Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government

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Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics? a

Matt McDonald a

Matt McDonald is a Reader in International Relations in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. Published online: 21 Aug 2015.

Click for updates To cite this article: Matt McDonald (2015): Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics?, Australian Journal of International Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2015.1056514 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2015.1056514

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Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics?

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MATT MCDONALD* While foreign policy featured prominently on the Australian political agenda in late 2014, the manner of Australia’s engagement with the world challenges the idea of a ‘pivot’ from domestic politics to foreign policy. In particular, the government demonstrated a tendency to prioritise domestic political considerations, in particular public opinion, in its dealings with the outside world. This was evident across a range of issue areas: from the ‘internationalist’ agenda of asylum, climate change and aid to more traditional concerns such as bilateral relations with Indonesia and international security. This article explores these dynamics and asks what implications this has for both Australian foreign policy and theoretical accounts of the role and desirability of public engagement with foreign policy in international relations thought. Keywords: Australian foreign policy; international relations; public opinion

Foreign policy featured prominently in Australian politics in the latter half of 2014. Australia played host to the Group of Twenty summit in November while simultaneously holding the presidency of the United Nations Security Council. In July, the government had responded robustly to the attack on the MH17 airliner over Ukraine, utilising its role on the United Nations Security Council to condemn the attack and secure an international investigation. Australia also became a prominent member of the US-led coalition against Islamic State/Daesh in Iraq and Syria, with Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop using the United Nations Security Council seat to make a case for stronger international action in response to the terrorist threat and foreign fighters. Political commentator Peter Hartcher (2014), in his book examining the foreign policy–domestic policy relationship in Australia, made the case that the events of the latter part of 2014 transformed Abbott’s leadership, replacing a ‘provincial reflex’ with ‘an international inclination’. While world affairs seemed to find their way onto the political agenda in this period, however, it does not necessarily follow that this constituted a pivot from domestic politics to foreign policy in the Australian context. Indeed, the manner *Matt McDonald is a Reader in International Relations in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. © 2015 Australian Journal of International Affairs

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of the response to the MH17 attack, and Prime Minister Abbott’s memorable threat to ‘shirtfront’ Russia’s Vladimir Putin over the event at the Group of Twenty summit, seemed to suggest that foreign policy was ultimately viewed through the lens of domestic politics. This trend continued through to early 2015, with both the terms of the Federal Budget announced in May and the response to Indonesia’s execution of convicted Australian drug smugglers in April pointing to a tendency to approach foreign policy with domestic political considerations in mind. This is the broader trend discussed in Hartcher’s 2014 book, The Adolescent Country. As captured by political commentator Nick Bryant (2014) in discussing Hartcher’s claims, ‘the latest polling from the western suburbs of Sydney appears to hold sway over diplomatic dispatches from Washington or Beijing’. This article critically examines the extent to which the Australian government does indeed view foreign policy through the lens of domestic politics, focusing on the Abbott government of 2014–15. It concludes that the government exhibits a particular tendency to prioritise domestic political considerations, in particular public opinion, in its dealings with the outside world. This is especially evident in approaches to issues on the ‘internationalist’ agenda such as asylum, climate change and aid, but has also been evident in its approach to bilateral relations with Indonesia and international security dynamics, particularly over the MH17 incident in Ukraine. The article then explores the implications of this tendency both for theoretical accounts of foreign policy and for the contours and conduct of Australian foreign policy. It suggests that the extent to which domestic political considerations appear to drive contemporary Australian foreign policy challenges key accounts of the origins of state interests as well as raising important questions about the future of Australian diplomacy. It suggests in particular that the increasing salience of public opinion to foreign policy risks creating short-term-oriented policy with a limited focus on Australia’s role in working to address transnational challenges or recognition of obligations to vulnerable outsiders. The article proceeds in three parts. The first outlines theoretical accounts of the relationship between domestic politics, in particular public opinion, and foreign policy. While charting the way different theories make sense of the role of domestic political considerations in foreign policy, it also examines the claims these approaches make regarding the appropriateness and desirability of such influence. The second section examines the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy in Australia. It distinguishes between public perceptions on various foreign policy issues, on the one hand, and the importance attached to those issues in the context of Australia’s political agenda, on the other—an important distinction in coming to terms with the degree to which governments are enabled or constrained by public opinion generally. The final section reflects on the Abbott government’s foreign policy agenda, focusing on the extent to which foreign policy choices reflect these domestic political considerations.

