The federal government is weighing whether it should bolster foreign aid if the Trump administration moves to slash development funding across the Pacific and South-East Asia.
Senior ministers also remain determined that Australian vessels and planes will continue to take part in freedom of navigation exercises in contested waterways like the South China Sea, despite Beijing’s unprecedented display of naval power off Australia’s coast.
As the government grapples with seismic geopolitical shifts across the globe, Foreign Minister Penny Wong is releasing a new foreign policy “2025 Snapshot” designed to capture its key strategic principles.
In a starkly worded introduction, Senator Wong warns that Australians “face confronting signs that assumptions we have relied on for generations are less assured, with international security increasingly fragile”.
“We live in a world of increasing strategic surprise, ever more uncertain and unpredictable,” she writes.
The document doesn’t directly broach some of the major foreign policy shifts confronting Australia in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s election. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
The snapshot lists the government’s key priorities, like bolstering Australia’s strategic position in the Pacific, expanding economic ties with South-East Asia and broadening ties with regional powers like India and Japan.
It says the region faces “a military build-up unprecedented at any time since World War II, intense great power competition that risks spiralling into conflict, coercive behaviour, and the impacts of climate change”.
“Australia’s interests are in a region that is peaceful, stable and prosperous — where no country dominates, and all countries have the freedom to decide their own futures, without interference.”
The document treads carefully on US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, simply saying that “the president’s America First agenda envisages a different role for the United States in the world”.
It doesn’t directly broach some of the major foreign policy shifts confronting Australia in the wake of President Trump’s election, including the new administration’s raw transactionalism, the rupture between the US and Europe over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the looming prospect of sweeping cuts to US aid.
But it says that “Australians should be confident in our ability to come together and navigate these changes in our national interests — and in our capacity to strengthen key elements of our alliance for the future”.
It adds that while Australia continues to “build our longstanding and bipartisan alliance”, the government has also “invested in more diverse relationships in the region and the world”.
DFAT investigating potential vulnerabilities
The global US aid freeze has already had a devastating impact, including in parts of this region, but the ABC has been told the government will wait and see exactly what emerges from the Trump administration’s sweeping review of development programs before making any decisions about how to respond.
Still, Senator Wong has already directed the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to look at what vulnerabilities might emerge in the Pacific and Southeast Asia if sweeping US aid cuts are confirmed.
While US aid dwarfs Australian development spending globally, Australia remains a much larger donor than the United States in the Pacific and some nations would likely look to Canberra to help fund any programs gutted by the Trump administration.
Aid groups are also certain to press the Albanese government to rapidly scale up development assistance if it’s returned at the looming election.
The 2025 snapshot sticks closely to the government’s usual language on China, saying it has worked to “stabilise” ties with Beijing “without compromising on our national interest”.
“We seek to address our concerns through dialogue and by upholding rules, while working with our partners to do the same,” it says.
No change to exercises in the South China Sea
The Coalition says the unprecedented and disruptive naval exercises conducted this month by China exposed the limits of Labor’s strategy, saying Beijing has exploited the prime minister’s “weakness”.
But the government doesn’t believe that naval exercises signal a failure of its strategy, stressing they didn’t expect “stabilisation” would stop China from asserting its growing power — including on the military front.
Analysts believe that China is using the naval task group to send a clear message to Australia about its growing capacity to project naval power globally and into this region.
The government doesn’t believe that China’s naval exercises off Australia’s coast signal a failure of its strategy. (Supplied: Australian Defence Force)
The director general of the Office of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer, told Senate estimates on Monday night that China’s navy also wanted to normalise its presence in the region and “shape” the response of countries like Australia.
However, the government has signalled it will continue to conduct freedom of navigation exercises or join multinational missions in areas like the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea when it believes it is in the national interest.
The 2025 Snapshot concludes by stressing that Australia can secure its position by building up a broader web of international partnerships and through the “unprecedented application of our national power”.
“We should be confident that we can meet these challenges — and protect our security, stability and prosperity,” it says.
“Whether the challenges are known to us today or not, Australia approaches them with more resilience — and with more choices in how to respond — because we are doing the hard work of building common ground in more diversified relationships.”
