Australia blase about ASEAN market plan

Australia blase about ASEAN market plan

Agence-France Presse, Sydney

Australian analysts have played down fears the country will be left out in the cold by an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plan to create a European-style common market by 2020.

Australia has long sought closer ties to ASEAN but been rebuffed by Asian leaders who do not see it as a natural fit in the 10-member bloc.

Two-way trade between ASEAN nations and Australia totalled A$34 billion (US$23.4 billion) last year and Melbourne's Age newspaper said Australia could not afford to be permanently marginalised.

"ASEAN is still too important a club for Australia to feel comfortable about its exclusion," it said in an editorial.

The newspaper said Australia could not ignore the fact that China, Japan, South Korea and India had signed ASEAN security accords and been invited to help build a European-style economic community.

The landmark ASEAN agreement, signed at a conference in Bali last week, aims to remove all trade barriers between ASEAN members and create a common market by 2020.

Outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad singled Australia out for criticism at the conference, describing it as "some sort of transplant from another region".

And a report in the Australian newspaper said Indonesia had prevented Prime Minister John Howard from attending the Bali conference in a calculated snub "for political reasons".

But Trade Minister Mark Vaile said Australia's trade relations with ASEAN countries were growing stronger, pointing to the completion of a free trade deal with Singapore and another that is being negotiated with Thailand.

"We are ahead of the game in terms of our relationship with South-East Asian economies," Vaile told parliament.

The Australian Institute of Export was also unconcerned about the proposal.

"ASEAN economies don't really compete with our exports, their export markets are complementary to ours, rather than compettive," he told AFP.

Murray said the common market could reinvigorate ASEAN, saying the grouping had "slipped off the agenda" in recent years.

"After the Asian crisis ASEAN as a grouping seemed to fade and if this helps it to become more dynamic that's good thing," he said.

But some commentators questioned whether ASEAN would ever get around to actualy implementing the reforms.

The Age newspaper pointed out Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's comment two years ago saying ASEAN ministers had admitted they were "all talk and no action".

The Australian Financial Review said ASEAN members "have a track record of shooting for targets they never quite reach".

"Their biggest problem is denial," Australian trade expert Alan Oxley told the newspaper. "They're still not actually facing up to the fact that they have to get inside their economies and make them more competitive.

"They haven't worked through the debt of companies lamed by the financial crisis."