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Foreign policy formation and the role of domestic politics The role of the public and domestic politics more broadly in the formation and execution of foreign policy, of course, varies significantly across different theoretical accounts of foreign policy in international relations. At its most basic level, a distinction is often made between elitist and pluralist approaches (Robinson 2012; see also Drum and van Onselen 2014). The former suggests that foreign policy is (and should be) made at the level of the political elite. In this schema, political leaders and relevant experts (bureaucrats, for example) are involved in drawing up and implementing foreign policy, and, if there is a role for the broader public, it is largely restricted to being notified of foreign policy priorities and action. For those subscribing to the elitist view, a broader public role about international affairs risks the politicisation of foreign policy, and involves input from those not immediately familiar with the issues being discussed and the long-term implications for the state. While such an approach is out of vogue in most liberal democratic states (see Risse-Kappen 1991),1 it is arguably the default position in foreign policy issue areas where public engagement is limited or where the (perceived) need for secrecy encourages foreign policy action without public consultation. Pluralist approaches, meanwhile, suggest that foreign policy is formulated through the ebb and flow of the (democratic) political system, in which different actors (representing different constituencies) articulate and advocate alternative views about the national interest and the means through which it might be protected or advanced. Advocates of this view suggest that such an approach minimises the likelihood of foreign policy being captured by individual vested interests, ensures open and democratic participation in the policy process, and allows a role for the broader public in influencing foreign policy (see Kaufmann 2004; Robinson 2012; Snyder 1991). There is arguably both an analytical and a normative dimension to these approaches—there is a claim about the way foreign policy is made, and the extent to which multiple actors and the broader public should be involved in its formulation and implementation. For elitist approaches, it is appropriate that foreign policy decisions are concentrated in the hands of leaders and experts, while for pluralists it is far more defensible to involve a wide range of actors, including the public, in the formation of foreign policy. To some degree, these distinctions map onto prominent international relations theories. For realists, for example, foreign policy should be developed on the basis of a rational and hard-headed assessment of the national interest. This speaks against a responsiveness to the ebb and flow of public opinion or particular lobby groups, and in favour of decision-making by experts with an appreciation of the distribution of material resources in the international system and the capacity of the state. At an analytical level, this view is evident in Kenneth Waltz’s structural realist account of states as functionally similar. For Waltz (1979), it is unnecessary to examine internal political dynamics or bargaining— to open up the ‘black box’ of the state—because ultimately we can expect states

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to act in a similar manner in response to the material distribution of power in the international system (see also Kagan 2004). And, in normative terms, this view is evident in Mearsheimer and Walt’s (2007) controversial argument that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has exerted an undesirable amount of influence over US foreign policy towards the Middle East. A range of realists (especially the so-called ‘neoclassical’ variant) have attempted to develop analytical frameworks that better account for domestic contexts of foreign policy, suggesting that foreign policy action may be the product of a combination of international power dynamics, perceptions of those dynamics, and societal factors that enable or constrain foreign policy behaviour (see, for example, Rose 1998; Wohlforth 1993). The latter clearly draws some attention to domestic political processes as a driver of foreign policy, though its centrality to foreign policy practice is ultimately downplayed relative to external factors and perceptions of them, while analysts here shy away from outlining arguments regarding the desirability of such dynamics. At the normative level, then, the dominant view in realist theory remains that elite-driven, rational assessments of foreign policy interests are desirable, and may be undermined in a pluralist system that allows special-interest actors or a public unfamiliar with global affairs to influence the policy process. Pluralism, by contrast, is advocated by liberals at the normative level, and is a feature of foreign policy formation for constructivists at the analytical level. Liberals suggest that it is appropriate for domestic politics to inform foreign policy. They argue that encouraging a diversity of voices in the formation of foreign policy serves to minimise the role and power of elite interests, and allows publics a role in influencing policy carried out in their name (Doyle 2012). Indeed, some suggest that the qualities of a liberal democratic system—the practices of compromise and the need for leaders to retain political legitimacy among the eyes of the broader public—can civilise the actions of the state in its dealings with outsiders. This is, of course, central to some accounts of the democratic peace thesis (Russett 1993). Underpinning this normative position is not only the idea that regime type matters in terms of foreign policy behaviour, but also (and more relevant for this article) that progressive foreign policy oriented towards internationalist concerns is likely to follow from domestic political processes that account for the broader views of the public and enable multiple voices on foreign policy to be heard (see Lawler 2013). For constructivists, foreign policy can be viewed as the product of a process of negotiation and contestation between actors in a (particularly liberal) domestic setting. While foreign policy is a question of expert assessment of material realities for structural realists, constructivists point to the role of ideational factors such as norms, identities and values, and to the central role of interpretation in making sense of ‘reality’ itself. This creates more contestability about foreign policy, with different actors attempting to sell their foreign policy vision to the broader public (see Holland 2013). Beyond this, foreign policy actors also articulate different views about the intentions of other states based on past behaviour

