Perspectives: Asia seminar

Speech
14 November, 2025
Hosted by Griffith University Asia Institute
Brisbane

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Turrbal and Jagera (Yuggera) peoples, and pay respect to Elders, past and present.

I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.  

As we meet here at the Gallery of Modern Art, during the exhibition of Archie Moore’s extraordinary Kith and Kin, we can reflect on 60,000 years of Indigenous history, knowledge, and culture that we are the beneficiaries of.

Archie Moore’s genealogical chart, hand-drawn in chalk across the expansive walls of this place, is a striking visualisation of the tens of thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge embedded in 2,400 generations.

First Nations peoples were this land’s first diplomats and our first traders.

Indeed, it’s now well known that long before a word of English was spoken on Australian soil, Indonesian traders from Makassar came to Arnhem Land in northern Australia in search of trepang – sea cucumber.

It wasn’t just sea cucumber being traded in these exchanges. Language was also trade between the Yolngu and the Makassar.

As a result, the Yolngu language group incorporates a series of Malay/ Indonesian loanwords which are still in use today.

Words like kelapa for coconut and jalan for road or walk.

Or notably, balanda, the Malay word for the Dutch colonisers, which the Yolngu people later used to describe the British colonists who were to arrive many years later and is still today used to describe white Australians.

Australia’s engagement in Asia has a long and complex history indeed.

Congratulations to Griffith Asia Institute and the Queensland Art Gallery’s Australian Centre of Asia Pacific Art for hosting this lecture and 20 years of Perspectives:Asia.

Over the past two decades, you have brought together community leaders, artists, diplomats and academics to shape the public debate on Australia’s relationship with our region.

I should say that I saw the influence of Griffith University in action yesterday, when I joined Griffith Alumni and Australia’s Ambassador to Indonesia, Rod Brazier for the state lunch for Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto at Kirribilli.

It was impressive watching Rod put his fluent Bahasa Indonesia and his Griffith Asia Studies degree to use in service of our Australia’s national interest on a watershed day for Australia-Indonesia relations.  

So, I thank Griffith University for the work you have done building Australia’s Asia capability for many decades.

I also acknowledge:  

·        Prof. Christoph Nedopil Wang, Griffith Asia Institute Director

·        Mr Chris Saines, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art

·        Mr Tarun Nagesh, Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art

On this 20th anniversary of the Perspectives:Asia seminar series, I want to reflect on the history of the way that we have conceptualised Australia’s Asia capability challenge in the past, and how it has shaped our security and prosperity in the region today.

The world looks very different today than it did when this lecture series was established in 2005.

Our region has seen enormous change since Makassar traders first arrived in Northern Australia, but the pace of this change has never been so fast as it is today.

We are navigating the most complex strategic environment since the end of World War II.

Major powers are changing how they engage and assert themselves and geostrategic competition is intensifying.

China is central to solving global challenges – from climate change and the energy transition, to global public health and trade.

But we are also realistic about China's objectives in changing the regional balance of power, as it continues to assert its strategic influence and project its power further into our region.

The United States’ presence in our region remains critical to the Indo-Pacific's strategic stability.

Its presence reinforces the ability of all its countries to make choices in their own sovereign interests.

At the same time, we also know that the Trump Administration envisages a different role for the United States in the world.

The nations of Southeast Asia are navigating their own paths in the face of these changing dynamics.

In parallel to this background of intensifying geopolitical competition, climate change is challenging regional resilience, causing extreme weather events, threatening food and water supplies and regional stability.

In a region in which the median age is under 30, demographic change is reshaping public expectations of the societies and economies of our neighbours.

Artificial Intelligence and rapid technological innovation threaten to further disrupt economies and societies.

Our region is complex, consequential and dynamic.    

In the face of the waves of change reshaping our region, the Albanese government is intent on deploying all sources of our national power – all tools of statecraft - to help shape the region that we want.

To help build a region which is peaceful, stable and prosperous.

Where no country dominates, and where no country is dominated.

A region where disagreements are addressed through dialogue and rules.

Where all countries have the freedom to decide their own futures, without interference.

Achieving this in the current international environment is demanding more of our government and our leaders than ever before.

Over the last three and a half years we’ve seen an unprecedented level of activity in the Australian government’s engagement with the world, and particularly our region.

We have stabilised our relationship with China and we are now both managing our differences and taking forward our interests through patient, calibrated and deliberate engagement.

