Australia’s mobilisation of its ‘amplified middle power diplomacy’ has been a feature as of late, with new agreements signed with nations across the Pacific. But as these agreements come through, a new parliamentary committee report lays bare Australia’s slow death in understanding the region it belongs to.
Regional Literacy is Australia’s Missing Currency
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education recently released a report on security and prosperity in Asia, which was discussed at the launch of the new Parliamentary Friends of Asia Capability at Parliament House. The report notes that from 2005 to 2024, there has been a 75% decrease in university enrolments in Southeast Asian language studies. The Indonesian language has become less popular to learn, with nearly a 60% decrease from 2010 to 2024 in Year 12 students opting to learn the language. Experts informed the Committee that if this trend continues, the Indonesian language ‘will be functionally extinct by 2031.’
The Committee heard two reasons for this decreasing trend in learning the Indonesian language amongst other languages spoken in the region. The first is that AI would replace the need to learn languages. The recent preliminary report published by the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI provides evidence suggesting that, as AI enhancements prevail, it also faces persistent limitations, whereby dedicated investment is crucial to prevent ‘cultural and linguistic erasure.’
The second reason heard by the committee was that the Australian-Asian diaspora would fill the gap in language and cultural understanding of the region. Over a third of Australia’s population was born overseas, of which people from India, China, the Philippines, England and New Zealand represent the largest migrant groups in the country. The report notes the importance of learning from our migrant groups and provides recommendations to enhance our language and cultural literacy, as well as leveraging business networks our migrant population already holds in the region. However, this requires a balancing act in empowering our diverse population, as opposed to treating them transactionally. If we treated it as purely transactional, it would place the burden of a national strategic failure onto diaspora communities without addressing the structural issues that limited Australia’s ability to build genuine regional literacy in the first place.
Acknowledgement Isn’t Capability
This gap in understanding has recently surfaced through Australia’s new agreement signed with Vanuatu. Article 2 of the Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu recognises the importance of strengthening First Nations and Melanesian ties and facilitating dialogue between communities affected by blackbirding. This acknowledgement is crucial for revisiting the history faced by our First Nations and Pacific communities, but it does not explain how this recognition leads to capability. There is no mention of how officials will be educated on the history of the Ni-Vanuatu peoples or resourcing Pacific-specific expertise to facilitate its purpose in the ‘integration between the Parties and their peoples.’ This Agreement could have had the potential to go beyond acknowledgements but lacks the depth to do so.
Capability begins at home. The parliamentary committee report is unflinching about where the Australian Public Service currently sits. Home Affairs sets no targets for recruiting staff with Asian language skills. DFAT’s graduate program does not have any requirement for Asian language proficiency or targets for language speakers across intakes. If the department responsible for delivering Australia’s regional relationships is not selecting for the skills those relationships require, the strategy runs on rhetoric rather than capability.
A Model Worth Following
When looking abroad, Japan offers a useful model. The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies is a state-funded institution with a mandate of foreign language education and area studies in direct service of Japan’s international engagement. Japan’s Diplomatic Bluebook explicitly frames language capability as a foundation of its foreign policy in Asia. For Japan, language capability does not stop at just education, it also enhances its foreign policy. Australia has the rhetoric of amplified middle power diplomacy and Japan has the architecture.
There is credit in taking a genuine interest in the region we belong to, whether through language, culture, history or geopolitics, in Asia or in the Pacific. We still operate in this region. To truly be part of it, our relationships need to be deepened through the cultural ties that have long existed between us. That depth of interest should be the real measure of Australia’s middle power credibility, not the agreements we sign. The parliamentary committee’s report makes clear that the window for action is narrowing. Investing in language education, regional area expertise and cultural understanding can no longer be treated as soft power instruments. They are the foundation on which everything else rests. You can’t diplomacise what you don’t understand.
Daweena Tia Motwany has spent close to a decade working across criminal justice, housing and public health. She is also an Inaugural Fellow of the Indo-Pacific Cooperation Network and an elected Councillor with the Australian Institute of International Affairs – ACT. Daweena holds a Master of International Affairs from ANU.
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