Australian Election 2025

As Australians head to the polls on 3 May, the stakes for foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific are quietly profound. From where I sit in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the debate in Australia around national security, alliances, and regional engagement is being watched with interest – and, at times, concern.

Much has been made of the current government’s concept of strategic equilibrium – a worldview that seeks to maintain a region where “no country dominates and no country is dominated,” as Foreign Minister Penny Wong described it. This vision resonates deeply with many across Southeast Asia. It signals that Australia understands its place not as an external power, but as an integral part of the regional community. It suggests a sober, measured approach to foreign policy, especially in a time of rising nationalist sentiment and populist rhetoric globally.

Regardless of whether the next government is led by Labor or the Coalition, it is imperative that this spirit of balance endures, by whatever name it may take. Australia does not exist in a vacuum. It is bound, historically and strategically, to the fates and futures of the countries around it. To engage the region not only as an economic partner but as a political and security community is not just wise. It is essential. Australia's choices reverberate far beyond its borders. The region pays attention to not only what Canberra says, but what it does.

The world is entering a period of greater uncertainty, and the Indo-Pacific is its geopolitical epicentre.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Strategic equilibrium demands nuance: it means preserving the alliance with the United States while maintaining credible, independent relationships with key partners in Southeast Asia. It means standing up for democratic values and a rules-based order, without becoming a proxy in great-power rivalry. And it requires Australia to act in a way that reflects regional realities, not domestic political theatrics or ideological swings.

There is a concern in this region that a future government could lean too far into the orbit of an increasingly unilateral Washington, especially under the renewed leadership of Donald Trump. Calls for tighter alignment with the United States may resonate at home, but they could also be seen as undercutting Australia’s autonomy and credibility in the region. A foreign policy that punches above its weight might play well in campaign slogans, but it does not always build trust with neighbours. In Southeast Asia, countries value consistency, consultation, and quiet strength, traits that define strategic maturity, not strategic volume.

From Jakarta’s point of view, a responsible Australia is one that listens, consults, and invests in its regional relationships, not only through defence and diplomacy, but also through education, people-to-people connections, and economic partnerships. Initiatives like the original Colombo Plan or the New Colombo Plan have gone a long way in building this kind of strategic empathy. That spirit should continue, regardless of who wins in May.

The world is entering a period of greater uncertainty, and the Indo-Pacific is its geopolitical epicentre. For Australia, now more than ever, the choice is not simply between the United States and China, but between a reactive, short-term posture and a long-term, balanced strategy. Strategic equilibrium, however framed, should be more than a slogan. It should be the guiding principle for how Australia shows up in the region it calls home.

The Albanese government has hung its hat on improving ties with Australia’s two near regions, the Pacific and Southeast Asia. And while there is clearly a hierarchy of effort, with the Pacific rightly allocated greater resources, Southeast Asia has been a focus for Foreign Minister Penny Wong. She has travelled extensively to Southeast Asian countries (except Myanmar) and driven a major new initiative – the Southeast Asia Economic Strategy – aimed at boosting Australian investment in the region.

So, would these efforts be sustained, either under a second Labor term, or a Coalition government?

Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s recent Lowy Institute speech on foreign policy gives a few clues. In a political address, focused on identifying areas of Labor weakness, Dutton did not identify Southeast Asia as an area of contention. While relations with the Pacific have been politicised in Australia since China’s security deal with Solomon Islands in 2022, with each side seeking to position itself as the better guardian of Australia’s security interests in the region, relations with Southeast Asia have not been caught in the whirlwinds of partisan competition. This suggests some degree of continuity.

Whichever party is elected, there are four issues to watch in Australia’s relationships with Southeast Asia.

First is the basic question of attentiveness and focus. Government-to-government cooperation will continue whichever party is elected. But political-level attention is required to keep Australia on the radar and back up the message that it is a reliable partner for the region. On this score, Dutton’s failure in his Lowy Institute speech to mention Southeast Asia suggests that these relationships would not animate his government’s foreign policy to the extent they have under Labor. Revealingly, Dutton did suggest he would make his first overseas visit to the United States, despite the longstanding tradition of new Australian prime ministers to make Jakarta their first bilateral port of call. But it’s worth pointing out that Albanese, too, broke with a similar convention by failing to attend Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration in October last year.