We’ve restored trust in our relationships in the Pacific.

We have long said that we want to be the partner of choice for the Pacific family, and gone about that goal by listening to Pacific priorities and partnering on shared goals.

We remain the region’s largest and most comprehensive development partner.

By listening to Pacific priorities, we have also adopted innovative approaches to engagement like the ground-breaking Tuvalu-Australia Falepili Union.

It is the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world. It provides legal protection for Tuvalu's sovereignty in the face of sea level rise and a pathway for mobility with dignity as the impacts of climate change worsen.

We have reengaged with Southeast Asia, strengthening our partnerships with the nations of our region.

ASEAN centrality remains at the heart of our engagement and we were pleased to host the ASEAN Australia Special Summit in Melbourne in 2024 to mark the 50th Anniversary of ASEAN-Australia Dialogue Relations. 

But we have also lifted our bilateral relations to an unprecedented level, formally upgrading our diplomatic relationships with Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei and Laos, and continuing to deepen our longstanding ties with Malaysia and Singapore with new agreements.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Albanese and President Prabowo announced a landmark security agreement between Australia and Indonesia, the Australia-Indonesia Treaty on Common Security. 

Modelled closely on the Agreement on Maintaining Security, agreed by Prime Minister Keating and President Soeharto in 1995, the Treaty reinforces Australia and Indonesia’s common interest in the peace and security of our region.

Against this backdrop of government to government engagement we’ve also prioritised lift our economic engagement with the region through the Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040. 

Finally, we have been lifting our engagement in the Indian Ocean region, including through the creation of my role as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Indian Ocean Affairs.  

The Indian Ocean matters to Australia.

It is home to the world's fastest growing large economies and around half of Australia's sea-bound exports set sail from Indian Ocean ports.

The shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean are vital to Australia and the world economy and it is bustling with more than a third of the world's bulk cargo traffic and two-thirds of global oil shipments.

That’s part of why the Indian Ocean was identified as an area of primary interest to Australia in the National Defence Strategy and half of Australia's naval fleet is based in the Indian Ocean, including Fleet Base West and Submarine Rotational Force West.

It’s also why we’ve been strengthening relationships in the Indian Ocean by expanding our diplomatic footprint to increase our trade, investment, diplomatic and development ties.

We’ve been working with the countries in the Indian Ocean to strengthen regional resilience in the face of shared challenges through new models of engagement, including through the gifting of a Guardian Class Patrol Boat to the Maldives, a first for the region. 

We’ve been pleased in this context to have been able to lift our relationship with India to an unprecedented level, rapidly accelerating our trade and investment relationship through our India Economic Road Map and signing ground breaking defence cooperation agreements.

And all of this is just a few of the highlights of our foreign policy agenda.

Take it from someone on the inside, we’ve been very busy – and I would argue successful.

However, this level of activity and success hides an uncomfortable truth.

While we are doing more than ever before in our region as a government, our successes today are leveraging investments in the Asia capability of individuals and institutions made decades ago.  

While we have been leveraging all the tools of statecraft to pursue our foreign policy goals in the region, back home the institutions that build the Asia capabilities of of our nation have been in a decades long decline.  

In some ways, there’s nothing new in this.

Preparing Australia to grapple with impending change in our region has been a pre-occupation of our national debate since Federation.   

The public debate surrounding Australia’s first diplomatic mission to Asia nearly a century ago is characteristic of the way this discussion has unfolded in the decades since.

Led by Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs J.G. Latham, the 1934 mission visited the ‘Netherlands East Indies’ – now Indonesia; ‘French Indo-China’ – now Vietnam, and Singapore, China and Japan.

In a report to Parliament after his travels, Latham recognised:

“… the continent of Australia is actually in the geographical area often described as “the East”.

The risks attendant upon any disturbance of peace or actual outbreak of war in that region are of the greatest moment to our people. Our trade relations with Eastern countries are most important to our welfare.”

As historian Boris Schedvin says, this mission was Australia’s first serious attempt to develop a coherent policy towards Asia.

It marked a significant broadening of Australia’s foreign and trade policy.

Latham concluded that: “the maintenance of friendly relations between Australia and our neighbours… should be the major objective of Australian foreign policy.”

Even in 1934, JG Latham saw what remains true today: that our security and our prosperity rely on events in our region.