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or the identities ascribed to them, the domestic values and beliefs that should inform foreign policy, and different visions of appropriate behaviour in the international system. Viewed in this way, a wide range of actors can and do articulate interests, objectives and visions relevant to the formation and practice of foreign policy at the domestic level. The idea of foreign policy as a site of negotiation and contestation is an important one for constructivists, making public attitudes and broader dynamics of public debate central to debates about foreign policy more generally. Here, policy makers attempt to negotiate with their constituency to try to ensure that foreign policy priorities and measures are supported and viewed as legitimate, while multiple actors compete with each other to articulate ‘our’ interests and the best means of their preservation or advancement (McDonald 2013). While trying to ‘sell’ policy, political leaders (particularly those in democratic states) are also attempting to marginalise alternative accounts of the national interest, whether articulated by opposition parties, lobby groups, non-governmental organisations or even international organisations (see McDonald and Merefield 2010). These dynamics were particularly relevant to contestation over the Iraq War in 2003, with constructivists pointing to the efforts and strategies of policy makers in attempting to justify intervention, marginalise alternatives and sustain public support in the face of concerted opposition (see, for example, Cramer 2007; Krebs and Lobasz 2007; Schmidt and Williams 2008). And, at the normative level, liberals have suggested that one of the key lessons of the 2003 Iraq War is that greater public oversight and scrutiny (of claims around intelligence, for example) would have been beneficial in limiting the power of elite actors to determine foreign policy according to their own interests and prejudices in this instance.2 Of course, a range of other theories of international relations have important contributions to make to the question of the relationship between domestic politics, public opinion and foreign policy. Robert Putnam (1988), for example, suggests that diplomacy can be viewed as a ‘two-level game’, with political leaders attempting to communicate simultaneously with both international and domestic audiences. Feminist approaches point to discourses of international relations that concentrate responsibility for the practices of international diplomacy in the hands of the few and justify the marginalisation of the broader population (see, for example, Enloe 1989; Shepherd 2010; Tickner 1988). And Marxist-inspired approaches point to the ways in which business interests and broader economic discourses can impact on foreign policy, enabling powerful companies, for example, to exert disproportionate influence on the state (for example, Halperin 2011). Within Australia, elements of this analytical framework are evident in the claims of Guy Pearse (2007) and Clive Hamilton (2001) regarding the capture of Australian climate policy by fossil-fuel industry groups, and in critics’ account of Australia’s use of underhand tactics in its negotiation with East Timor over access to gas reserves in the Timor Sea (Cleary 2013). And, more directly on the role of the public, elements of this view are

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evident in Robert Manne’s (2011) claim that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been able to exert undue influence over the scope and tenor of public debate within Australia through his control of media networks. Ultimately, then, different theoretical approaches to international relations have different conceptions of the role of the public and public opinion in foreign policy questions, and different conceptions of whether domestic politics should play a role in the formulation and execution of Australian foreign policy. These accounts are challenged in different ways, at both the analytical and normative levels, by the manner in which the Abbott government has approached foreign policy and the public’s role in it. While examples of public engagement and public opinion genuinely impacting on foreign policy debate and practice are relatively rare in Australia, as will be discussed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that public attitudes and sensitivity to these attitudes have at various points influenced foreign policy. And it appears clear that this ‘politicisation’ of foreign policy has become more prominent in Australia in recent years. Public opinion and foreign policy in Australia Foreign policy has not featured prominently on Australia’s policy agenda. In their work on policy agendas in Australia, for example, Dowding et al. (2010, 2012) suggest that international issues are relatively marginal to how political leaders frame their agenda and priorities when coming to power or in key pre-election statements. Indeed, foreign policy has featured prominently on the Australian political agenda only at times of international crisis and war: first, around Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and, second, around the ‘War on Terror’ in the early 2000s (Goot 2007; Gyngell and Wesley 2003, 191–196). Not only were these conflicts that involved Australia, but they also became politicised as bipartisan support for military intervention (in the case of Vietnam and Afghanistan) gave way to a split between the major parties on whether Australian troops should withdraw (Vietnam) or commit to conflict (Iraq) (McDonald 2013a). These constituted significant moments for Australia, illustrating fissures in Australian foreign policy debate and encouraging reflection on fundamental concerns such as the US alliance and the extent to which Australia should participate in US wars (see Fraser 2014). Yet, in the broad sweep of Australian foreign policy, such moments are exceptional in two key ways. First, Australian foreign policy is more readily characterised by continuity than change, particularly on key issues. While employing different language to define foreign policy priorities, for example, largely since World War II Australia’s political leaders have remained committed to the key goals of maintaining national security through the US alliance, fostering continued development through economic engagement with the economies of the Asian region, and remaining engaged (albeit to greater or lesser degrees) with the key institutions of international society (Gyngell and Wesley 2003; Lee 2006).

