| Danial Norjidi |
BRUNEI Darussalam is important to Australia, on a bilateral level with strong ties between the two countries, and as a member of Asean and other broader organisations.
Nicola Rosenblum, the Australian High Commissioner to Brunei Darussalam shared this during a recent interview with the Bulletin.
She said that Asean as a grouping is one of Australia’s largest trading partners, and that it is absolutely essential to stability and security in the region. “Asean is our doorstep. We talk a lot about the Indo-Pacific region and that’s our terminology for the broader region in which we have strong interests, but for us Asean is at the heart of that.
“Asean is really at the centre of those regional structures which matter most to us, so the East-Asia Summit, the Asean Regional Forum; these are groupings that matter a lot to Australia. We see them as norm-setting bodies for the entire region, and Asean is really at the heart of those decision-making bodies.
“That’s why the Asean-Australia Special Summit was so important to us, because it was a way for our government to demonstrate to Asean the level of commitment we have to integrate into the economies, but also our political commitment to working with those countries to try and improve security and stability in the region.
“I think one of the real strengths of Asean is the fact that every country has its own voice and has its own weight, and that means that every voice in Asean is important,” she added.
Speaking on Brunei, the high commissioner said, “Brunei is important to Australia. We have strong bilateral ties, but Brunei is important to us as an Asean member and as a member of these other broader organisations, so the Asean Regional Forum, the East-Asia Summit.”
On how the relationship between Australia and Brunei is developing on a bilateral level, she said that the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a great example of how the economic relationship is going.
“Brunei, like Australia, is a really early member of that grouping, and we share a lot in the way of trade commonalities, and I think we’ll be looking to use those agreements to try and push that forward, and I also think we’ll be working through RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) to do that as well.”
She also touched on the Asean-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA). “Brunei is the lead for that trade arrangement, and we’re currently in the process, between Australia, New Zealand and Brunei of reviewing that agreement to see how we can improve it and to see what level of implementation we have, to see if there are areas that we can increase implementation, or barriers that we need to further work on.
“So I think there’s a lot of really practical trade cooperation going on there,” she added.
The high commissioner shared that she was pleased that these economic ties, as a result of the Australia Awards-Asean Scholarships, will be increased.
She affirmed that education ties between Brunei and Australia are strong, noting that more than 12,000 Bruneians have already studied in Australia.
In addition, there is also the Bridge School Partnerships Programme, which she explained “is where we take primary and secondary school teachers from Australia and Brunei and we have exchanges, and they actually form relationships between their classrooms”.
The high commissioner shared that it is a good way to grow an understanding of both sides of different communities and different cultures, but also to facilitate an exchange of ideas around different ways of education.
“And of course, we also have other arrangements between different universities,” she said.
She added that education is a great example of how close the relations actually are between Australia and Brunei, and how underpinned they are by people to people links.
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