Depending on how relations with the United States and China evolve, Australia could find in future that its defence and foreign policies are not well received in the region.

Second is the future of the economic strategy, the signature initiative of the Albanese government. Viewed positively, the strategy takes a long-term view (its full title is “Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040”) and throws real resources at a sticky problem of weak Australian investment and business engagement in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian officials have good awareness of the strategy, and don’t doubt the Albanese government’s sincerity. Yet, while the strategy has drawn attention to the problem, the jury is still out on whether it will change business behaviour. Labor would certainly retain the approach, but it is unclear whether a Coalition government would be equally sold on the benefits.

Third, Australia’s ties with the region are affected by the broader direction of Australian strategic policy. Australia’s participation in minilateral arrangements such as the Quad or its defence technology partnership under AUKUS haven’t been a barrier to improved bilateral ties, almost across the board. But, depending on how relations with the United States and China evolve, Australia could find in future that its defence and foreign policies are not well received in the region, perhaps except in the Philippines. This sense of strategic divergence could limit enthusiasm from both sides, as it did under the Morrison government post-AUKUS announcement.

The last area is Middle East policy. Reputable regional surveys show huge damage to US standing in Muslim majority Southeast Asian countries due to Washington’s support for Israel’s war on Hamas since 7 October 2023. The middle ground position that the Albanese government has tried to stake out has helped insulate Australia’s regional relationships from the politics of the Middle East. Regional relationships will remain a secondary consideration in determining Australia’s Middle East policy settings. Still, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Indonesia and Malaysia reacted negatively to the Morrison government’s announcement, following a decision by the first Trump administration to relocate the US embassy, that Australia would recognise “West Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital.

Ultimately, a Coalition government, if elected, might not share Labor’s zeal for Southeast Asia. But at a time of great uncertainty about Australia’s outlook, it’s likely that it too would ultimately come to prioritise the one constant: Australia’s immediate geographic neighbourhood.

Governments worldwide are scrambling to make sense of a volatile new world where the only certainty is uncertainty. And Australia is no exception. Last week’s federal budget brought forward defence spending while reprioritising development funding in response to recent USAID cuts. The release of the unclassified 2024 Independent Intelligence Review the week before also underscored the scale of the challenges ahead, with more than $44 million allocated to updating Australia’s intelligence community.

Yet for all these announcements, a fairly crucial element remains missing: a broader strategy to actually navigate this shifting world order. Granted, last month the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released the Australia in the World – 2025 Snapshot, acknowledging the unprecedented changes in the world and providing an overview of Australia’s existing diplomatic and international engagement efforts. However, it fell short of outlining a strategic vision.

Australia’s last foreign policy white paper was in 2017 during Donald Trump’s first administration – the equivalent of four decades ago in foreign policy years. Australia’s since gone from friend to enemy to frenemy with China and the experience of economic coercion, launched AUKUS, and now faces the need to reassess its relationship with America. Meanwhile, the global order isn’t just transforming but is being rewritten. There’s a return to great power politics where might makes right. Strategic competition is intensifying, international institutions are cracking. The world no longer divides neatly into allies and adversaries. Despite sovereignty being the word of the hour, hybrid war and foreign interference are on the rise. Meanwhile, the world faces global catastrophic risks from emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and the urgent existential threat of climate change.

Against this backdrop, Australia’s relative power is diminishing. The dynamics of the global order are no longer in Australia’s favour. Many of the core assumptions that once underpinned Australia’s foreign policy no longer hold true. It’s going to become harder to protect and uphold Australia’s interests in the years ahead.

Australia needs a new foreign policy framework. As Australia hurtles towards a federal election, the next government – Labor or Coalition – must commit to commissioning a new Foreign Policy White Paper.

Beyond strategy, white papers also serve an unsexy but important bureaucratic function. They provide the all-important policy authority that government functions on.

