Foreign Minister Penny Wong will issue a rallying cry to the Indo-Pacific to embrace a united front to managing relations with the United States and China, playing a collective role to defuse tensions and avert a devastating conflict between the two superpowers.

In a keynote address to The Australian Financial Review Asia Summit in Melbourne on Tuesday, Senator Wong will warn against allowing the contest between Beijing and Washington to define the region’s geopolitics, lamenting that in Australia most of the discussion about Asia is viewed through a Chinese lens.