CLOSING DOORS: AUSTRALIA’S HOUSING CRISIS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR ASIA

How Australia’s Housing Crisis is reshaping its politics, closing its doors, and reordering its place in Asia

By Sisaru Diyunuge

Imagine paying over half of your take home pay simply to keep a roof over your head.

Imagine being a nurse, a teacher, or a tradesman or woman – the very people any society depends on to function and still being unable to afford to live within an hour’s commute of where you work. This is daily life for hundreds of thousands of Australians today. Australia, long celebrated as one of the worlds’ most livable nations, is navigating a housing crisis so significant that it had begun to strain the social contract, reshape its politics, and in ways that matter directly on how Australia engages with all of Asia.

The story of how the ‘lucky country’ - what Australia is commonly referred to as; how a wealthy western-democracy arrived at this juncture is complex. It involves decades of political miscalculation, an addiction to property as the primary vehicle of national wealth, the economic arithmetic of post-COVID migration, and a construction industry that has consistently failed to build enough homes. Yet in the overheated language of electoral politics, this complex story has been distilled to a single, incendiary word: immigration.

The consequences of that distillation reach beyond Australia’s shores. For the approximately 200,000 plus Sri Lankans who call Australia home and the 1,000,000 plus Australian-Sri Lankans – the political weather is shifting in ways that are already tangible and may grow significantly more so. For Sri Lanka and Asia at large, Australia as a partner in trade, education, and diaspora remittances would demand careful attention moving forward.

The Making of a Crisis

Australia’s housing crisis was not a result of an overnight change in policy. Policies which favoured the interests of existing property owners over those who had yet to enter the market were introduced at least three decades ago.

The fundamentals are straightforward: the pace at which homes were built was not commensurate with the increase in population. The reasons are multi-faceted and intertwined: restrictive zoning rules that prevent higher-density housing in desirable urban areas, as slow and fragmented planning approval systems spread across hundreds of municipal councils, a building sector plagued with labour shortages and rising material costs, and a tax system that, through policies such as negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, has consistently incentivized the purchase of investment properties over the construction of new ones.

The tax incentives deserve particular scrutiny. Negative gearing is the ability to offset losses on an investment property against other income. And the halving of capital gains tax (a levy on the profit made from selling an asset) on assets held for more than a year have effectively made the Australian property market a subsidized investment vehicle. This has driven prices higher, enriched those already on the property ladder, and made entry progressively more difficult for those who are not.

The COVID-19 pandemic added its own disorienting chapter. When Australia closed its borders in 2020, international students and temporary migrants departed en masse. Population growth slowed dramatically. One might have expected house prices to fall. They did not. Instead, prices surged by roughly 25 per cent in little over a year – a period of historically low immigration. This inconvenient fact is rarely mentioned in political discourse, yet it demolishes the simplest version of the argument that immigration is the primary driver of unaffordability.

The Political Explosion

Into this volatile environment has stepped Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party, offering an explanation that is simple, emotionally resonant, and arguably misleading. The argument is essentially this: too many migrants are competing for too few homes, and the solution is to drastically reduce immigration.

One Nation is not a novel phenomenon. Ms Hanson first came onto the Australian political scene in 1996 after winning a lower house legislative assembly seat for a rural electorate in the state of Queensland. Immediately thereafter, her rhetoric of anti-immigration and anti-Aboriginal platform was made clear. She was eventually sidelined by the Liberal party which represents the traditional center-right, only to return in 2016 to the upper house of the Australian federal Parliament as a senator with renewed relevance. But what is happening in 2026 represents something qualitatively different: a potential structural realignment of Australian politics rather than a cyclical protest vote. In the 2025 federal election, One Nation received roughly 6 per cent of the primary vote, a modest result. But the tremors began almost immediately after Australian Labour’s landslide victory after the popularity of the traditional center-right Liberal party started to slip amongst rural and outer-suburban conservative voters to One Nation and as well as more affluent, university-educated and/or white-collar urban voters who now moved to an alternative political force to One Nation and the Liberal Party commonly referred to as the “Teal Independents” with a more centrist, pro-market attitude.

Post-election surveys conducted by researchers at Macquarie University and the Australian National University found that 60 per cent of respondents believed immigration had gone too far or much too far. Among One Nation voters and supporters of the small far-right Trumpet of Patriots part, that figure approached 90 per cent. Significantly, anti-immigration sentiment is not confined to the elderly or the economically marginalized. Among Australians aged 18 to 34, a demographic that has borne the sharpest pain of housing unaffordability, 32 per cent identified immigration as a leading cause of their predicament.

What makes the numbers particularly striking in a global context is that Australia has compulsory voting. Every eligible citizen must cast a ballot. This is not a case of a motivated extremist minority turning out while the moderate majority stays at home, as has happened in some European and American political upheavals. When one in four Australians indicate they would currently vote for One Nation, including people who might not advertise that preference to neighbours or colleagues, but who mark it nonetheless in the privacy of the ballot box.

The sociological profile of One Nation voters has also evolved. While the party’s base has historically been male, mostly rural, and blue-collar, economically insecure workers who on most measures of class interest are indistinguishable from Labour voters – the housing crisis has extended its appear into the outer-suburbs and among song younger renters who feel permanently locked out of the dream their parents took for granted.

Analysts note that since 1993, the combined vote for candidates outside the two major parties has risen from under 11 per cent to nearly 34 per cent in 2025. For the first time in polling history, a member of the traditional two-party duopoly – the Liberal Party – recorded a lower primary vote than a minor party. The era of rusted voters reliably supporting Labor, or the Liberal Party and their rural coalition partner the Nationals Party appears to be ending, and One Nation is the primary beneficiary on the right.

The Gas and the Kitchen Table

To understand why Australia’s housing crisis extends so far beyond its borders, one must understand the peculiar economics of Australian prosperity- and the tensions those economics are now generating.