In 1933, ahead of his Asia visit, JG Latham wrote to Sir Stanley Bruce, former Prime Minister and then Australia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Latham lamented that Australia didn’t have its own ability to engage with the region, and spoke of the embarrassment of having to rely on the United Kingdom to be effective beyond our borders.  

Latham realised Australia had to stand on its own two feet when engaging with Asia, and couldn’t rely on the United Kingdom or their translators when it came to engaging with our neighbours.

He said:

“we are very embarrassed owing to ignorance whether the visit would be acceptable to countries concerned and whether the Foreign Office would assist through British Ambassadors, Consuls and interpreters….

Consuls here are embarrassed through hearing nothing either from us or from their own countries and Press full of embarrassing speculations.”

As a result, on his return to Australia Latham recommended the establishment of new missions throughout the region.

Unfortunately, his vision took many years to be realised.

Writing in the Courier Mail after Latham’s return, journalist, Harriet Winifred Ponder captured what, nearly a century ago, had already become a pattern in debates about Australia’s Asia Capability, observing:

“.. there is talk of trade commissions and of advisory committees, and every now and then some fortunate individual is financed by patriotic public bodies and dispatched in quasi-official role to “report”, returning armed with sheaves of statistics and recommendations – and all is exactly as it was before.”

Ponder went on to make a call for Australia to develop its Asia Capability that would become all too familiar over the coming century.

Ponder declared that:

“… the only sort of trade “commission” that would have the least hope of achieving useful results in even the Far East as a whole, would be one including persons capable of conversing fluently in Japanese, Chinese (at least three dialects), Malay, Hindustani (for Indian traders are everywhere), Anamese, Dutch and French.”

Since Latham’s 1934 visit to Asia, we’ve seen a series of reports calling for Australia to build its Asia Capability soon followed by Ponder-esq laments of the lack of action in response.

In 1989, Ross Garnaut’s “Australia and the Northeast Ascendancy” Report wrote that to realise the opportunities of the extraordinary economic growth of our region,

“The most important task is to educate a new generation of Australians to confident familiarity with their East Asian environment.”

Garnaut called for 5 per cent of tertiary students to be studying an Asian language by the year 1995.

It obviously didn’t happen and so after Garnaut came more reports – the 2012 Australia in the Asian Century White Paper and the 2018 India Economic Strategy and in 2023, “Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040”.  

All of these reports made similar recommendations: increase Australia’s Asia capability at home in order for us to be effective in our region.

In stark contrast to Garnaut’s call for 5 per cent of tertiary students to be studying an Asian language by 1995, just 0.71 per cent of domestic Australian tertiary students studied an Asian language in 2024.

Since the release of the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, the number of Australian high school students studying a priority Asian language has fallen by nearly 30 per cent.

In absolute terms, the number of Australian high school students studying Indonesian in 2024 was less than half than it was in 1989.

The comparison is even more bleak when you consider that the number of Australian high school students today is around 40 per cent larger than in 1989. 

Here in Queensland, the study of Indonesian in particular is on the brink of extinction.

Only two high schools are left teaching the language at Year 12 level.

At current enrolment levels, the total number of students enrolled in Year 12 Indonesian in Queensland for 2026 will be four.

How can it be that the Yolngu of 300 years ago spoke more Bahasa Indonesia than the globally connected young Queenslanders of today?

The problem isn’t unique to Queensland though. Far from it.

Experts warn that the study of Bahasa Indonesia could be extinct nationwide by 2031 – that would be in the next term of Parliament.

Of course Asia Capability is about much more than languages alone.  

Unfortunately, as everyone in this room will know, we’ve seen similar declines in the Asian Studies courses and research programs at our Universities that build the deep expertise in the cultures, religions, histories and modern societies of our region that we need as a nation.

As Griffith University’s own Ian Hall recently wrote:

“in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Australian institutions hosted some of the greatest scholars of Asia – mostly men, but all distinguished – including A. L. Basham, Herb Feith, John Legge, Anthony Low, James Masselos, and Pierre Ryckmans.”

The unfortunate reality is that the career paths of the scholars who followed in the footsteps of these extraordinary figures in the contemporary Australian university system have been much harder.  

Given the decades long decline in the institutions that trained past generations of Asia experts looks set to soon reach a crisis point, where will the next generation of Asia capable institutions and leaders come from?   

How have we reached this point?

Why have so many reports to government calling for Australia to lift its Asia Capability ended in failure.

