This year's ASEAN-Australia Summit was held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of ASEAN's partnership with Australia. Australia is ASEAN's first partner, and Australia is also the first partner with which ASEAN has a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
The theme of this summit is 'A Partnership for the Future.' The summit itself is broadly divided into two sessions. The first session discussed "Future ASEAN-Australia Cooperation and The Three ASEAN Cooperation Pillars". The essence of the first session was actually to discuss future cooperation.
Last year, Australia released a document prepared or created by Nicholas Moore. This report is entitled "Invested: Australia's Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040," or what is usually called Australia's economic strategy for Southeast Asia.
"The essence of Nicholas Moore's report is actually a new approach that Australia will take in order to increase trade and investment with Southeast Asia," said Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi who accompanied President Jokowi on his visit to Australia.
"In Australia's eyes, Southeast Asia is a region with great potential with quite high economic growth, geographical proximity of course, economic complementarity, and is part of Australia's efforts to diversify the economy," he continued.
Ten Priority Sectors
In the report there are four big things that will be done, namely: increasing awareness, removing obstacles, building capacity, and deepening investment.Meanwhile, the 10 sectors that will be prioritized are agriculture and food, resources, green energy transition, infrastructure, education and capabilities, migrant economy, health services, digital economy, professional and financial services, and also creative industries.
As an implementation of the new approach as stated in Nicholas Moore's report, Australia has launched: ASEAN-Australia Center This is a form of support for the implementation of AOIP.
Australia also provided 55 master's scholarships and 55 non-degree scholarships in the field of AOIP cooperation for ASEAN countries and Timor Leste, as well as adding Australian start-up facilitation centers in 4 cities in ASEAN including Indonesia and Vietnam. Previously, facilities like this already existed in Singapore.
In the first session regarding future cooperation, President Jokowi emphasized the importance of focusing on the future in three areas.
"First, strengthening the economic integrity of ASEAN and Australia, where the President emphasized the importance of strengthening two-way trade and investment cooperation," said Foreign Minister Retno.
"The President also emphasized the importance of synergy between Australia's existing strategy as reflected in the Nicholas Moore report and the implementation of the AOIP," he continued.
ASEAN Digital Transformation
Jokowi emphasized the importance of synergy between Australia's new approach as reflected in the Australian Strategy report regarding the approach to the Southeast Asian economy and the implementation of AOIP."Second, the acceleration of the energy transition, where Australia's support for the ASEAN Strategy for Carbon Neutrality is highly expected, especially in the form of investment, easy access to innovative financing and technology transfer," said Foreign Minister Retno.
Indonesia also encourages Australia to support the development of an electric vehicle ecosystem in ASEAN. Apart from that, Jokowi also emphasized that Indonesia opposes smear campaigns and discrimination that use environmental pretexts that are not based on scientific evidence.
"The third point is digital transformation cooperation. The President said that ASEAN's digital economic potential is very strong. Last year, negotiations on the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) began," said Foreign Minister Retno.
"Indonesia also hopes that Australia can support ASEAN's digital transformation efforts through skills development, knowledge sharing and strong public and private partnerships," she continued.
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