Australia is, in one sense, extraordinarily wealthy. It sits atop some of the world’s largest deposits of iron ore, coal, and natural gas. These resources have been the engine of economic growth for decades, and their primary customers are in Asia: China, Japan, South Korea, India and Taiwan. More than 80 per cent of Australia’s coal exports flow to these markets. Iron ore, the steel-making raw material extracted primarily from Western Australia, goes overwhelmingly to China – in 2023, China purchased 84 per cent of Australia’s iron ore exports, which in turn accounted for nearly a quarter of all Australian export revenue. In short, the Chinese construction and manufacturing boom built much of the financial comfort that Australians have enjoyed, and that comfort is now threatened by its own internal contradictions.

Liquified natural gas (LNG) paints a revealing story, and one that is generating significant and underappreciated domestic tension. Japan is Australia’s largest LNG customer, importing approximately $39 billion in 2024 alone. These are multi-decade contracts, negotiated over years, underpinned by massive Japanese investments in Australian export infrastructure. Japan’s Inpex Corporation operates Ichthys LNP project in Australia’s Northern Territory, which at the time of its approval represented the single largest overseas investment ever made by a Japanese company.

The problem is that ordinary Australians are paying sky-high energy prices while this gas flows offshore under long-term contracts. Critics argue that Australia exports gas at favourable rates to Japan and South Korea while domestic consumers and businesses faced among the highest energy costs in the developed world. A 2025 analysis found that Japanese companies resold between 10 and 13 million tons of Australian LNG in that year alone. In plain terms: Japanese intermediaries were on-selling Australian gas to third-party markets at a profit, while Australians struggle to heat their homes.

The relationship is further complicated by climate politics. Australia’s Labor government has pledged significant emissions reductions by 2035 yet continues to approve LNG expansion projects backed by Japanese investment. When the government applied the ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ — a policy requiring large industrial emitters to reduce or offset carbon emissions — Japan’s senior energy executives publicly warned that this threatened the reliability of supply. It was an extraordinary intervention by a foreign corporate interest in Australian domestic policy, and it did not go unnoticed by Australian voters already skeptical of globalization. Critics have accused the Australian government of prioritizing the interests of foreign energy corporations over those of its own citizens.

Queensland’s unilateral increase of coal royalties in 2022 similarly provoked the Japanese Ambassador to Australia to issue a public rebuke — a rare breach of diplomatic protocol that underscored how deeply Asian governments view Australian resource policy as a shared concern. These episodes have fed a narrative, particularly on the populist right, that Australian politicians have sold the country’s resources cheaply to foreign buyers while ordinary citizens are locked out of affordable housing and paying excessive energy bills.

China, Iron, and the Weight of Dependence

Further, the iron ore relationship with China is existential. No comparable economy in the modern world depends as heavily on a single export to a single customer as Australia depends on iron ore sales to China. When China in 2020 imposed sweeping trade restrictions on Australian goods such as barley, wine, coal, lobsters as retaliation for Australia’s call for an international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, Australian agriculture suffered severely. Yet the broader economy held up, partly because iron ore was never restricted: Beijing needed it too much. The episode demonstrated both Australia’s vulnerability and its leverage. China purchased 69 per cent of global iron ore exports in 2023 — finding alternative buyers for Australian supply would be extraordinarily difficult. This mutual dependence has produced what analysts describe as a peculiar intimacy: two countries with deepening strategic differences and a profound economic codependency neither can easily escape.

The Albanese government, elected in 2022, successfully normalized relations with Beijing, and by late 2024 virtually all trade restrictions had been lifted. But the underlying structural anxieties remain. As China’s property sector slows — the construction boom that drove steel demand and therefore iron ore demand is cooling — Australia’s export revenue faces structural headwinds that no diplomatic normalisation can fully address. The mining wealth that has subsidised Australian living standards and insulated governments from making hard housing-policy choices may be entering a period of decline precisely as the domestic political pressures it has obscured become impossible to ignore.

What This Means for Sri Lankans in Australia

Against this backdrop, the situation of Sri Lankans in Australia — people spanning citizens, permanent residents, temporary workers, and students is increasingly precarious.

Sri Lankans have built a remarkable presence in Australian professional life. Between 2020 and 2024 alone, more than 15,000 Sri Lankans entered Australia through skilled migration programmes, making the community the sixth largest in the skilled employment visa category. In 2024, more than 32,000 Sri Lankan students held Australian student visas, making Sri Lanka the eleventh largest source of international students in the country. The city of Melbourne in the State of Victoria has become home to a dense Sri Lankan community. Professionals in medicine, engineering, finance, information technology, and education — fields where Australia faces genuine shortages — form the backbone of the Sri Lankan diaspora.

Yet the political climate is changing in ways that affect even those who are already there, and that are closing doors on those who wish to come. In February 2026, Australia’s Department of Home Affairs recorded a 38 per cent refusal rate for Sri Lankan higher education student visa applications — placing Sri Lanka among the five countries with the highest rejection rates globally, behind Nepal (65 per cent), Bangladesh (51 per cent), and India (40 per cent). As recently as late 2025, Sri Lanka had enjoyed ‘Evidence Level 1’ status under Australia’s Simplified Student Visa Framework, meaning streamlined processing and minimal documentation requirements. By January 2026, Sri Lanka had been downgraded to Level 2, ending the minimal-evidence era for most applicants.

The official reason given is integrity: concerns about fraudulent financial documentation and ‘search fund’ schemes in which funds are temporarily moved to pass verification checks. These concerns are real and not confined to Sri Lanka. But the broader context is unmistakable.

Australia has signaled that student visa programmes are no longer treated solely as educational pathways but also as ‘a key lever of migration control.’ International student numbers are being used as a tool to reduce net migration figures in response to domestic political pressure driven in no small part by housing unaffordability.

The practical consequences for Sri Lankan families are severe. Each rejected applicant loses a non-refundable visa application fee of approximately AUD 2,000 and must decide whether to reapply, pivot to Canada or the United Kingdom, or abandon overseas study entirely. Australian universities, meanwhile, risk missing enrolment targets in postgraduate programs that have historically relied heavily on South Asian students. The education consultancy sector in Colombo warns that repeated policy shifts and opaque assessment criteria are eroding trust in Australia as a destination, potentially causing long-term reputational damage that outlasts any political cycle.