Building Asia capability is a complex systems problem.

It requires sustained, long term, whole-of-nation commitment.

It requires coordination across the public and private sector, across state and federal governments, and across primary, secondary and tertiary education.

It requires policy makers to grapple with complex and interacting drivers of supply and demand shaping the decisions of students, parents, schools, universities and employers.   

On top of that, you don’t see a return of investment - or the costs of a failure to invest - for many years.

All in all, it’s not an appealing challenge for any government.

But it’s a necessary challenge.

Today, Australia’s Asia capability is approaching a crisis, at a time when we need it most.

Our complex, consequential and dynamic region will ask more of our leaders and institutions than ever before.

It will demand a deeper knowledge of our region than ever before.

At the same time, the decades long decline in the study of Asian languages and the region more broadly will soon result in many of these programs lacking the scale to continue.  

This is why I’ve been calling for a renewed focus on Australia’s Asia Capability challenge and why I’ve been pleased to be able to lead the current Parliamentary inquiry into the topic.

But I also want to be clear at this point that the solution to Australia’s Asia Capability challenge does not lie in the past.

We cannot simply revive 1990s era programs and expect them to work in our radically changed school, universities and broader Australian society.

Our efforts to build our Asia capability in 2025 need to recognise our current context.

Our schools and universities look very different to what they did in the 1990s.

There is currently a nationwide shortage of teachers of all kinds, not just language teachers or teachers with knowledge of Asia.

We don’t have the supply of teachers or academics to simply turn on the supply tap in the way we did in the 1990s.

It’s not all bad news though.

Many of the changes Australia has experienced in recent decades create new opportunities for building Asia Capability.

During Latham’s first trade mission to Asia, the White Australia Policy loomed large over every meeting of the delegation.

Now, around 17% of modern Australia claims Asian heritage and our Asian-Australian diaspora communities are an extraordinary potential source of Asia capability.

Today, someone from anywhere in Asia can look to Australia and find something of themselves reflected, and we can look within out own communities and find a point of connection or understanding with someone from anywhere in the region.

It is no small thing that our Foreign Minister was born in Southeast Asia and speaks Bahasa Melayu.

Nor that in our most recent election, Australians elected MPs with heritage from China, Laos, Singapore, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia among others. 

Indeed, the number of Australian MPs with Asian heritage has more than tripled in my time in Parliament to 16 members.

However, while we have come a long way in increasing the representation of Asian-Australians in positions of leadership, Asian-Australians need support in building Asia capabilities too.

Ask any Asian Australian family and they will quickly tell you how hard it is to maintain Asian language capabilities down the generations.

It takes a real commitment of time, effort and resources.

I know this from firsthand experience.

It’s a mistake to take the language skills of Asian-Australians for granted.

Instead, we should be thinking about we can increase access to recognised language training and qualifications for Australians who are already connected to the language through culture and family.

We shouldn’t stop there either.

It’s famously much easier to learn your third language than your second.

We should recognise that Asian-Australians who are already multi-lingual have a head start in learning Asian languages outside of their cultural heritage.   

Similarly, while many Asian-Australians posses valuable cultural, religious and historical knowledge of the region, this implicit knowledge can still be greatly enhanced by access to structured, formal study of the region.

The final thing that has changed during Australia’s decades long Asia capability is our time horizon.

For the bulk of Australia’s Asia Capability journey, the call to action from advocates has been that Australia’s future security and prosperity will be determined in Asia.

In 2025, that future is now.

Today Asia capability is a vital sovereign capability that underpins every dimension of our statecraft.

It’s not something that we need to build for the future, it’s something we need to draw upon today, as we seek to preserve Australia’s security and prosperity in the region we share.

We can recognise that building Asia capability takes time, that it’s a complex policy challenge and that there are no silver bullet solutions.

But today, as we face the most complex, consequential, dynamic and uncertain international environment in living memory, we have to choose to take control of our own destiny in our region and to invest in the capabilities we need to make our own way in Asia.

For that reason, I want to thank everyone who is in the room here today.

I thank everyone here who has contributed to building Asia capability in Australia.

I thank everyone who made a submission to the parliamentary inquiry.

Your contributions are invaluable and will support us with developing recommendations to reverse the approaching Asia capability crisis.

I thank the Griffith Asia Institute for your work to actively inform public debate and better connect Australia with our region.

Because Australia’s prosperity and security is too important to be left to chance.