Queensland Senator Russell Trood predicts that the Rudd foreign policy agenda may leave Australia red-faced on the international stage, as its ambitious aspirations are left unfulfilled due to under funding.
An under funded department and Mr Rudd’s foreign policy being more about process than substance, comprised the central message of Senator Trood’s speech to the Australian Institute of International Affairs in Sydney last night.
Entitled "Australian Foreign Policy: is middle power activism enough?” – he gave a preliminary assessment of the Rudd government’s foreign policy performance.
“This is an extraordinarily ambitious agenda,” Senator Trood said.
“To have any chance of succeeding it will demand considerable time and energy for both political leaders and our diplomats, and it will require substantial commitment of foreign policy resources.”
In a balanced appraisal, Senator Trood said that “…we should give new governments a fair go, though the reality is that in international relations governments don’t always have that luxury.”
“Ideas are important in foreign policy, but some of these ideas are so devoid of content they look ill-conceived and have little chance of being realised.”
“Rudd’s view of international relations leads him to an almost manic belief in the value of regional and global mechanisms for problem solving. This approach to foreign policy may have its attractions but it is not going to provide much joy in solving the really knotty or difficult issues on the global agenda.”
“The belief that all problems are shared problems for which there can be commonly agreed solutions makes Australia’s national interests hostage to the policy preoccupations of other states.”
Given that Rudd has argued that Australia needs to engage more deeply with Asia, it is astonishing how badly Australia’s relations have been handled since last year’s election. We seem to have lurched from one crisis to another as our engagement with the region has careened out of control, most conspicuously in the case of Japan.
“On the evidence to date, it will be well beyond the Rudd government to manage. The likely outcome will be policy dysfunction and or failure.”
In concluding his speech, Senator Trood lamented upon the state of the Government’s funding of Australia’s foreign policy resources, especially the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“In the years ahead, DFAT’s funding will decline. It is very difficult to see how this is consistent with Rudd’s belief that Australia should have an activist foreign policy agenda,” Senator Trood said.