For Sri Lankans already in Australia as temporary residents or on bridging visas, the uncertainty is of a different and rather sinister nature as they are in permanent limbo. Processing times for permanent residency applications have lengthened substantially. The political noise around immigration has translated into a bureaucratic culture of heightened scrutiny, where caseworkers apply discretion more conservatively than in previous years. Community organisations report growing anxiety among Sri Lankan families who have built lives in Australia over years or decades, but whose immigration status remains unresolved.

The rise of One Nation is not yet a governing proposition, but it shapes the political environment within which all parties operate. When 60 per cent of the electorate believes immigration has gone too far, mainstream parties — the governing Australian Labor party included — respond by tightening policies rather than defending the economic and social case for migration. The result is a ratchet: the political pressure moves in one direction only, and the Sri Lankan community, like other migrant communities, bears the costs of a debate it had no part in creating.

Will Australia Turn Transactional?

The question that should concern policymakers in Colombo — and in most Asian capitals — is whether the political forces now reshaping Australia will produce a country that is more transactional in its engagement with the region: willing to sell coal and LNG and iron ore, but increasingly reluctant to accept the people, students, and cultural exchange that give substance to genuine partnership.

There are reasons to worry about the One Nation worldview — and, to a lesser but still significant degree, the mainstream political response to its rise — tends to separate ‘good’ trade from ‘problematic’ immigration. Resources can be exported; gas can be contracted; iron ore can be shipped. These transactions create wealth, or at least the illusion of it, without asking Australians to share their neighborhood, school, or suburb. People are more complicated. They need housing. They change the character of communities. They are visible in ways that a cargo vessel departing from Port Hedland is not.

This division is, in important respects, a false one. Australia’s multicultural communities, including its large Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Sri Lankan diasporas are precisely the soft-power infrastructure that gives Australian engagement with Asia its depth and credibility. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s own 2025 strategic snapshot acknowledged that the country’s multicultural communities provide ‘insights, skills and perspectives’ that strengthen its engagement with the world. The $33 million ASEAN-Australia Centre, recently established to build business, educational, and cultural connections with Southeast Asia, exists because Australia’s policymakers understand that trade alone does not build durable partnerships.

But understanding and political practice are increasingly divergent. A government that responds to One Nation’s rise by cutting student visas and tightening migration is, whether it intends to or not, dismantling the human architecture of the very relationships it simultaneously claims to be investing in.

The LNG and gas contract controversy adds a further layer of irony. At precisely the moment when ordinary Australians are questioning whether the country’s resource export arrangements serve Australian interests, Australian governments are under intense pressure from Asian energy corporations to maintain and extend those same arrangements. The result is a political economy in which fossil fuel exports to Asia are protected — because the industry employs 215,000 Australians and generates enormous government revenue — while the human connections that give Australia’s Asian relationships their social and cultural dimension are quietly eroded.

What Sri Lanka Should Understand

For Sri Lankans reading this from Colombo or Kandy or Galle, the implications are practical as well as strategic. In the near term, students and families considering Australia as an education destination should approach the process with greater care and documentation than was previously required. The era of straightforward approvals is, for the time being, over. Financial evidence must be meticulous and verifiable. Academic progression plans must be credible and well-documented. Those who have family members already in Australia on temporary visas should seek legal advice about their pathways to permanency, as processing environments have grown less forgiving.

More broadly, Sri Lanka’s government should be actively calibrating its education and labour migration strategies to reflect a world in which Australia is one option among several rather than the default choice it was for a previous generation. Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom are actively competing for the same skilled Sri Lankan professionals and students. Australia’s political turbulence creates market space that other countries are moving quickly to fill.

On the bilateral relationship more broadly, Colombo should resist the temptation to assume that the Australia it has known — an enthusiastic champion of regional integration, people-to-people exchange, and multicultural engagement — is necessarily the Australia of the next decade.

Diplomatic relationships with Australia must be sustained and deepened precisely because they are under pressure, not because they can be taken for granted. The Sri Lankan community in Australia, large and professionally accomplished, is itself a form of diplomatic resource — a bridge that should be cultivated by both governments, not left to navigate hostile political weather alone.

There is also a cautionary tale here for Sri Lanka’s own development. Australia’s housing crisis is in significant part the result of treating property as a primary investment vehicle, of failing to build social and affordable housing over decades, of allowing planning systems to prioritize the comfort of existing owners over the needs of future residents. These are not uniquely Australian temptations. Any rapidly urbanising economy that allows housing markets to serve investment rather than habitation risks arriving, eventually, at the same destination.

Conclusion: The Cost of Simplicity

Australia is a country trying to solve a complex, multi-generational problem with a simple, emotionally satisfying but empirically inadequate answer. Housing unaffordability is real and acute, and its effects on working Australians — particularly the young — are genuinely devastating. But its causes lie in decades of tax policy favoring investment over construction, planning systems that protect the interests of existing owners, a construction sector ill-equipped to scale, and a post-COVID rebound in migration occurring into an already depleted housing stock. Although, the 2026 federal budget brought in sweeping changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing, making it more favorable for future generations to enter the housing market.

The political response to blame immigration, to channel that blame through parties like One Nation, and to respond with visa restrictions and migration caps is arguably the path of least resistance. It does not build a single additional house. It does not reform a single zoning regulation. It does not change the tax treatment of property investment. But it is visible; it is politically legible, and in a system of compulsory voting, it can command a majority.

The consequences of this path extend far beyond Australia. For Sri Lankans in Australia, it means greater uncertainty, more scrutiny, and harder pathways to permanency. For Sri Lankans hoping to study in Australia, it means higher rejection rates and more expensive, more bureaucratically demanding applications. For Sri Lanka as a country, it means a partner in the region that is gradually retreating from the human dimension of its Asian engagement, even as it insists on maintaining and expanding its resource export relationships.

Australia will remain an important country. Its resources, its institutions, and its geographic position in the Indo-Pacific ensure that. But the Australia that emerges from this political moment may be a smaller version of itself: more suspicious, less generous, more transactional, and ultimately less equipped for the kind of partnership that the Asia-Pacific’s uncertain future will require.