White papers are major undertakings and are – quite legitimately – often criticised as costly, slow and outdated by the time they’re published. It could be argued that policymakers should already be thinking strategically, internal classified assessments already inform government decision-making, and the rapid pace of global change makes long-term planning challenging. Yet the world has clearly changed in ways that demand Australia take stock and consider how it may continue to change in the years ahead.

A white paper provides the opportunity to think about Australia’s strategy from first principles. Strategy is not something Australia does well. There are fundamental differences between international engagement, the art of diplomacy, foreign policy, and strategy – yet Australia too often conflates them, or leaves it to Defence.

A white paper would also offer a crucial opportunity to think about how Australia navigates the world. In an increasingly contested and transactional ecosystem, where Australia wields less influence and struggles to protect its interests, how can Australia be more strategic, creative, and agile? How and where can it build influence? Where does Australia have – or can it create – leverage? The very volatility of the international environment presents opportunities – if Australia is prepared to seize them. Australia must also become far more sophisticated in how it frames its interests and positions, and competes in the global battle of ideas – whether with regional partners, global institutions, or even domestic audiences. Why does Australia matter, and why should others want to work with us?

Not doing this strategic thinking and planning will lead to miscalculations in foreign and security policy, missed opportunities, and diminished diplomatic leverage in the future – none of which Australia can afford.

Beyond strategy, white papers also serve an unsexy but important bureaucratic function. They provide the all-important policy authority that government functions on. A white paper – endorsed by Cabinet – would set overarching policy and enable updates to existing frameworks, remits, and institutional structures. It would also provide coherence between Australia’s defence strategy and the proliferation of other international engagement documents. Governments often talk about using all elements of national power to advance Australia’s interests – a white paper provides the mechanism to deliver on that.

It’s also an opportunity to ensure Australia’s foreign policy architecture is fit for purpose. Australia’s foreign policy and diplomatic structures were built for a world that no longer exists. DFAT is underfunded, understaffed and constrained by outdated arrangements. Are funding levels aligned with strategic realities? Does the internal culture truly value outside-the-box thinking? A white paper could take stock of these shortcomings and provide the policy levers for necessary reforms. This is no easy task. Australia cannot control global events but it can – and must – control how it prepares for them by ensuring its institutions and processes are fit and ready for the challenges ahead.

The next government – Labor or Coalition – will inherit a world more unstable than at any point in Australia’s modern history. The question is not whether we need a new foreign policy white paper – it’s why we haven’t already started drafting one.

Australia’s election campaign formally kicked off today, with a vote to be held on 3 May. Labor, under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, presently holds a narrow majority in parliament, with Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s Liberal-Nationals Coalition aiming to make it the first government since the 1930s to lose after a single term. But a swathe of independents could also push Australia towards the unusual, although not unprecedented, position of minority rule.

A tense international scene forms the backdrop to this campaign. US President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be one debating point, especially if Australia’s pharmaceutical benefits scheme is targeted. But I wouldn’t expect anything as extraordinary as Canada’s overnight declaration from new Prime Minister Mark Carney, also in the midst of an election campaign, that “the relationship Canada had with the United States … is over.”

Foreign diplomats in Canberra will be scrambling over the coming five weeks to chart the contours of the campaign and report to their home countries. While they don’t get a vote, they will have preferences about which party they prefer to govern Australia.

So, let’s start with the United States. The White House is unlikely to offer any signal as clear as the time George W Bush effectively endorsed conservative PM John Howard over Labor’s Mark Latham. Trump has shown a penchant for flattering Australia’s leaders. He called Albanese a “fine man” in February. But Trump also once described his “fantastic relationship” with former Coalition prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, a “tough negotiator”, only to now belittle him as “a weak and ineffective leader”. Scott Morrison still has Trump’s ear after his time as PM, but with Trump, who can really say? He likes winners.

Then prime minister John Howard’s triumph in 2003 of having a US president and China’s president address parliament on consecutive days now seems a quaint memory.