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Second, these moments are also atypical in that they constituted an exception to the general tendency towards public disengagement with international issues (see Goot 2007). In both cases, as noted, it was unusual that public mobilisation featured around a foreign policy issue. Arguably, however, these trends are shifting in Australia, demonstrating both the politicisation of issues with an international dimension and increasing public concern around those issues. Before exploring this trend, however, it is worth briefly noting public attitudes to international issues within Australia. Since 2005, the Lowy Institute has conducted annual surveys of public opinion in Australia on foreign policy issues. These surveys have generally suggested that Australians have a troubling lack of knowledge of a range of international issues and the world more generally.3 They have also illustrated generally warm feelings towards Western states (for example, the USA, the UK and New Zealand), suspicion of non-Western states (for example, China, India and Indonesia), a positive security outlook, concern about asylum-seekers arriving by boat (see Goot 2007) and extreme volatility around the issue of climate change (Oliver 2014). Ultimately, however, making sense of the role of public opinion requires more than simply charting public attitudes to various states and issues, even in a liberal democratic state. The degree of government responsiveness to public attitudes and the depth of public concern over particular policy issues are also clearly important. While the former may theoretically be influenced by government ideology (including its commitment to deliberative process), in practice these two usually coincide: government responsiveness to public concern is often dependent on the scale of public concern. This is, of course, also influenced by the electoral cycle. In instances where federal elections are looming, as Thomas Risse-Kappen (1991) has argued, a wider range of issues are likely to be politicised and governments are more likely to be responsive to public attitudes. Here, public attitudes may range from ambivalent/uninterested to sceptical/ supportive to concerned/engaged. In the first instance, an ambivalent or uninterested public gives governments significant room to move in terms of their foreign policy choices. This is applicable to most Australian foreign policy, especially those issue areas and relationships that are not extensively covered by the media. In the second instance, sceptical or supportive public attitudes tend to constrain or enable policy in certain areas. Public suspicion about the size and utility of foreign aid, influenced by populist views about aid money being wasted and misunderstandings about the scale of Australia’s aid program (see Costello 2013), has enabled governments to wind back such programs while constraining their expansion. In these instances, alternative policy may be possible but has to be carefully narrated and justified, and is vulnerable to politicisation by opposition political parties in particular.4 Finally, in instances where publics are actively concerned or engaged in foreign policy issues, it can be politically challenging for policy makers to sustain a policy that diverges from public opinion. This certainly applied to the issue of asylumseekers arriving by boat from the early 2000s, when significant public concern

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and overwhelming support for a hard-line stance on boat arrivals limited the possibility for articulating alternative policies and played a role in sweeping the Howard government back into office in 2001 (see Marr and Wilkinson 2003). As Murray Goot (2007, 298–300) noted, the issues of asylum and immigration featured prominently in the elections in 2001 and 2004, with around half those surveyed indicating that they were extremely important to their voting considerations, outranked only by health and education as policy issues. This followed support for the Tampa blockade stance, which was upwards of 75 percent in some national opinion polls (Goot 2007, 256). If this example is suggestive of powerful public constraints to the articulation and pursuit of particular foreign policy, this, of course, does not mean that public opinion operates independently of politics. As a range of critics have argued, the Howard government helped create public concern about asylum-seekers through representing them and their values in such a way as to help justify a hard-line stance—one that was increasingly popular when linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ (see Hage 2003; Marr and Wilkinson 2003; McMaster 2002). Of course, establishing this relationship is difficult in methodological terms, but we can certainly discern instances where governments expend time and energy to emphasise the legitimacy of their preferred policy approach and attempt to marginalise others (see McDonald and Merefield 2010). And, in the extent and sites of media coverage, for example, we can identify issue areas in which domestic political considerations are likely to feature in political decision-making. The remainder of this article examines the role of domestic political considerations in foreign policy formation through an examination of the Abbott government’s approach to foreign policy in Australia in 2014–15. Ultimately, it points to this government’s tendency towards viewing foreign policy through the lens of domestic politics.