The house prices are real. Anger is real. What is being lost, quietly and without fanfare, is something harder to measure and far harder to rebuild.

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TAKE COURAGE SRI LANKA, WE ARE A DEMOCRACY!

- George I. H. Cooke

When the going gets tough, we Sri Lankans have been known to rise to the occasion, deal with the situation to the best of our ability, endure the problem, overcome the challenge, and move forward. Unfortunately, we forget. The most important thing we forget is that we have those qualities - of resilience, of tenacity, and that we definitely possess the spirit to survive. Instead, we fear, and what we fear most is change.

A trek back in time, shows that we feared many things but we were always courageous, dealt with the eventuality, and moved on. In 1931, when the British held sway in the island nation, and decided to test universal franchise, there was general fear. Many leaders of that era were against it. The British did not have the most cordial of relations from the time of their arrival, with the natives of the land, yet that change that was feared then is our biggest strength today. We became a democracy and have stayed one, truly embracing all aspects of the democratic system.

Every person who has come to power from independence onwards has faced opposition, owing to the fear of what he or she would do with the country. Yet they won through democratic means, governed to the best of their ability, had strengths and weaknesses, and then had to leave. Yes, they had an effect on this country's journey, which was both positive and negative, and yes, we had to endure hardships at times, yet we survived.

It is we, the voters, who had choices at those elections, we voted, and democracy prevailed. We might have liked those in power or not liked them, but what is crucial is that democracy prevailed. The will of the people, above all else - that's true democracy.

We are the oldest democracy in this part of the world, and undoubtedly a country with people who are bold to expect change, work for change, and bold enough to sustain the ethos of change. We thankfully have such people, and it appears that the number is growing.

In September 2024, the need once again is courage, as it has been on numerous occasions in the past. We have voted in leaders, we have defeated leaders, and we have joined together to oust leaders too. This is the richness of the democratic tapestry that has been woven on this beautiful island for more than seven decades. We now need courage to vote again, and not abstain or spoil our votes. It is our right as citizens to decide on the destiny of our country, and also because there are millions around the world who do have the opportunity to vote, we must cherish this right we possess. 

When there is a glimmer of hope to end corruption, to ensure justice and fair play, to stop nepotism, and bring about equality, why are we afraid? Is it because corruption is good? Are injustices and the unfairness in society, fine? Is nepotism wonderful? Is equality bad? Why then, do some fear?  

Interestingly for some this fear stems from select memories of parts of the past, specific moments in a very subjective manner. Yet we do not want to remember everything or everyone who contributed to all that we have endured from independence onwards, on every side of every divide. If we are keen to open the chest of history, let us do so collectively and genuinely look at all aspects of history and not be subjective in our choice of moments and persons. 

In 2024, our biggest problems revolve around the economy, but how did we get here? Poor decisions led to wrong policies and very importantly, corruption at every level contributed to our crisis. The lack of action against those responsible has been the icing on the cake. We are living in a bubble at present, wherein we owe outside entities so much yet we live as though all is fine. Let us realise the reality and be bold, once again. 

A quarter of the 21st century is almost over. We can either harp on the past, complain about the misgivings of some of those moments and selectively remember only parts of history, OR we can look forward, understand the reality of the country, realise the need for justice, fair play and vision, comprehend the vicious role that corruption has played throughout history, and vote wisely. 

Going forward, if we find corruption rampant, misdemeanours of various forms, and mistakes being made, we can and will change leaders. It has been done in the past, it can be done again. Yet fearing change should not be part of our national psyche, especially in the 21st century, because that is not who we really are. 

We Sri Lankans are made of tougher stuff and possess the resilience and strength to face the future. We need to march ahead with confidence and trust. We need to be bold, we need to take courage, we need to embrace change and not forget that we are a democracy!

Let’s exercise our democratic right, and ensure that above all else, democracy prevails in Sri Lanka. 

THE DEMOCRACY THAT IS INDIA: INTRIGUING, EVOLVING AND INSPIRING

Marking 75 years of Indian Independence

By George I. H. Cooke

Preserving democratic values, ensuring the maintenance of democratic standards and strengthening the process of democratization, are formidable measures for any country. When a country with a population of nearly one and a half billion embraces democracy as its political ideology, continuously champions this system for more than seven decades and implements it across the entirety of its length and breadth and at all levels of its political being, it is clear that democracy has been able to withstand much. India is today the largest democracy on the planet, and with its position comes much responsibility.

The democratization of India, whereby the world saw the abandoning of hereditary monarchical systems, and the dismantling of the privileged structure that had existed even through colonialism, was to set India on a pedestal. Yet this pedestal was not one of natural influence and ability. It did not occur accidentally either. It was to be one on which and from which India, her leaders and people would be called upon to formulate and implement policies that would sustain democracy, nurture its values and ensure that all - irrespective of their communities, religions and castes - who identified as Indian, would be beneficiaries. The journey was not without its challenges, but it is the journey itself that remains remarkable.

The Intrigue - Lessons of the Past

At Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, was at pains to ensure that India remained a secular nation, which rallied around the Indian flag and identified primarily as Indians, before all else. Undoubtedly it was a firm foundation that gave the Indian nation a strong start. His presence at the helm for seventeen years till 1964 guaranteed that the seeds he sowed would have the opportunity to grow unhindered for nearly two decades. In many neighbouring countries of South Asia, leaders at independence did not survive for even a decade thereafter to see the results of their pre-independence struggles or to fully implement policies they deemed fit for their emerging countries.

India thus received an advantageous commencement on a journey, that has seemed more like a race, with neighbours, with the Cold War, with non-alignment, and with economic liberalization among other entities and concepts, but most importantly with internal challenges of keeping a country as diverse, as different, and as divided as India, together. This diversity is upheld today as a great boost for image and publicity in the international community. Yet arriving at the present involved much cohabitation, compromise and cooperation, that was, is and continues to be unparalleled in the world.

