 With Myanmar President Thane Sain visiting Australia this week, we spoke to Dr John Blacksland about increased military cooperation between the two countries, the role of Australian aid and Myanmar's road to reform. Thane Sain has come at an opportune moment. There has been momentum growing for engagement with Myanmar and that's for a variety of reasons. One is the change, the democratic transition that's been taking place in Myanmar in the last two years has been quite substantial and unprecedented. Most commentators have been very surprised at just how extensive the reform that's taken place has transformed the country and it's ongoing. Now there is no question that there's scope for considerable more reform. There are many issues still outstanding to be addressed, but this is a very positive step. I think it's important to keep things in context. If you think about what's happened in neighbouring countries in Bangladesh, in Laos, in Thailand, even in Malaysia, what we're seeing is actually remarkably significant progress in democratic reform. Now this is not where we'd like it to be. There's no question. Most commentators on Myanmar want further reform and see this as a step along the way, not the end point, but it is significant and it's unprecedented in Myanmar's history. It's been a peaceful transition, it's been an orderly transition and it's been a transition from military rule to quasi-civilian and increasingly civilian rule. The human rights issues are significant and ongoing. There's no washing that out of the picture. The issue of the Rohingya is significant, but it's bigger than Myanmar. It's actually about ASEAN. It's about how ASEAN and even Australia and the rest of the West looks at this issue and helps them resolve it. There are no easy answers there, but there are deep-seated problems there that we can perhaps help them adjust to. But beyond that, there's issues with people like the Kachin that they've been in conflict with in northern Myanmar as well. And there are many other ethnic groups that have grievances with the central government. And the steps that the Australian government has taken today with the announcement, with the visit of Thane Sane to Australia, is actually a way of consolidating and reinforcing that trend. So it's a very positive message. We've used the carrot very rarely in the last few years. We've tended to go with the stick, and the stick hasn't got us very far. There's a recognition that in fact positive inducements are really the way to go, particularly given what we've seen with Thane Sane demonstrate so far. His desire, his clear demonstrated willingness to grapple with difficult issues and to positively engage on the topics that Australia has raised, other ASEAN countries have raised and other interested countries have raised. Well, a few years ago, I was in a position where I advised against a military attache position opening up in what was then Burma. I've changed my mind, and that's for good reason. What we've seen is really a transformation in the outlook of the country towards the west, towards outsiders, towards its neighbours, and that is providing an opportunity for engagement on the military front. Now, this is not a revisiting of the old ways of doing business where we sold weapons or we taught them how to conduct counterinsurgency better. What this is, though, is an opportunity to engage with them on our approach to respect for law and order, for the operations of a military within a civil society that's controlled by a democratic civilian-led government. That's a very positive thing, and to do that we need an attache to explore opportunities, to understand what they are thinking, and to get feedback from ideas. So if we're going to engage them, which I think is important we do, then we need to have somebody on the ground doing that and actually working out who's the right person to speak to, what's the best way we can shape the proposals we have in mind to best place them in the context that's going to work locally. It's no good us having a loud hailer and shouting from a distance, instructions of what they should do. What we need is to have a softly spoken, self-deprecating but constructive approach to engagement. An attache placed in Rangoon is the first step along that path. Yes, I think for now it is because too much can cause problems. It's important to actually not give too much aid in one hit because it'll get swandered, it'll get misused. So a measured incremental increase in aid is a constructive way of doing that, where you engage people locally, you employ them locally, you develop programs incrementally, and then you can build something that's constructive that can have long-term effects rather than just squandering it on programs just simply to spend the money quickly. That's not the way to do business. And what we're seeing is an incremental increase, and that's a very positive thing. And we're seeing already Osaid has a significant presence in the embassy in Rangoon and what they're planning to do is expand that and what they have in mind is really constructive things to deal with the issues that are on the front pages of the newspapers, help the Myanmar government, work out how to deal with the Rohingya problem, engage on constructively helping the Kachin people and various other ethnic groups as well. So there's a whole range of things we can be involved in and the door is opening and there's a bit of light being shared. There's a lot of murkiness there to deal with but that shouldn't scare us away. It should actually encourage us to go further.