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Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong met right this moment together with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese in Canberra. The 2 leaders signed a landmark inexperienced economic system settlement bracketed by paeans to the depth and breadth of their nations’ bilateral relationship.
Lee was in Australia this week for the seventh Australia-Singapore Annual Leaders’ Assembly and met Albanese for the primary time because the Labor chief turned prime minister in Might. He was accompanied by International Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, Commerce and Business Minister Gan Kim Yong, and different authorities officers.
In a joint assertion launched on the shut of the Leaders’ Assembly, the 2 leaders “welcomed the power and depth of bilateral relations between the 2 international locations, anchored in shared strategic and financial pursuits.”
Throughout a subsequent joint press convention at Parliament Home in Canberra, Lee mentioned that the 2 leaders “affirmed our complete strategic partnership,” and mentioned that bilateral cooperation “has proceeded apace, even throughout COVID-19.” He added that in a “troubled world,” it was “essential for like-minded international locations to work collectively.”
A centerpiece of Lee’s journey was the signing of the Singapore-Australia Inexperienced Financial system Settlement, which Albanese mentioned signaled a “collective resolve to confront challenges as we transition our economies to web zero.” Characterizing this as “the primary such settlement of its sort,” Lee mentioned that it could “assist the transitions of our international locations to web zero emission and on the identical time increase development and create jobs within the inexperienced sectors.” Albanese celebrated the settlement between “two nice mates” as an “essential instance to the world” and a “new chapter” within the complete strategic partnership that was established in 2015.
The settlement will guarantee higher collaboration between the Australian authorities analysis company CSIRO and Singapore’s Company for Science, Know-how and Analysis, and strengthen provide chains of essential assets between the 2 international locations.
Because the above paragraphs counsel, Lee’s journey abounded in heat language concerning the previous, current, and way forward for bilateral relations. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as soon as described Singapore and Australia as “pure companions,” and it’s logical that the Lion Metropolis would kind the centerpiece of the present Australian authorities’s promise to deepen and develop its engagements with the nations of Southeast Asia. Singapore’s International Minister Vivian Balakrishnan repeated Abbott’s phrase when internet hosting his Australian counterpart Penny Wong in July, when he additionally referred to the 2 nations’ “enormous reservoir of strategic belief.”
Albanese, the eighth Australian prime minister that Lee has met since taking workplace in 2004, mentioned yesterday that the ties between Singapore and Australia “are underpinned by deep ranges of belief, mutual respect, and the power to speak frankly with one another.”
The explanations for this closeness aren’t arduous to discern. Since Singapore’s start as an unbiased state in 1965, the 2 nations have shared broadly congruent pursuits, from a shared opposition to communism to robust assist for a continued strong U.S. safety presence in Asia. From an Australian perspective, it could be naïve to disclaim that the relative cultural familiarity of Singapore, as an economically superior, English-speaking nation, has additionally facilitated the institution of nearer ties.
The 2 nations even have robust protection ties, and Singapore is likely one of the few international locations that frequently sends its forces to be skilled on Australian soil. Throughout right this moment’s joint press convention, Lee mentioned that Singapore’s armed forces would supply assist to the Australian protection forces of their efforts to alleviate communities which have been deluged by the current floods. On high of those cultural and strategic alignments, Singapore is Australia’s largest buying and selling companion in Southeast Asia, and its fifth-largest buying and selling companion general.
As Gatra Priyandita wrote this week for The Strategist, the home publication of the hawkish Australian Strategic Coverage Institute, nonetheless, the language of uplift conceals points on which the 2 nations differ, if not disagree brazenly. As he famous, whereas Australia has usually signaled its assist for the U.S. authorities’s aim of curbing and containing the affect of a rising China (not less than partially as a result of its personal tried coercion by China), Lee, drawing on Singapore’s distinct model of small-state realism, has known as on each China and the U.S. (and by extension, Australia), to make mutual lodging.
There have been glimpses of this in right this moment’s press convention. When requested concerning the U.S. authorities’s current restrictions on the sale of semiconductors and chip-making tools to China, Lee expressed ambivalence. He mentioned that whereas “nationwide safety issues are actual,” he mentioned that Singapore nervous that these concerns “might set off additional penalties and should lead to much less financial cooperation, much less interdependency, much less belief and, presumably, in the end a much less steady world.”
One other space of distinction issues China’s (presumably quixotic) bid to hitch the Complete and Progressive Settlement for Trans-Pacific Partnership commerce settlement, which Singapore helps however about which Australia is extra skeptical. “I believe Australia is aware of what it’s doing and we perceive one another’s perspective,” Lee mentioned. When requested for his views concerning the Albanese authorities’s China coverage writ giant, he mentioned, “we by no means give ourselves report playing cards, a lot much less our mates.”
On the identical time, in comparison with the variations of notion that Australia has with the remaining nations of Southeast Asia – one thinks right here of its perpetually fraught relationship with Indonesia, endlessly topic to Australian guarantees of renewal and re-engagement that by no means fairly eventuate – Canberra and Singapore are comparatively aligned on most key points. Certainly, no matter their variations on the query of China, they continue to be deal nearer than each different nation within the area, bar maybe the Philippines.
If Australia is searching for a “like-minded” companion in Southeast Asia, it’s unlikely to search out one that matches that invoice to a higher diploma than Singapore.
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