The Abbott government: foreign policy as domestic politics? Tony Abbott came to office in 2013 outlining an approach to foreign policy broadly consistent with a conservative foreign policy agenda. Australia under his leadership, he indicated, would be less deferential towards the United Nations and less likely to grandstand on the international stage; more concerned with developing the US alliance and defence spending to allow it to make a genuine contribution to that alliance; more protective of immediate Australian national interests and national security relative to a global sensibility; and concerned with developing key bilateral relations in the immediate region (Coalition 2013; Taylor 2013). The central mantra of the Coalition in this context was that it would be ‘more Jakarta, less Geneva’. In a range of issue areas, however, and notwithstanding the foreign policy ‘pivot’ in 2014, the Abbott government demonstrated a tendency to view foreign policy through the lens of domestic politics and to define international issues in terms of domestic political

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considerations. This was particularly applicable to the issues of asylum and climate change. On the issue of asylum, Tony Abbott made clear his intention to follow in the footsteps of his political mentor, John Howard, in politicising the management of asylum-seekers arriving by boat and pursuing a hard-line approach to so-called ‘unauthorised arrivals’. This was among the most prominent foreign policy issues in the elections of 2010 and 2013, with Abbott emphasising that Labor had lost control of Australia’s borders, having previously pressured the Rudd government to suspend the processing of asylum-seekers arriving from Sri Lanka in mid 2009 (Kelly 2012). The 2013 promise to ‘stop the boats’ was one of the more memorable and politically charged slogans in the lead-up to the election, with the Rudd government ultimately scrambling to point out that the differences between its asylum policy and that of the Coalition were limited largely to the issue of ‘boat turnarounds’ (see Phillips 2014). Having pledged to ‘stop the boats’, it is perhaps no surprise that the Abbott government combined a deterrence-based policy of offshore mandatory detention with a military-based response in order to physically prevent asylumseekers arriving in Australia. Operation Sovereign Borders involved the deployment of Australian military personnel to intercept asylum-seekers and return them to the relevant mainland—most commonly Indonesia. By early 2014, it involved the participation of up to 800 Defence personnel and a large fleet of Defence and Customs patrol boats and surveillance aircraft (ABC 2014). While boat arrivals were certainly significantly reduced, the politics associated with the claim of stopping the boats also encouraged the government to curtail regular updates on boat arrivals to the media. It was a policy that was defined as an emergency response to a crisis situation, though, of course, the numbers of arrivals to Australia had remained low by international standards throughout the previous government’s tenure (Phillips 2013). It was a policy approach that came at a significant cost both literally and in terms of Australia’s foreign policy interests. While the government was less than forthcoming on costs for Defence operations, for example, analysis by James Brown (2013) concluded that annual Defence expenditure would likely be between AU$250 and AU$300 million per year. Customs figures, meanwhile, suggested that their surveillance and interception operations were over AU$320 million per year (ABC 2014). While a significant expenditure, these figures were dwarfed by the cost of the mandatory detention of asylum-seekers—an annual cost of over AU$3 billion. In total, operations associated with preventing and processing asylum-seekers would cost Australian taxpayers over AU$4 billion in 2013–14 (see ibid.). Significantly, this was in the context of a ‘budget emergency’ that would be used to justify reductions in government spending on programs in health, education, environment, welfare and aid. The costs of this policy for Australia were diplomatic as well as financial. While promising to rebuild and strengthen relations with Indonesia, the practice of boat turnarounds was constantly criticised by Jakarta, with Indonesian officials also