The Evolution – Overcoming Challenges

While it is argued that the holding of elections at regular intervals and electing leaders are not the totality of democracy, they are key components. In the last 75 years Indians have elected leaders and political parties and in so doing removed others, who were subsequently bought back at later times. Leaders have resigned, died in office, been assassinated, Parliament has been attacked, the fundamentals of democracy have come under siege, but despite all of these occurrences and much more, the Republic remains strong. Presiding over a federal system that aims to embrace the diversity and overcome the differences is a complex task. In reflecting upon that which has been, it is evident that the complexity has been comprehended. If not, the Republic would have disintegrated quite some time ago.

Lincoln observed that people remain at the core of any democracy. Whether the ones who are elected, or the ones who elect, it is people who are the direct beneficiaries of any democratic society. Thus, people must never leave the equation nor allow themselves to be excluded from it. If any attempt has been made or is being made to restrict that which a democracy affords, all effort needs to be exerted to rein in the constrictions and permit instead the prevalence and proliferation of all that a democracy stands for.

In neighbouring Sri Lanka, the oldest democracy in this part of the world having gained universal franchise in 1931, when efforts were underway to undermine people, with ill-advised policies, erroneous decisions, incompetent leadership and heightened corruption, that collectively misled a nation of 21 million, people rose up. In proof that democracies are constantly evolving, the people forced leaders out of office due to the aforementioned reasons, and demanded change. While mandates are given at elections, mandates can also be withdrawn especially through mass protests that signify the displeasure of the people and their desire to safeguard the democratic standards that are enshrined in the constitution and which must be preserved in a democracy.

The Inspiration - Strategizing for the Future

Democracy with all its complexities and connotations is still the optimal governance system for any country. Giving people the freedom to elect their representatives who in turn are called upon to formulate sound policies which would have a positive impact on the entirety of the polity, is by far the accepted form of governance, and is widely practiced. India, as the world’s largest democracy has a bigger burden. This is not confined to the implementation of proactive democratic principles within the country alone. It extends to the immediate sub region, the greater Asian region, and the international community. The Indian model, despite its complications and conundrums experienced within, is still the largest working model in the world today. With the growth in population, this position is not likely to be changed for the rest of the 21^st century, and would only be further strengthened in the decades to come.

The onus is thus on India. Indian leaders have an obligation to their people, which extends beyond. The first obligation is to the people of the vast country to be able to live in a society that enshrines basics freedoms, guarantees equality in all respects, and promotes understanding amid diversity. At no time must the citizenry of a country that occupies this primal position be forced to compromise on their freedoms, have their voices silenced, find themselves bereft of recourse to justice, encounter an erosion of democratic institutions, or have any form of ideology foisted upon them. The liberal nature of democracy can create space for such challenges to thrive, but it is the people who remain at the core, and who must be able to thwart any weakening or destabilizing of the democratic norms upon which their nation has been built.

The second obligation is to countries that adhere to the democratic form of governance. If a country the size of India falters, the repercussions would be widespread. Thus far the country has survived in close geographic proximity to two of the largest countries, that advocate different policies of governance. Whilst their preferred policies have been implemented for decades, and would prove effective for them as a means of governance, the larger Asian neighbourhood has adopted democratic norms, as has most of the world. Any faltering or failure to remain the strong, representative democracy that India was envisioned to be at independence, would prove detrimental to many.

Given the challenging global environment in which democracy attempts to thrive, with a skew of ‘isms’ disrupting countries and their courses, India has a third obligation to the democratic tradition as a whole. The concept was first coined in the middle of the 5^th century to denote the system of governance in Greek city states, which had populations of several thousands. Thereafter it survived millennia, and is today practiced in a single country that possesses a population of nearly one and a half billion. This is testimony to the fundamental importance of the system, its traits and what it proffers its adherents. Therein India remains an inspiration to all, from fledgling states to well-founded ones, and cannot renounce its role.

As India surges ahead towards further milestones, it is the action taken at present, that would see the country emerge as a global giant or remain a regional power. Whether through partnerships with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) or membership in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) or even Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), through intensified performance in larger multilateral bodies like the United Nations and its affiliated agencies and organizations, or even in its bilateral relations in South Asia and the world, India can readily rely on two key features, democracy and diplomacy. Both have been strategically implemented and have stood the country in good stead. However as with all key characteristics, no lapses can be encountered, no slips allowed and no mistakes permitted.

India’s place in the world, and also in history has been guaranteed to a large extent by its democratic credentials, which have been bolstered by an effective diplomatic apparatus. In its engagement with the people of India, the people of the region, and those of the world, the Indian leadership has and must continue to safeguard democratic ideals, and guarantee their implementation. A strategized foreign policy administered by an effective and efficient diplomatic structure will see the country raise its stakes for global leadership, realize that which was envisaged more than seven decades ago, and reinforce the enormity of potential and opportunity of the country and her people.

 

 

 

 

 

SHINZO ABE: PRESERVING HIS LEGACY

Guest Commentary by Banura Nandathilake

Subscribers to international relations often come to a junction between theories: Realism, which posits a zero sum world where external circumstances such as hard power and anarchy that are beyond any individual define the ways in which states do what they do, and constructivism which understands an interdependent society of states where leaders truly have an tangible impact on inter-state relations through social mechanisms. The case for the latter seems to outweigh the former in the analysis of Shinzo Abe however, who left an ineffaceable mark on Japanese foreign policy, by guiding a largely pacifist Japan to one that actively moulds and shapes the security, economic and diplomatic architecture of the Indo Pacific and beyond.

As the heir of a distinguished political family, Abe entered politics in the 1990s where he sought to largely continue the policies of his grandfather, the former Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi: Regain the ability to exert Japanese power on the regional and world stage by removing the shackles imposed by the US and a faction of the then Japanese political class. As such, Abe went on to become Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister with four terms (2006-7, 2012-14, 2014-17, 2017-20). On 8 July 2022 however, in an event that stunned the heavily gun restricted Japan, the former Japanese Prime Minister was shot and killed during his campaigning run for his party in the Japanese city of Nara. Despite the untimely passing of the "shadow shogun", the direction of Japan's future may be influenced by, thereby correlate with Abe's "vision" to a great extent (Green, CSIS 2022). Japan has built a full-fledged national security establishment, an estimated 1.7% growth in GDP in 2022, and is a bastion of neo liberal democratic policies in the Indo pacific. Below is an obituary for a man who had a heavy hand in reawakening Japan, wherein his effect on domestic and foreign policies will be appreciated.

