Australia said to be ignoring the Indian Ocean

Updated March 31, 2010 20:54:28

A new report says Australia has been ignoring the Indian Ocean .. despite extensive and varied threats in a region with few mature institutions of co-operation to mediate them.

The report is from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

And it says everything from poor fisheries management to India-China rivalry is fuelling instability .. at the same time as Australia walks a diplomatic tightrope building relations with those regional competitors.

It provides a big list of things for Australia to do about all this, on which Australia's government says it's already acting.

But some obversers are sceptical.

Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Australia's Foreign minister Stephen Smith; Professor Sam Bateman, maritime specialist, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore; Dr Rajat Ganguly, senior lecturer, Security, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism Studies, Murdoch University, Western Australia.

MOTTRAM: Australia has ignored the Indian Ocean, says Professor Sam Bateman, co-author of the report "Our Western Front .. Australia and the Indian Ocean". But why when it's such a big ocean that includes forty-eight independent littoral and island states and features increasingly muscular behaviour by some of the biggest external players? Professor Bateman.

BATEMAN: Well I suppose a very basic reason is that the national capital and most of our population is in the southeast of the continent and most of our pressing international relations issues in recent years have usually been in east asia, and south east asia and out in the Pacific. So we have been forgetting that we are a three ocean country and we seem to rediscover the Indian Ocean at about 15 year intervals.

MOTTRAM: Australia's Foreign minister Stephen Smith, who's welcomed the report as timely and substantial, largely agrees.

SMITH: The truth is I think the last time we shifted our strategic view to the Indian Ocean was in the mid 1980's and we saw essentially a shift of naval assets with a two ocean policy. We now have to bring a comparable shift with our strategic view generally. And so the things I've that I've said from day one as foreign minister apply equally to the Indian Ocean rim.

MOTTRAM: What he's said from day one as he puts it is that Australia wants to bring India to the front rank of its bilateral relationships. But that's been a troubled path. Issues like Australia's refusal to sell uranium to India and attacks on Indian students in Australia have been obstacles.

Rajat Ganguly is senior lecturer in Security, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism Studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia.

GANGULY: Well I hope the engagement with India would at some point move from what is still now purely economic and cultural ties to what is a more deeper political relationship, maybe even a strategic relationship, you know contacts between Australian military and Indian military and some calibration of military strategy between the two sides. We haven't come to that yet and we may never get there.

MOTTRAM: But it's also about the other big player in the region, China. The Strategic Policy Institute Report outlines a littany of contentious issues and potential threats in the region. Key among them is India-China rivalry, brewing for a decade, and fuelled not just by China's general rise but also by the drive for energy security. Report co-author Sam Bateman again.

BATEMAN: Countries have become increasingly more concerned about their energy security, sources of oil in particular and most of that of course comes form the Middle East so countries have been increasingly trying to establish their presence in that part of the world basically up in the north west Indian Ocean.

MOTTRAM: Other issues also confront a region that lacks many of the habits of co-operation that characterise the Asia Pacific. Natural disasters and a lack of fisheries management are among them. Indeed the latter has already had major security implications in the Indian Ocean .. because its been a cause of the spike in piracy off the Horn of Africa. Professor Bateman again.

BATEMAN: To some extent it started because the fishermen Somalia were getting annoyed, upset by the extent of foreign fishing in their waters, large, much more capable fishing boats than their own and they started a little bit of their own bush justice in terms of attacking these fishing boats. And now we have the piracy situation there.

MOTTRAM: Foreign minister Stephen Smith says he's already acting on one recommendation that Australia do more to help build regional co-operation. He also says he'll look seriously at other recommendations. He can't though say when Canberra will deliver a promised boost to the defence of the country's mineral and energy rich western flank .

SMITH: Its a logical extension of where we were a quarter of a century ago with the movement of resources to HMAS Sterling, the naval base in the west. Yes we have to move in that direction, the nature and extent of it of course, time will tell.