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claiming that Australian personnel had violated Indonesian sovereignty by entering Indonesian waters (Ireland 2014). And the November 2014 announcement that Australia would not accept refugees from Indonesia saw Jakarta summon the Australian ambassador to a meeting and officials issue a statement that this move had hurt Australia–Indonesia relations (Guardian 2014). In these senses, this policy undermined a core commitment of the government itself. It also, predictably, drew the ire of human rights groups and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which were concerned about breaches of the Refugee Convention, the practice of intercepting and towing back boats, the continued practice of detaining asylum-seekers, and reports of widespread mental health problems and unsanitary conditions in the detention centres themselves (Siegel 2014). This particularly applied to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, the scene of a riot in February 2014 where locals killed an asylum-seeker. While claiming a concern with the plight of asylum-seekers on the high seas, the practice of detaining asylum-seekers for extended periods in developing states served to undermine the claim that their welfare was a genuine policy concern. All in all, it was a policy that undermined Australia’s international credentials as a country committed to human rights and international law. Crucially, however, it was a policy that was overwhelmingly supported by the broader public. The 2014 Lowy Poll illustrated that more than 70 percent of Australians supported Operation Sovereign Borders (Oliver 2014). In early 2014, almost 60 percent of Australians (erroneously) believed that most asylum-seekers attempting to arrive by boat were not genuine refugees, while over 60 percent supported even harsher measures (Dorling 2014). A range of analysts suggested that the government benefited in both the 2010 and 2013 elections from its stated commitment to ‘stop the boats’, exploiting the failure of the Labor Party in office to stem the flow of asylum-seekers arriving in this manner (see ABC 2013; Reilly 2013; Short 2011). This electoral benefit had been anticipated by senior Liberal Party strategists, according to US Embassy cables accessed by the Wikileaks organisation. One cable from the US Embassy to Washington, DC, indicated that a ‘“key Liberal Party strategist” told US diplomats in November 2009 that the issue of asylum seekers was “fantastic” for the Coalition and “the more boats that come the better”’ (Dorling 2010). As the Labor Party’s scramble to match Coalition asylum policy attests, while public support for a hard-line stance has clearly been furthered and encouraged by the Coalition in both opposition and now government, this appears to be a foreign policy issue where it would be politically challenging for the Labor opposition to commit to a policy that diverges significantly from current policy. Another international issue which saw internationalism give way to domestic political considerations was that of climate change. Again, this was not surprising. Abbott had taken the leadership of the Coalition promising to end the Conservatives’ support for carbon pricing, and had described the 2013 election as a ‘referendum on the carbon tax’ introduced under the Gillard government. Under his leadership, Australia subsequently became the first country in the world to

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repeal a carbon pricing mechanism in mid 2014, with the government emphasising the implications of the tax for industry and general electricity prices. The government’s own Direct Action policy was criticised as a mechanism that would ultimately provide financial incentives to heavily polluting companies to pollute less, but with no guarantee of reaching the emissions reduction targets to which the government remained rhetorically committed (Green 2014). Other policy commitments, complicated by the configuration of the Senate after July 2014, included axing the Climate Commission—a body designed to communicate climate science to the broader public—and pursuing a review of the (20 percent) Renewable Energy Target, which featured a prominent climate denialist—Maurice Newman—as chair. The following year, and as the deadline for Australia to outline its greenhouse-gas emissions reduction commitments for international climate negotiations in Paris in 2015 loomed, Newman (2015) suggested that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the United Nations to end democracy and impose authoritarian rule. Australia, under the Abbott government, has approached the issue of climate change almost exclusively through the prism of the cost of mitigation action for Australian consumers and industry. Concerns over electricity prices and industry competitiveness were frequently articulated, while recognition of Australia’s international obligations or the global dimension of the issue itself barely featured (Cox 2014). In a first for Australia, the Abbott government chose not to send a minister to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties meeting in late 2013, having earlier cancelled consultation with stakeholders over Australia’s position. In the mid 1990s, the Keating Labor government had recognised the immediate economic costs facing Australia in the context of its high per capita emissions and if talks on climate change developed into a global movement away from coal. Yet here, the government also recognised the importance of making a contribution to addressing a genuinely transnational problem, and remained engaged with the climate regime (Oberthur and Ott 1999, 47). The same could not be said of the Abbott government. In opposition, Tony Abbott had actively sought to politicise the previously bipartisan issue of carbon pricing and, in government, he sought to lay a foundation for walking away from action on global climate change. As international actors began to criticise Australia’s inaction (Elligett 2015), his government continued to emphasise its climate policy as a mechanism to protect Australians’ incomes and continued economic growth (Cox 2014). In Australia, support for climate action has waxed and waned significantly, but action on climate change has certainly been constrained by the willingness to politicise and mobilise concern about the immediate costs associated with climate action. This was the case from 2009–13, with Abbott’s emphasis on the prohibitive costs of climate action serving to drive support for action from nearly two-thirds of the Australian population to less than 40 percent (Oliver 2014). While support for climate change action has begun to turn in recent polling (Oliver 2015), the government’s approach to this issue has clearly

