Ex-minister says Australia alienating itself from Asia
Ex-minister says Australia alienating itself from Asia
SYDNEY, Australia (Agencies): Australia is alienating itself
from its Asian neighbors by gloating about its economic success
and failing to stem anti-Asian sentiment, a former foreign
minister said on Friday.
Gareth Evans said he feels "a sense of self-satisfied
superiority in the air" among Australians about Asia, which
threatens to destroy Australia's trade and military ties in the
region.
In a speech delivered in the southern city of Melbourne, the
former Labor government minister criticized the current Liberal
administration for neglecting Asia in favor of "re-establishing
our role as a loyal, dedicated and unquestioning ally of the
United States."
"The regional landscape has been changing rapidly, with
Australia becoming less and less a part of it," Evans said.
"The acute worry is that we have been playing ourselves out of
Asia, without any compensating capacity to play ourselves in
elsewhere."
Evans said Australia had gloated about surviving relatively
unscathed the 1997 Asian economic crisis which shattered many
regional economies.
He said Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government
was perceived as "arrogant" for congratulating itself over its
intervention in East Timor, where Australian armed forces led an
international peacekeeping force when violence broke out after
the 1999 independence referendum.
The government had also failed to "respond quickly and surely
to the corrosive impact of (anti-Asian politician) Pauline
Hanson," Evans added. Hanson, whose One Nation party was launched
in 1997 on a platform that includes opposition to Asian
immigration, has had a resurgence this year as voters grow
disenchanted with the Howard administration.
Evans said it is imperative that Australia work on rebuilding
its ties with Asian nations through increasing diplomatic efforts
and reinforcing cultural links.
"We should not be looking out on Asia as a bunch of Anglo-
Saxon cultural misfits trapped by our geography, but as members
of a common neighborhood of extraordinary diversity and
potential," he said.
It was particularly important that Australia improve its
relationship with China as it becomes a greater world power,
Evans said.
"This is not a time to be relaxed and comfortable about
Australia's future: we have to go out there and win that future,
in the region and in the world," he said.
Long odds
Meanwhile, Australia's Liberal Party, the senior member of the
governing coalition, was locked in battle on Friday over who
should run a state branch, but Prime Minister Howard insisted
that the party's leadership remained united.
The party, which governs in a coalition with the rural-based
National Party, is in tatters at the state level and faces long
odds against winning a third term at an expected year-end federal
ballot, trailing well behind opposition Labor in opinion polls.
Just days after a scandal over the leaking of a scathing
internal memo rocked the prime minister and heir apparent
Treasurer Peter Costello, the party is facing another crisis as
the troubled Queensland state branch resists a federal takeover.
The Queensland Liberals, reduced to just three seats in state
parliament after a disastrous state election in February and
staggering under a debt of A$400,000 (US$209,800), were in
negotiations with the federal executive on Friday in an attempt
to retain control of their troubled branch.
Queensland vice president Neville Stewart began the day
threatening legal action if the federal party tried to take over,
but the state's parliamentary leader Bob Quinn said a compromise
was being hammered out.