ASEAN’s integration agenda - reflected in the Declaration of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 - has also brought benefits not just to Southeast Asia, but to ASEAN’s economic partners.
ASEAN now represents around 15% of Australia’s total trade and is our third largest trading partner, after China and the EU. That’s an extraordinary achievement, but it hasn’t come about by chance. Since becoming ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner in 1974, Australia has worked assiduously to support the organisation’s economic integration and trade liberalising activities, and we continue to do so today.
During the last decade, we secured the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, still ASEAN’s most comprehensive trade agreement. This agreement has, in turn, inspired the drive for an even bigger prize in the form of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – which will also bring in China, Korea, Japan and India.
As our strategic spaces become more crowded, the challenge for ASEAN is to show that the impressive statecraft of its past can be sustained in a more complex future; to remain nimble enough in a more testing time. Australia’s interests in ensuring that this is the case are clear. We support a strong, united ASEAN that continues to convene and strengthen organisations such as the East Asia Summit, the region’s only leaders-led forum that can help manage the region’s strategic risks. And we support an ASEAN that remains committed to liberal economic values.
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