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suggested a tendency to conceive and frame it as a domestic, rather than global, concern. While asylum and, to a lesser extent, climate policy were significantly influenced by public concern, general public scepticism (built on misconceptions) about Australia’s Official Development Assistance program has enabled the government to scale back Australia’s aid commitments significantly. In 2007, arguably with an eye on winning a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council, Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would double its aid spending to reach 0.5 percent of gross national income by 2015–16. In subsequent budgets under the Labor government, the time frame for the achievement of this goal was delayed, but, in its first budget, the Abbott government announced that the budget for Australian aid would be cut by AU$7.6 billion over five years. It also announced that the agency responsible for delivering Australian aid—the Australian Agency for International Development—would be disbanded and subsumed within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in order to allow aid and diplomatic aims to be ‘more closely aligned’ (Abbott, as quoted in Baker 2013). And reflecting a commitment to focus on Australian domestic political interests through its aid program, it was announced that aid to Papua New Guinea would increase as part of a deal to house asylum-seekers in the Manus Island detention centre, while aid to the poorest countries in subSaharan Africa would be reduced. Indeed, in releasing the 2015–16 Federal Budget, the government announced that aid to Africa would be cut by 70 percent (Nicholson 2015). The scale of the aid reduction announced in consecutive budgets surprised many and accounted for the largest single budget saving in the controversial 2014–15 budget. It also—crucially, in the context of the politics of foreign policy—signalled a rupture in what had previously been a bipartisan commitment to the 0.5 percent gross national income target, itself below the United Nations-recommended 0.7 percent. Predictably, the aid reduction was criticised by human rights and development groups, as well as international organisations (AAP 2014). If—as the government itself claimed—Australian aid was a means for building Australia’s international reputation, contributing to addressing global poverty and inequality and even advancing Australian strategic and economic interests (Coalition 2013), these foreign policy goals/benefits were all undermined by the scale of the cuts and the message sent by scrapping Australia’s aid agency. Yet again, the government was enabled in this decision by public attitudes to aid. Numerous polls have indicated widespread misconceptions about the size and utility of Australian aid, with a 2011 Lowy survey indicating that Australians thought aid constituted an average of 16 percent of current government spending, as opposed to the actual level of 1.3 percent (Hanson 2011, 5). And opinion polling in the aftermath of the 2014–15 budget announcements illustrated widespread concerns about many of the planned cuts to education, health and welfare, for example, but limited public concern about aid cuts.

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Indeed, a poll taken in the wake of the budget found that 64 percent of Australians supported massive cuts to foreign aid, making it the most popular savings measure announced (Essential 2014). In this context, resources committed to a tool of Australian foreign policy were viewed as mechanisms for offsetting domestic funding cuts—an approach that was enabled by Australian domestic political opinion. The latter part of 2014 certainly saw a more confident and active foreign policy from the Abbott government. Australia managed bilateral diplomatic and trade breakthroughs with key states in the region, enjoyed a period in the international limelight as host of the Group of Twenty meeting and President of the United Nations Security Council, and took a strong position on terrorism and security in light of the MH17 bombing and intervention in Syria and Iraq. On the latter, Australia seemed to be embracing its role on the United Nations Security Council and a confidence on the international stage to rebuke Russia over its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, pushing for a United Nations Security Council resolution regarding access to the crash site for an investigation. Here too, however, there was more than an element of populism in Australia’s response, as critics have suggested (for example, Roggeveen 2014). The deaths of 28 Australians on board had created demands for action on Australia’s part, and the Abbott government’s vocal condemnation seemed as much directed at speaking to the concerns of these audiences as trying to ensure genuine international cooperation on this issue. Indeed, some have argued that, in terms of securing Russian cooperation and even potentially moving towards ending conflict in Ukraine, the government’s hard-line response was counterproductive (Heinrichs 2014). Similar dynamics were in evidence in response to the Indonesian decision to move ahead with the execution of convicted Australian drug smugglers Myurun Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in April 2015. In response to growing media attention and public opposition to the executions within Australia, the prime minister invoked Australia’s aid program to Indonesia when publicly calling on President Widodo to stay the executions (Hurst 2015). While few would disagree that it is appropriate for the Australian government to express displeasure about the execution of its citizens and the use of the death penalty generally, the manner of such an intervention seemed more targeted at domestic audiences in Australia than at achieving diplomatic outcomes. It also ensured that the subsequent aid reduction to Indonesia announced in the 2015–16 budget was interpreted by Jakarta as retribution for the executions (Nicholson 2015). The government also took the unprecedented step (in Australia–Indonesia relations at least) of recalling Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia in the wake of the executions. A vocal and sizeable constituency within Australia (upwards of 40 percent) supported this initiative and Australian activism on this issue more broadly (see Harrison 2015), though a range of analysts suggested it had left Australia–Indonesia relations—a priority of the Abbott government—at a low point (Wesley 2015).

