Julie Bishop tells President Donald Trump that Asia wants 'more US leadership, not less'
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has urged President Donald Trump to remain engaged in the region.
David Wroe
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has called on Donald Trump to deepen rather than reduce US leadership in Asia in a speech that underscores Australian concern about the potential for the new President's isolationist leanings.
In a speech she was set to deliver in Los Angeles on Friday morning, Ms Bishop described the US as "the indispensible power throughout the Indo-Pacific" while also spruiking Australia's role, stressing that the heavy lifting would not be left to the US alone.
Couching the speech as a set of ideas that "we believe the new administration should consider", she urged Mr Trump to boost American engagement with the major grouping of South-East Asian countries and said he should personally attend this year's key East Asia Summit in the Philippines.
"Most nations wish to see more US leadership, not less, and have no desire to see powers other than the US calling the shots," she said, according to speech notes given to Fairfax Media.
"Australia believes that now is the time for the United States to go beyond its current engagement in Asia, to support Asia's own peace, and to capitalise on the era of opportunity that long-term US investment has already created."
Ms Bishop has also used the speech to champion Australia's history of immigration at a time when headlines in the US have been dominated by Mr Trump's swift clampdown on refugees and the building of a wall between the US and Mexico.
A leaked draft executive order from the White House reported by US newspapers on Thursday raised further questions about the Turnbull government's planned resettlement deal in which the US would take refugees held in Australia's offshore detention system. The draft order includes a four-month suspension on taking refugees and, as expected, a range of other restrictions over the longer term.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull nonetheless reiterated that he was "confident that we will maintain the arrangements" previously agreed to with the previous Obama administration.
But on Thursday night Australian time, Mr Trump said in a television interview that he would press ahead with "extreme vetting" of immigrants and it was going to be "very hard to come in".
"The world is as angry as it gets," he said. "The world is a total mess."
Ms Bishop told the US-Australia Dialogue on Co-operation in the Indo-Pacific that Australia believes that it is "essential" for the US to give "serious consideration and at the highest levels" to closer involvement with the Association of South-East Asian Nations, which is often maligned but which Ms Bishop said still has the power to positively shape China's rise.
Her robust defence of ASEAN indicates Australia is urging the Trump administration to stay engaged in Asia not by throwing its weight about but by strengthening its role as a backbone of an alliance system that maintains peace and order.
"If we seek an Asia in which mutual respect and the rule of law prevail, as we do, then we should work in the fields that ASEAN and its partners have cultivated for 60 years," she said.
It is widely felt in government circles that Australia has a significant opportunity to influence the Trump administration at a crucial time when its ongoing leadership in Asia cannot be taken for granted.
The new administration is marked by a contrasting and in some ways contradictory tapestry of views ranging from Mr Trump's "America first" rhetoric to more traditional foreign policy views in which the US maintains a carefully crafted network of alliances.
Ms Bishop, who has been cultivating links with the new administration, said it was "critical that President Trump attend" this year's East Asia Summit "as the leader of the pre-eminent strategic power in the region".
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