Perspectives:Asia Lecture | Fair go, mate: The changing language and practice of Australian values diplomacy in times of uncertainty and risk

Perspectives:Asia Lecture | Fair go, mate: The changing language and practice of Australian values diplomacy in times of uncertainty and risk
Perspectives:Asia Lecture | Fair go, mate: The changing language and practice of Australian values diplomacy in times of uncertainty and risk

Principal speaker

Emeritus Professor John Fitzgerald, Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne Uniersity of Technology

One rare point of agreement uniting practitioners and researchers in Australian foreign policy circles is that while values may have a place among foreign policy aspirations they have little bearing on the conduct of Australia's international relations. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper upset this long-standing consensus by placing values front and centre of Australian foreign policy, alongside trade and security, and uprooting them from the familiar national territory of Australian folklore and replanting them in the global commons of liberal values. Mateship and the fair go gave way to freedom, democracy and rule of law.

The reasons are many. At a popular level, movements targeting religious and ethnic difference are testing Australia's commitment to inclusion, equality, and diversity at home and abroad. Among state actors, a dynamic and increasingly powerful China is driving structural and strategic changes in the region while showing little sympathy for the values underpinning democracy, rule of law, or the liberal rules-based order on which regional stability and prosperity have been based since WWII. The Trump administration's response to the China challenge brings the long-term viability of that order into question.

For Australia, the question arises whether values are likely to help or hinder government to negotiate safe passage through these complex ethical and policy issues. This question was largely sidestepped in the past when "Australian values' were championed as particular to the country, with little application beyond Australia, and the expression "common values' served as coded reference to the US alliance framework with little application beyond it.

Recent government statements suggesting that Australia's national identity is grounded in liberal values goes beyond both the parochial and the alliance frameworks of earlier values statements to make a particular claim on liberal values as Australian. Yet, this shift raises important questions. In particular, what are the implications of this transvaluation of values for Australian diplomatic practice and international relations?

Professor John Fitzgerald's research focuses on territorial government and civil society in China and on Australia's Asian diasporas. His publications have won international recognition, including the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies and the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association.

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