the most telling about Orcas, whilst it's a breakthrough for Australian defence infrastructure and a much needed modernisation about capability capabilities and also trilateral engagement. It's seen Australia return to the anguish for its security, just as the balance of power is shifting towards Asia. Moving forward, I think Albanese is going to be grappling with two main issues that I've discussed. Firstly, it will have to manage its historical and increasing relations with the UK and the US alongside its push in the Indo-Pacific. Whether that's as we saw taking a call from Johnson on the way to a Quad meeting, how we're going to navigate that I think is going to be really key going forward. And the labour government have really strong support for Orcas as well. So having Orcas as a multilateral, trilateral institution engages with the Indo-Pacific is also going to be really telling. I think the partners for the Blue Pacific is a good example of incorporating your traditional alliances, Anglo, including Japan, into the broader Indo-Pacific region. And our second key issue is matching international climate diplomacy to our domestic policy and following through our own domestic commitment. So I haven't spoken much about China today and I think this is emblematic of the very little engagement Australia and China have had over the past few years as our bilateral relationship has worsened. And reached its lower point and I'm happy to talk more about China in the Q&A as well. But I think to conclude the biggest issues for the Albanese government are following through on its commitments to the Indo-Pacific and climate change. Rhetoric and medians are all good, but it's action and policy that are going to count in the region during these uncontested times.