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Conclusion Much has been made of the Abbott government’s ‘pivot’ from domestic politics to foreign policy from mid 2014. Yet whether this apparent shift in focus is a reflection of global events (Roggeveen 2014), the unpopularity of a domestic agenda (Haigh 2014) or different sets of factors, this idea of a shift from the domestic to the international in focus is more complicated than it seems, and indeed suggests too sharp a distinction between the two spheres of policy. At the very least, this period in Australian foreign policy provides a useful opportunity to revisit and examine the assumptions often made about the origins of foreign policy and the role of domestic politics and public opinion in influencing it. That the Abbott government has demonstrated a tendency to view foreign policy through the lens of domestic politics, even undermining core foreign policy commitments in the process, is not particularly surprising, nor is it new in the Australian experience. Under domestic pressure or in the context of public ambivalence, the Rudd Labor government in particular retreated from strong action on climate change, suspended a more ‘humanitarian’ approach to asylum-seekers and held back on delivering its own promised aid increases. Even high-profile positions on whaling and the live cattle trade under that government, the latter triggered by damaging media coverage, seemed oriented towards signalling to domestic constituents rather than engaging constructively with foreign policy issues, whatever the rights and wrongs of those issues. As Christopher Hill (2003, 37) has argued: ‘foreign policy can never be abstracted from the domestic context out of which it springs’. Yet increasing movements away from bipartisanship on foreign policy and a tendency to sacrifice a foreign policy vision for short-term political gain do suggest important political shifts in Australia. Journalist and analyst George Megalogenis (2010) and former Labor minister Lindsay Tanner (2011) have argued that a media spin cycle in Australia has encouraged the politicisation of a range of issues that were previously viewed as apolitical or bipartisan. Unsurprisingly, this media engagement has tended towards the short term and divisive, emphasising points of difference (for example, on climate science) and short-term considerations (for example, electricity prices associated with climate mitigation efforts) rather than international obligations (for example, with regard to asylum or climate change) in reporting on some issues, while failing to cover other issues in enough detail to inform the Australian public genuinely about policy and the importance of policy action (for example, aid). And the overtly political nature of some media engagement, especially as associated with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has further marginalised the possibility for genuine open debate and understanding of a range of foreign policy issues (Manne 2011). With a public generally disengaged from foreign policy issues but with strong concerns around the cost of climate change mitigation or the ‘threat’ of asylum-seekers, it is perhaps inevitable that political responses to these issues orient towards populist, national-oriented responses.

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This raises, of course, significant questions for theories of foreign policy and international relations. For most realists, and in particular structural realists, it clearly questions the analytical purchase of their framework, which prioritises the material distribution of power in the (anarchic) international system rather than the internal dynamics of foreign policy formation and practice. This approach is clearly inadequate for making sense of contemporary foreign policy in the highly politicised context of modern liberal democratic states. For liberals, however, the above examples raise troubling normative questions. While pluralistic decision-making is often seen as a normative good for liberal approaches, it is possible to argue that the tendency to view foreign policy through the lens of domestic politics, and in particular public opinion, has encouraged more introspective and exclusive approaches to international affairs (see also McNevin 2007). Here, foreign policy is more likely to encourage the denial of ethical obligation than an embrace of Australia’s position as a global actor. This not only raises troubling questions for the way we think about foreign policy in liberal democratic states, but it also raises troubling questions about the way Australians view the world and their role in it.

Acknowledgements An earlier version of this article was presented at the Australian Political Science Association conference in Sydney in September 2014. I am grateful to the members of the panel and the audience for their feedback, and grateful also for comments on this article by Jack Holland and Caroline Yarnell, along with the reviewers and editors of the journal.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes 1. This is evident, for example, in the use of consultation processes to encourage input into foreign policy decision-making or oversight of foreign policy. In Australia, White Paper development and parliamentary committees entail opportunities for public involvement and submissions, even while some are sceptical about the extent to which these constitute genuine policy input (for example, Cheeseman 2001). 2. This is evident in claims that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ around foreign policy decision-making failed to operate as it should have in the USA in the context of the ‘War on Terror’ (Cramer 2007; Kaufmann 2004). For Kaufmann (2004, 5), for example, ‘the marketplace of ideas helps to weed out unfounded, mendacious, or self-serving foreign policy arguments because their proponents cannot avoid wide-ranging debate in which their reasoning and evidence are subject to public scrutiny’. 3. Other surveys have generally supported these conclusions, with a recent Newspoll (2014) survey conducted for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade pointing to widespread misconceptions about Indonesia, for example.

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4. Kevin Rudd (2006–08) was eager to tie an increase in Australian aid spending to traditional strategic concerns associated with the so-called ‘arc of instability’ (see Hameiri 2008), but the goal of an increase in aid spending was initially bipartisan, which also strengthened the case for this increase.

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