This chapter examines how the ‘Indo–Pacific’ concept became entrenched as the primary frame of reference for Australian regional security between 2016 and 2020. It first briefly reviews the process by which the ‘Asia–Pacific’ descriptor was jettisoned in favour of the ‘Indo–Pacific’ to capture Australia’s conception of its region and its place therein, and how this affected related policies. The chapter next examines Australia’s efforts to engage the region’s major powers, as well as the sub-regions of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, to illustrate how the Indo–Pacific framework governed Australia’s approach to regional security. Australia’s enunciation of the Indo–Pacific concept, the chapter shows, facilitated closer relations with the US, Japan and India, but it created frictions with China and gained only limited acceptance in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

Australia’s relationship with China is one of its most difficult and challenging: it constitutes a crucial test of the success of Australia’s ability to engage with the region in a way which gives full expression to its energy, initiative and unique identity. While relations have continued to be both cordial and mutually beneficial, and have matured considerably, two major developments in the post–Cold War era are likely to have an enduring impact on their long-term stability. At the international level, the end of ideological confrontation between the superpowers, and of the alliance system that buttressed it, refocused the political and economic attention of both China and Australia at the regional level. At that level, the most significant development, the emergence of China as a dominant economic and military power within a region that was itself shaping up as a financial and commercial powerhouse, opened up new windows of opportunity for Australia, while at the same time highlighting asymmetries in power between China and Australia, which had hitherto been disguised by a confluence of circumstances.

In the early 1990s it might have been expected that the Pacific islands region would fall off the Australian policy maker’s map. This seemed plausible given Canberra’s preoccupation with Asia and the end of the perceived security problem in the South Pacific. Instead, Australian decision makers embarked on an ambitious campaign to radically transform the regional economic order. The region was almost seen as part of Australia; ’the backyard’ that needed to be brought into line with Australia’s push into Asia and with Australia’s reform agenda in the face of new global economic pressures. This move was strongly influenced by an organisational initiative to place Pacific islands affairs and development assistance under a junior Minister. While some interpreted this as a downgrading of the area in Canberra’s foreign policy priorities, it had the effect of bringing more attention and energy to the relations with the Pacific islands than if they had been left in the Foreign Minister’s hands. Under the leadership of Gordon Bilney, the South Pacific returned to the priority list in Canberra, even engaging the Prime Minister from time to time.

In a remarkable article published in the official journal of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 1992, the Director-General of the Economic Affairs Bureau and one of the most senior figures in the Ministry, Kazuo Ogura, wrote in an analysis of Japan’s diplomacy that only Australia could fill the role of Japan’s real partner in an Asian-Pacific regional alliance: their similar democratic values, market economies and approach to free trade, and common interests in security and political matters, gave the two countries a firm basis for a continuing and closer partnership. This view was warmly endorsed by Australia’s Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, as echoing his own remarks about Australia being a natural ally of Japan, and was enthusiastically taken up by the Australian press in terms of the opportunity and challenge presented to Australia.

In its annual poll for 2010, the Lowy Institute for International Policy included public opinion data under the heading of the ‘Rudd government’s foreign policy report card’. Asked about its performance across a range of issues, those polled gave their highest mark for the Rudd government’s management of the alliance with the United States (7/10), but only 6/10 for the government’s response to the global economic crisis, a mere 5/10 for combating climate change, and a lowly 4/10 for dealing with Japanese whaling. It must have been slightly unnerving for the government that these issues were precisely those that Kevin Rudd had identified as clear-cut successes in the area of foreign policy. More broadly, the increasingly widespread perception that the Rudd government’s management of foreign policy was indifferent at best posed problems, because it was the one policy area in which Rudd himself could claim particular professional expertise. If the government was unable to point to a record of unequivocal successes in the Prime Minister’s own specialist domain, it raised questions about its capacity to deliver on other fronts as well.

Canberra’s foreign policy orientation has shifted inexorably towards the Asia-Pacific region over the last quarter century. Into the 1970s, Australia viewed itself as in, but not of, Asia. The demise of ’White Australia’ notwithstanding, Canberra remained the capital of a far-flung European outpost. Today, that geopolitical identity seems quaintly archaic. Australia is unambiguously an Asia-Pacific country. Its chief trading partner is Japan; its main ally is the United States; and its strategic analysts’ main focuses are Indonesia and China. Within this broader regional context, Canberra considers North-East Asia, South-East Asia, and the South Pacific as sub-regions of particular concern for Australian foreign and defence policy. But what about South Asia, an area conventionally defined as encompassing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, and Bhutan? What role do these countries play in Australia’s international relations? Do Australian policy-makers perceive them as important? Have Canberra’s links with the subcontinent traditionally been characterised by amity or enmity? What is the nature of these relationships today?

The trans-Tasman relationship matured in the 1990s as Australia and New Zealand assumed somewhat more distinct identities, while simultaneously forging a closer partnership on the periphery of the Asia-Pacific region. No one in New Zealand pretends that the relationship with Australia is one of equals. Each is a central but asymmetrical priority for the other in economic, trade, foreign and security policies. The momentous global changes of the 1990s affected the two countries in similar ways and produced many similar responses. Along with the abatement of the Soviet threat from Southeast and North Asia, this gave rise to some fears of the retrenchment of the United States from Asia and to a resulting instability in Asia. Australian and New Zealand concerns therefore focused more sharply on the creation of structures of confidence building and security dialogues in the Asia-Pacific region. Yet New Zealand’s geopolitical distance from Asia relative to that of Australia, as well as New Zealand’s dissociation from the Australia, New Zealand and United States (ANZUS) security alliance for fears of nuclear contamination, took Canberra and Wellington along some separate defence paths.