Domestic Political Legacy

While for many, Abe’s career was one of dramatic and unlikely turns which spanned 14 years and saw him into extraordinary power to influence the direction of Japanese domestic policy, Sheila Smith of Council on Foreign Relations and others understand that a revised domestic constitution may be Abe's major legacy.

Just two days after Abe’s assassination, the Japanese voted in the Upper House election, awarding the government led by the current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida their anticipated victory. Interestingly, Smith notes that the assassination had no credible change in the election environment. The voter turnout was on par with previous years, and Abe’s party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had a structural advantage as the smaller opposition parties did not form a united front thus further dividing the vote. As such, an Upper House win by the LDP could open an avenue for a Constitutional revision, once an ambition of the former Prime Minister. While factors that may postpone an immediate revision do exist, she notes that a revision could have a lasting impact on Abe’s legacy.

Abenomics

Abe’s vision was of regaining the ability to exercise Japanese power, by losing her shackles imposed by low domestic economic power and capital, which can then be turned into military might and diplomatic currency. However, Japanese capabilities were idling, due to the lack of opportunities as per legal and international constraints in the post WW2 era. In the understanding that securing Japan’s future would require an economy with a new foundation for growth, the economic programme “Abenomics” was born. The programme was an attempt to kickstart Japan’s dormant capabilities through expansionary monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and a long list of industrial, labour, and regulatory policies to incentivise endogenous development. Abenomics aimed to shift production from agrarian or low value sectors to high income productive sectors to slow the decline of Japan’s labour force, in an “serious, sustained, and flexible attempt to grapple with Japan’s growth challenges” (Harris, FP 2022).

Abenomics was instrumental in reviving the Japanese economy, as well as supercharging Abe’s political career. The programme reversed years of stagnation, boosted corporate profits and state tax revenues, thereby reducing unemployment and crime. As such, Abe was able to coast past domestic elections, pausing the tradition of short-lived premierships in Japan. The resulting political durability allowed him to pursue long term ambitions, such as creating a National Security Council which distilled the defence apparatus through the Prime Minister’s office. Such a creation then allowed for a more active foreign policy over the existing passive structure, which sought to strengthen regional ties while balancing against regional hegemons. 

Japan-India Relations

Relations between Cold war Japan and India were one of polite distance: Japan was a US ally, while India was procedurally non-aligned with some overlap of interests with the USSR. Despite the deterioration of the said relations during the 1988 Indian nuclear missile test and the Japanese economic sanctions that followed, the two states were quick to repair and rebuild a “global partnership’’, proposed by the Japanese Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro a few years later during his visit to India. However, it was Abe that built the stage for a more cohesive and interdependent Japanese-Indian relationship, such as the “India Japan Strategic and Global Partnership’’ (2007). Bilateral relations were further strengthened during Abe’s third term in 2014 through a “special and strategic partnership,” which encompassed diplomatic, security and economic sectors. Trade between Japan and India increased exponentially from 2007, while Japan and India cooperated on security issues in the Indo-Pacific through the Quad.

Moreover, it could be understood that Abe's 2007 visit to India was not only significant for the Japan-India relationship, but also India’s perception of itself and its role in the region (Miller, CFR 2022). Miller understands that it was Japan that influenced India, ‘a notoriously reluctant and cautious actor in global politics’ to join Abe’s Indo-Pacific vision, which now serves as an ideological, economic and military buffer to the rise of China. This vision of the “confluence of the two seas” - Pacific and Indian, were first outlined by Abe in his speech during his first visit to India in 2007, and laid the foundation for the “free and open Indo-Pacific” concept which was later adopted by the United States.

China and the Quad

China’s rise in the contemporary era has been unprecedented. An authoritarian political system combined with a quasi-capitalist economic system has allowed China to gain regional hegemony and a global great power ranking, allowing its influential military, economic and diplomatic alliances. Such a rise presents a growing threat and demands a balance of power between China and the US and Allies. Of those allies, Abe represented a significant one: Japan.

While Abe was central in expanding India's position in the Indo-Pacific, his pragmatic approach to relations with China demanded a closer look. Abe could be considered a soft liner on Sino-Japan relations, so much so that he was called a "traitor" by many Japanese patriots. This may be so since the uneven economic balance of power weighed more towards China than Japan: Japan needed China for trade and manufacturing, than vice versa. However, as Mireya Solís, the director of the Centre for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution understood, despite his efforts to maintain closer relations with China “Abe felt very strongly that Japan could not live in an Asia where China had hegemony”. As such, Abe’s pragmatism recognised that despite interdependence and globalisation, China represented a challenge on all fronts, diplomatic, economic and military. Ergo, Abe may have been instrumental in setting the tone for the Japanese defence apparatus. Furthermore, Abe subscribed to right leaning nationalist policies domestically, as he helped coax a pacifist Japanese public to oppose China’s meteoric and bullish rise, further laying the groundwork for the direction of Japanese foreign policy.

However, his vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific may have trumped all else. His influence soon superseded national and regional boundaries, as President Joe Biden, who once worked with Abe as the vice president during the Obama administration, put it “He (Abe) was a champion of the Alliance between our nations and the friendship between our people”, and promised to continue Abe’s “vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific” (2022). The US and Japan, along with India and Australia, form the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which represents a bulwark against China in the Indo-Pacific. While the US had more economic and military might than Japan, Abe was still paramount in laying the rhetorical groundwork for the Quad, “providing structural, conceptual ideas to things that needed to be provided at a time when it seemed like it was crumbling.” (Hornung, 2022).

On Taiwan

A great power conflict in East Asia appears to brew over the Island of Taiwan which stands a stone's throw away from the shores of China. While the ideological divide stems from the great powers US and China, US allies such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are not passive watchers either.

