How Australia can build a secure region: grow relationships with our neighbours

• Threats without enemies, such as illegal immigration; people smuggling; drug trafficking; the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout Asia and the Pacific; poaching by foreign vessels; problems originating or made worse by growing economic inequality; as well as natural disasters and complex emergencies.

• Continued population growth and the pressures this is placing on natural resources and the environment.

Together, these problems not only confront Australia with a long-term problem of human suffering in the region, but have far reaching implications in the areas of trade, tourism, migration, aid policies, budgetary policy and intergovernmental relations.

ACFOA welcomes the increased role the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) are playing in areas like peace keeping and humanitarian assistance and humanitarian de-mining operations. ACFOA acknowledges some of the positive aspects of the Government’s defence white paper, in particular, the need for a more flexible force structure to be able to quickly respond to the need for peace keeping in the region. But ACFOA believes the concept of security it adopts continues to remain too narrowly defined and too reliant on purely conventional military means.

In addition to the multiplicity of sources of instability is the changing nature of conflict. With the exception of only two interstate wars, most of the world’s conflicts are now within states or have resulted from collapsed or disrupted states. Apart from a small naval presence in the Gulf War, all Australian military deployment since Vietnam has been on peace keeping missions. The scenarios posed by East Timor, Bougainville, and the recent deployment of an unarmed International Peace monitoring team to the Solomon Islands, none of them conventional interstate wars, are representative of the sort of military and police actions which Australia will be confronted with in the future.

ACFOA urges the Australian Government to recognise that ADF deployments are now more likely to be for peace keeping or emergency responses than conventional war or defence requirements. As such, while the defence consultation may have highlighted arguments for greater operational and procurement needs these cannot take place without strengthening the ADF's peace keeping and conflict resolution capabilities.

The objectives for Australian involvement in these local conflicts are more likely to halt the spread of violence and to re-establish peace, rather than to militarily defeat the enemy. While the conditions and needs generated by these conflicts will vary, most will involve deliberate targeting of civilians, displacement of large numbers of people, the destruction of state infrastructure and services, and massive pressures on social systems and culture. The examples of East Timor and Bougainville both demonstrate the necessity of taking a broader, more proactive strategy towards Australia’s defence and security policy. East Timor required the mobilisation of almost the entire armed forces of Australia to provide sufficient resources for INTERFET. Bougainville requires a continual peace monitoring presence and over $100 million in Australian aid.

ACFOA stresses the need for an integrated policy approach that not only looks at increased cooperation between the NGO sector and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence, but cross-cutting approaches within the Aid Program, involving peace building, the protection of human rights, and the development of appropriate legal and state systems. The Government must include the provision of humanitarian assistance as part of a coherent peace building strategy, utilising the appropriate range of organisations and their comparative advantages, that is cost effective, as well as preventing duplication, waste and inefficiency on the ground.

This requires a multiplicity of responses: not just medical attention, but community health strategies; not only peace keeping or enforcement, but long-term peace building and conflict resolution strategies. In other words, relief and development programs in which local civil society, and their NGO counterparts in Australia have a great deal of experience in. There are already a number of conflict zones where Australian NGOs are involved in such activities, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia (Maluku and Aceh), and Africa (the Horn, Sudan, Angola, the Great Lakes region, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe).

The current strategic environment also increases the importance of the NGO sector and the Defence Department continuing to dialogue about peace keeping issues and improved civil-military cooperation, based on lessons learned from East Timor and acknowledging the important role NGOs play in sustainable peace keeping.

ACFOA stresses the contribution the Aid Program makes to the economic security of Australia, the region and other areas such as the Middle East and Africa. A robust Aid Program not only prevents social breakdown and reduces poverty, but delivers economic returns in the form of increased procurement opportunities for Australian companies. In addition, it contributes to an increased Australian economic and diplomatic profile, allowing us to take advantage of emerging trade opportunities. It also underpins Australia’s diversifying trade relations, helping to create more balanced relationships.