Australia’s relationships with the United States and the wider North American region were redefined in the era of intense international change following the Cold War and short-lived optimism about the so-called ’new world order’. The rise of the Asia-Pacific region as the dominant centre of global economic activities, along with the more fluid international environment that displaced the Cold War, reshaped the external policies and aspirations of both Australia and the United States. But these broad forces had very differential effects on the two states. Australia found increased political and economic latitude in the altered Asia-Pacific environment. In contrast, the United States adjusted uneasily to its declining status as the global hegemon, and found the promise of the post–Cold War world difficult to identify or manage. The long-dominant authority of the United States was compromised by the uncertainties of a more decentralised international environment. This change reduced Australia’s deference to its powerful Pacific ally, and permitted the Keating Government to exercise greater autonomy in pressing its separate interests abroad, especially in the economic arena.

In recent years, more and more countries have included different kinds of gender considerations in their trade agreements. Yet many countries have still not signed their very first agreement with a gender equality-related provision. Though most of the agreements negotiated by countries in the Asia-Pacific region have not explicitly accommodated gender concerns, a limited number of trade agreements signed by countries in the region have presented a distinct approach: the nature of provisions, drafting style, location in the agreements, and topic coverage of such provisions contrast with the gender-mainstreaming approach employed by the Americas or other regions. This chapter provides a comprehensive account and assessment of gender-related provisions included in the existing trade agreements negotiated by countries in the Asia-Pacific, explains the extent to which gender concerns are mainstreamed in these agreements, and summarizes the factors that impede such mainstreaming efforts in the region.

This chapter highlights three areas where local communities across the Asia-Pacific region – supported by National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (National Societies) – are already active in addressing climate- and disaster-related displacements. These areas include community engagement in developing legal and policy frameworks; community-led vulnerability, risk, and capacity assessments; and community participation in innovative anticipatory humanitarian approaches to addressing displacement. This chapter highlights both best practices associated with these examples and some of the challenges that these examples face in successful implementation. It proposes that these examples warrant further attention, support, and engagement, both as stand-alone practices and as part of a broader commitment and support for community participation and leadership in addressing climate- and disaster-related displacement.

There exists an October 1945 photograph taken at Duntroon in Canberra of five members of the Army’s Second World War Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) enjoying a laugh (see Figure 4.1). It was taken at the corner of Wilton and Harrison roads, near the back of the chapel, and one can see the start of the heritage houses down Harrison Road. DORCA was a remarkable organisation, a (uniformed) policy advice bureau (of about 100 staff in 1945) led by Colonel Alfred (Alf) Conlon and working for General Sir Thomas Blamey. The photograph is an important indication of the talent in that organisation of specialists in uniform: lawyers, anthropologists, doctors, Papua New Guinea (PNG) patrol officers and writers. The photograph was taken by Lieutenant John D. Legge, the foundation professor of history at Monash University from 1960 and later the dean of its Faculty of Arts and appointed an officer of the Order of Australia.

In this chapter, Ulrike Schultz summarises the key themes and ideas of the volume on women judges in the Asia-Pacific, and identifies future directions for the field.

Women in the judiciary in the Asia-Pacific are understudied. Building on the comparative literature on women in the judiciary, this chapter considers the extent to which we can identify the feminisation of the judiciary in the Asia-Pacific, past and present. The authors question the meaning of the feminisation of the judiciary across the Asia-Pacific, and how gains have been made on issues of entry into the profession and the more substantive issue of the difference women judges can make. An example of the increase in women judges and advocacy for women’s issues in the profession is the formation and growth of women’s bar associations and women’s judicial associations. We identify that some jurisdictions, such as Indonesia, had female appointments to the highest court well before some jurisdictions of the Global North. But overall, there are still many ‘firsts’ in terms of women’s entry and career progression into various tiers of the judicial profession. We argue that the extent to which we can speak of the feminisation of the judiciary in the Asia-Pacific relates to the wider issues of recognition, equality and non-discrimination for women in society more broadly. The judiciary in the Asia-Pacific, as in much of the Global South, is influenced by religious, traditional and customary values and practices, as well as postcolonial realities of corruption, inequality and violence.

This chapter presents an approach to assess the adaptive capacity of collaborative governance institutions. The approach links institutions and attributes believed to support societies in responding to social-ecological change. The application of such an approach to empirical studies demonstrates how adaptive capacity can be assessed and compared in a systematic fashion. It also sheds light on how different political, economic, and social factors enable or constrain adaptive capacity. By investigating the complex and interrelated nature of institutions and interdependence of adaptive capacity attributes, the chapter offers insights into the kinds of governance qualities that are conducive to adaptive capacity. Further, it underscores the role of contextual factors and power relations in shaping adaptive capacity and points out the need to consider such roles in future adaptive capacity assessments.