Japanese leaders before Abe were uncomfortable with using force to defend Taiwan, as implications of such a move for Japanese security, and how Japan's responses to such scenarios were heavily debated. But it was Abe that argued in 2021, “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance. President Xi Jinping in particular, should never have a misunderstanding in recognizing this”. Abe was thus paramount in transforming Japan’s relationship with Taiwan to counter threats from China, for he recognised a hegemonic China posed a risk not just to the security of the liberal democratic states of East Asia, but their economic and sociological institutions as well. As such, Prime Minister Abe emphasised shared economic, political and ideological values between Japan and Taiwan, where he referred to Taiwan as a “precious friend,” an angle the incoming governments adopted thereafter. Abe was an advocate of stronger relations with Taiwan so much so that he went on to argue that the US policy of strategic ambiguity was “fostering instability in the Indo-Pacific region” as he called out the US to “make clear that it will defend Taiwan against any attempted Chinese invasion.”

Furthermore, it was during Mr. Abe’s tenure as Prime Minister that one of the major sore points in the bilateral relationship between Taiwan and Japan were resolved. After 17 years of negotiations, in 2013 Japan and Taiwan concluded Japanese recognition of Taiwanese Fishing rights in the East China Sea. As such, affection for Abe and Japan in Taiwan have reached record highs. Thus, after the news of Abe’s passing had reached Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen honoured “Taiwan’s most loyal best friend” with the national flag flown at half-mast.

Shinzo Abe could be called a realist, for he understood that despite diplomacy and the multilateral handshaking, states with different value systems and interests must communicate through hard power and deterrence. But to call him a pragmatist through the constructivist lens could be more apt, as he understood that despite anarchy and hard power considerations, leaders are still able to make a difference in the domestic and foreign policies of a state, thereby keeping up with an evolving world stage. As the world honours him in his passing, it is now up to his successors to carry his legacy forward.

 

MARCOS JR.: THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS

Guest Commentary by Banura Nandathilake

The Philippines is in its Fifth Republic. The First was established when the US acquired it from the Spanish. The Second by the Japanese, the Third by the Americans after WW2, which lasted until Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s martial rule. The Fourth was created when he lifted martial law, and survived until the revolution which toppled the Marcos Government, thereby starting the Fifth republic. On June 30^th 2022, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. became the seventeenth president.

Despite being the son of the former brutal kleptocratic President Ferdinand Marcos Sr, he succeeded Rodrigo Duterte in a landslide election victory. With doubt, scepticism and demands for accountability surrounding him, Marcos Jr. is largely expected to continue the policy course pursued by the Duterte administration. However, the capability for his incoming government to curb rising domestic inflation, while steering the Philippines through a great power conflict happening a stone's throw away from its shores, thereby restoring the Marcos name remains to be seen.

Like Father, Like Son?

Ferdinand Marcos Sr. may be considered as one of the most controversial statesmen of the 20th century, with trademarks of unparalleled corruption, extravagance and state sponsored violence. During the 20 years he spent as the President of the Philippines, his first term was about socio-economic growth. It was a facade however, as the budding kleptocrat had financed domestic infrastructure and public projects through unsustainable debt. Such practices culminated in extreme poverty, inflation and gross inequality during his second and third terms. In 1986, the “people power” revolution resulted in him, his family and his wife Imelda having to flee into exile in Hawaii, with their amassed fortune. While Mrs Marcos left behind her infamous shoe collection, her husband brought with him jewellery, gold bricks and freshly printed Philippine currency, collectively worth around $15 Million. During his time in office, they had plundered more than $10 billion from the Philippine state, most ever recorded in the world. They in fact held an official Guinness world record for largest-ever theft from a government, until Guinness took the record down before his son’s 2022 election. During his time in power, thousands of innocents, including Muslims, alleged communists, dissidents, suspected opposition actors and media figures were tortured, jailed without due process or murdered by the regime’s cronies.

Ferdinand Marcos is the second child and only son of the former president, aged 64 as of 2022. He began his journey in politics at 23, as the Vice Governor of Ilocos Norte (1980–1983) during the years of his father’s reign, until his family’s political exile to Honolulu. Imelda Marcos and family were allowed to return to the Philippines after the death of Marcos Sr. in 1989. While procedurally it was to face charges for misallocation of state resources and corruption, stagnant politics allowed the Marcos’ re-entry into politics. Ferdinand Jr. returned back to the historical Marcos stronghold of Ilocos Norte as its Governor in 1998 for 3 consecutive terms. In 2007, Marcos ran unopposed for the congressional seat, and was appointed deputy minority leader of the House of Representatives of Philippines. In 2010, Marcos Jr. made a second attempt for the Senate in 2010, and entered office on June 30, 2010. Despite multiple scams wherein Marcos Jr. had diverted state funds totalling upwards of ₱305 million to his own account, he contested in the 2016 vice presidential campaign, albeit unsuccessfully. In the 2022 Presidential election however, Marcos Jr. along with his running mate and Vice-President Sara Duterte won 59% of all votes casted. Duterte is the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte - the outgoing president, who campaigned with Marcos Jr. following a split with her father, thereby resolidifying the Marcos hold on office in a system dominated by dynasties.

For all but a minority of mostly older Filipinos, the prospect of another Ferdinand Marcos in the presidential palace is horrifying. For them, Bongbong’s presidency can only result in a return to kleptocracy, as they intone: those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. The following questions thus arise: Did the Philippines forget history?  Was history rewritten by tools of the future? Or was it desperation, a new ruler following the inability of the previous to rule?

The Rise of Marcos Jr.

Marcos Jr’s rise to political power, from exile with his father to an apparent rightful throne of political apex, maybe analysed as the result of four main factors: drawn out multiyear effort to whitewash the Marcos name, skillful alliance building and political manoeuvring, the penchant of Philippine voters for political dynasties, and the inability of those already in power to govern.

History Forgotten or Rewritten?

