Asean Connectivity 2025: Shall Australia Become the Future Member of Asean?

Abstract

The issue of Australia becoming a full member of ASEAN has been a widely-debated topic in recent years. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Southeast Asia, where the future idea of connectivity in the region is compromised. This paper aims to investigate whether or not Australia can join ASEAN in 2025. The 'secondary research' method is utilized to gather data as well as adopting a qualitative approach to analyze the topic. This paper finds that Australia will not become the ASEAN member for several reasons. Firstly, the Australian community is different from Southeast Asian nations. Secondly, Australia is geographically not in Asia. Thirdly, the bid of Australia to be a full ASEAN community partner may not only trigger the debate among ASEAN leaders but also undermine its community vision for 2025. Lastly, Australia will restrict itself to its policy autonomy and comply with ASEAN Way (the principle of non-interference and consensus decisionmaking) which are not in the best interests of Australia.This paper finally concludes that ASEAN Connectivity 2025 will be better off without Australia and, to work towards a better ASEAN, it recommends for Australia to maintain its status quo as the ASEAN dialogue partnership.