Trump might make up his mind based on a country’s trade deficit or surplus with the United States, or pledges made about defence spending, even as the target moves ever upwards. It could be that Elon Musk has influence over the presidential preference, having picked a fight in Australia before. With both sides of politics rhetorically welded to the US alliance, as well as the AUKUS nuclear-powered subs deal, this might be an election that Trump feels he wins no matter the outcome.

Japan is carefully neutral and works with either side, but would probably prefer a Coalition win. Japan’s former ambassador to Australia has made plain his annoyance at Labor’s policies. Shingo Yamagami last year described Albanese as “weak and meek” on China, and while this can be dismissed as the disgruntled complaint of an individual, especially given Foreign Minister Penny Wong evidently thought Yamagami a troublemaker, Japan had wider gripes with Labor. It was highly critical of the Albanese government’s energy policy, and there is a sense Japan has never forgiven Labor, way back under Kevin Rudd in 2008, for having visited Beijing ahead of Tokyo.

China? With the relationship “stabilisation” mantra under Albanese, it would be easy to assume Beijing would prefer more of the same. Dutton has promised “the relationship with China will be much stronger than it is under the Albanese government.” Stronger is one of those words open to interpretation. Dutton has a more hawkish reputation, having said in his earlier job as defence minister it was “inconceivable” that Australia would not join the United States in war over Taiwan.

But China must also know that despite gushing about Albanese as a “handsome boy”, both sides of politics in Australia are suspicious about Beijing’s intentions. Then prime minister John Howard’s triumph in 2003, of having a US president and China’s president address parliament on consecutive days, now seems a quaint memory. And why else dispatch a “show of force” flotilla of warships to circle Australia in the weeks before the election if not as a warning to both sides of politics.

Pragmatism rules and any foreign country will work with the government of the day.

Israel clearly favours the approach set out by the Coalition on the conflict in Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having lambasted “the extreme anti-Israeli position of the Labor government in Australia” and described its voting record in the United Nations as “scandalous”. A return to the Coalition’s recognition of “West Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital (although Israel wasn’t entirely satisfied when this policy was first floated in 2018) would be welcomed.

India has been more inclined to the Coalition, at least under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Albanese might have ridden a chariot at the cricket and lavished praise on Modi as “the boss”, but India was suspicious of Labor’s return to office in 2022, still wrongly blaming Rudd for abandoning the first iteration of the Quad, and with memories of Labor’s decision, later reversed, to ban yellowcake uranium sales to India.

True, Labor has made significant efforts across this term to build ties. The recently revealed “nest of spies” allegations against India in Australia dated to the time under a Coalition government, and Modi’s complaints while standing alongside Albanese about local vandalism directed at Hindu temples seemed as much about Indian domestic politics as issues here. But ideologically, Modi’s India would prefer the message of former Coalition prime minister Tony Abbott, that “the answer to almost every question about China is India”.

Indonesia appears typically more comfortable with Labor’s historical emphasis on ties with Asia. The confrontation over asylum seeker boats was at its sharpest under the Coalition. Indonesian elites are said to harbour lingering resentment about Australia’s role in Timor-Leste’s independence, which also occurred under Coalition rule. Albanese skipping Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration in October last year might have been short-sighted, but is less likely to be remembered than Dutton’s announcement last week that, should he win, he won’t visit Asia on his first overseas trip as prime minister. Dutton’s preference for Washington is bound to revive the motif of Australia as America’s “deputy sheriff” in Southeast Asia.

Long memories also leave Dutton floundering with the preferences of Pacific nations. It was ten years ago that Dutton was caught on a hot mic, joking about rising seas leaving “water lapping at your door”. Yet such moments do tend to shape stubbornly held views, as Morrison also found with the Pacific after his stunt of burnishing a lump of coal in the Australian parliament. Labor’s climate change credentials might still be questioned in the region, but they are better regarded than those of the Coalition.

Pragmatism rules and any foreign country will work with the government of the day. Overt – or covert – interference in Australia’s campaign from abroad is just as likely to backfire. But that doesn’t mean countries won’t be quietly barracking.