Morrison-Suga meeting: Japan a priority in post-Covid world

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga after his phone conversation with US President-elect Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

In this upside-down pandemic year, we have tended to acknowledge those moments when first meeting the requirements of our brave new world, such as wearing a mask to buy groceries, or attending a Zoom farewell for a colleague.

As those one-offs have become routine, they have lost their power and now fail to give us pause.

The inverse is also true: when yesterday’s routine acts become today’s one-offs, they are imbued with a new depth of meaning.

And so it is that when Scott Morrison travels to Tokyo this week, what was previously a standard piece of prime ministerial business — a foreign visit — should instead be read as a much more important and significant moment.

The virtual summit playbook has been left on the shelf in Canberra as Morrison undertakes his first official overseas mission since he visited Thailand more than 12 months ago.

While we’ve welcomed Jacinda Ardern and Joko Widodo to Australia this year, we have rarely gone so long without our leader out in the world.

As a result, the substance and symbolism of this act — two essential ingredients for any successful bilateral visit — will have been on steroids long before the PM’s jet touches down at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

There are a few other notable firsts on the cards.

This will be the first time that Morrison has met in person with his Japanese counterpart, Yoshihide Suga.

More than that, Morrison is the first foreign leader Suga will welcome to Japan since he was anointed Japan’s Prime Minister two months ago.

It’s also worth remembering that Morrison was first cab off the rank back then too, being the first head of state to speak with Suga upon his elevation.

That abridged history gives some sense of how eager both Prime Ministers are to kickstart their personal relationship and get down to business.

It also speaks to the energy and enthusiasm bound up in the Australia-Japan relationship today, a result of dutiful nurturing on the part of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and the five Australian leaders with whom he worked during his second stay in the Kantei.

Suga was Abe’s chief cabinet secretary and right-hand man.

A true Abe acolyte, he was always in the room and has pledged to advance his former boss’s activist international agenda - policy continuity Australia would welcome.

There is a lot to discuss, starting with a veritable laundry list related to the COVID-19 response, be it setting up a travel bubble, vaccine diplomacy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, or responding to the foundering global economic environment.

The Australia-Japan defence and security relationship will be a key agenda item, with the two leaders sharing regional assessments and identifying new seams of co-operation that meet the moment.

They should also discuss new ways to partner with other countries, such as the US and India, on areas of common concern and interest, particularly where we might have a hope of reinforcing the important rules and norms Beijing rails against.

Should leaders finally sign a reciprocal defence access agreement — in the works since Tony Abbott was in The Lodge — it would serve as yet another milestone for our bilateral co-operation, which has been steadily deepening for more than a decade.

Energy will come up, with Australian hydrogen exports poised as the big opportunity to convert with Japan in the coming years.

Climate action will certainly get some airtime too, with Suga having placed the environment at the centre of his agenda and recently committing Japan to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Morrison should seek details about how Japan will achieve that, so we can bring forward the timeline on our inevitable subscription to net zero and join the consensus among our friends in New Zealand, the UK, Europe, and, in time, Joe Biden’s US.

The moment Australia signs on to net-zero emissions is the moment we stop polluting other parts of our foreign policy, particularly with our family in the South Pacific.

But the main agenda item will be Biden winning the US election.

Australia and Japan will be relieved that Donald Trump’s reign of volatility, vacuity and vanity will soon be over.

But that does not solve our problem: Morrison and Suga will need to agree on how our two countries — both treaty allies of the US — can work together to ensure the Biden administration is committed to our region and to helping us navigate its many challenging dynamics.

Our great and powerful friend will continue to be distracted by division at home, so Morrison’s time in Tokyo is an opportunity to align the messages he and Suga will separately deliver to the Biden team.

Those talking points should be all about why we need to see more of the Americans in Asia, and the leaders need to make it easy for the new US administration to say “yes”.

When Morrison returns to Australia, he will have to quarantine for 14 days, as will a slew of political staffers, departmental officials and journalists, who are all hitching a ride with the RAAF.

As the pandemic rages and a vaccine remains in the distance, the Indo-Pacific becomes more contested by the day.

Australia doesn’t have the luxury of sitting back to see our post-pandemic world emerge; we need to be out there working to shape it to our interests. So, while this may be Morrison’s first COVID-era foreign visit and quarantine, it shouldn’t be a one-off.

David Lang was an adviser to the Australian foreign minister in 2017-18 and is the founding director of the Australia-Japan Youth Dialogue.