Marcos Jr's popularity was kept afloat in his voter base through an aggressive social media campaign, aptly using the tools of the future to rewrite the narrative of history. YouTube and social media were jammed with constructed campaigns pushing a revisionist view of history as the Marcos era being one of crime-free prosperity, not of human rights abuses, extravagant corruption and near-economic collapse. Such a campaign proved appealing to voters who were not only too young to experience the Sr’s dictatorship but had experienced years of relative economic growth and prosperity. If analysed statistically, of the 110 million citizens of the Philippines, the share of population in extreme poverty has decreased by almost 20% since the death of Marcos Sr. in 1989 and the poverty gap has reduced by almost a billion However, the old-age dependency ratio has increased by almost 3% while the age dependency ratio has decreased by about 20%. The median age in the Philippines is 26 years (Ourworldindata.org). Fact checking of the Marcos campaign found that it was 92% disinformation in favour of the Marcos, and 96% opposing his main rival (Tsek.ph). As such, it could be understood that there exists a wide generation gap, and most of the population thereby voters are likely to be younger than older. Furthermore, due to the gap in ages, there exists a gap in memories of the tormented and children of the tormented, which is being exploited to restore the Marcos name.

But the recent events were not all social-media magic. A survey conducted in 1986, three months after the revolution, found that 41% thought he had been “true to the duties of a patriotic president”, which increased to 56% in 1995. In 1986, 44% agreed that he was a “severe, brutal or oppressive president”, while 60 % disagreed in 1995. Such a phenomenon could be aptly summed up by the quote, “Not many of us would care to hold a grudge against someone long dead, not even someone like Ferdinand Marcos'' (Social Weather Stations, 1986, 95).

A Squid game

Since Marcos Sr. died in exile in 1989 and the family returned to the Philippines, the Marcos family have manoeuvred around provincial and national offices from their base in Ilocos Norte, in the north of the country. They have since portrayed the dictatorship as a "golden period" of political stability, economic prosperity and lawfulness, which resonated with many Filipinos mired in poverty, violence and years of corruption.  As Marcos Jr. said, “My father built more and better roads, produced more rice than all administrations before his”. While his critics have accused his social media campaign of misinformation attempting to tone down or whitewash the atrocities under his father's rule, Marcos Jr. further propelled his election campaign by having Sara Duterte as his running mate.

Apart from political games, Marcos Jr. represents a political dynasty, and such a move allowed him to expand his voter base island wide by merging two political dynasties and their strongholds: Marcos of the northern Philippines and the Dutertes of the southern Mindanao island. Furthermore, the new Marcos cabinet relies on technocrats, such as the former Central Bank Governor Diokno, the Transport Minister is the former head of the national airlines, and the Defence Chief is the former Army General, following on the established norm of his predecessor.

New Ruler due to the inability of the Old?

Marcos Jr succeeds Rodrigo Duterte, who as most other elected presidents in the Philippines, started off strong with a popularity boost, but then nosedived. Duterte, unlike Marcos, rose to power as an outsider, as a defender of the ordinary, but lacked apt political governance, resulting in economic stagnation and an air of judicial impunity. His “war on drugs'', which saw at least 30,000 people dead as a result of extra-judicial killings, has attracted international condemnation. His alliance with China has bought little investment and has not curtailed Chinese incursions in the shared South China Sea. His administration of the Pandemic resulted in the economy shrinking by 6% and less than half of Filipinos are fully vaccinated. Such events raise the question however: does the Philippines not elect its Presidents for their proven ability to govern, but instead for the inability of those still in power to do so? A pick between the lesser evil, not between the better of the two? If so, it would not be unlike most other democratic, developing states in Asia.

An Opaque Domestic Policy

Marcos Jr. comes to office at a time of a post pandemic stagnant economy. The Philippine peso is one of Asia’s poorest performing this year, and global recession and inflation is on the horizon. While Marcos has promised to promote self-sufficiency in food due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his campaign speech was shrewd, devoid of policy details or platform wherein it promised to leave the middle class largely alone as he fulfils the common expectations of Presidents. While he did promise a “comprehensive infrastructure plan” however, in which “no part of the Philippines will be neglected”, he left out any hope for accountability for the sins of his father, or the theft. Nevertheless, he is expected to largely continue the policies of his predecessor, along with his aforementioned technocrats.

Marcos' presidency may not be a means of transforming Filipino society, or addressing structural issues. It is instead the end in itself, a culmination of attempts to whitewash history, and re-solidify the Marcos name to its apparent throne. A significant portion of the population however, almost 40%, may not accept the result. Attempts to disqualify Mr Marcos are underway. Concerns of patronage politics incentivising monopolistic or oligopolistic practices have mounted, adding to the climate of impunity that rules the country.

Diverting from Sr. in Foreign Policy?

A Marcos-headed Philippines remains on the tightrope between the US, its traditional and treaty ally, and the regional hegemon China, whom it has a costly territorial dispute with. Adding on is its distance to Taiwan, wherein it could be on the front line in any conflict between the great powers.

While Marcos has indicated he wants better alliances with the US than Duterte did, who steered Philippines’ foreign policy toward China and Russia, signalling that Washington may have wooed Marcos Jr. just like Sr. This may not mean Philippine-US ties would trump Philippine-China ties however, as Marcos Jr., has long had a close relationship with Beijing. Marcos Jr. is said to be China’s preferred candidate, and has already declared China to be Philippines’ “strongest partner” despite the former’s growing encroachment of the latter’s territorial waters, thereby echoing sentiments of his predecessor. Marcos may still be susceptible to the same anti-Beijing swells of the public however, which limited Duterte’s options in the latter part of his presidency, but such may be conditional on how much more infrastructure funding he is able to draw. Of course, in the age of great power rivalry, the question remains of the cost.

While the Marcos name may have risen, analysts have deemed Mr Marcos’s administration to be likely marked by protests and instability. While that may result in economic stagnation and political roadblocks, along with an opportunity for both the US and China, how long will the Marcos name stay afloat? It may be entirely feasible for Ms Duterte and Mrs Arroyo, a past president, to provide a balance of power in the government, while his technocrats do most of the policymaking. While his congressional record does not suggest he has many big ideas, at least not ones associated with a strongman, they do not suggest he's big on righting the wrongs of history either.