DFAT’s top bureaucrat has failed to call out Min Aung Hlaing over the coup in Myanmar, with Australia instead focused firmly on trade.

Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing (bottom, right) and other leaders attend the ASEAN meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia (Image: EPA/Laily Rachev)

In two appearances last week, secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Frances Adamson laid bare the Australian government’s Janus-faced policies towards our Asian neighbours as well as our general neglect of South-East Asia.

On April 21, Adamson delivered an address to the Asia Society on South-East Asia. Keen to highlight her department’s latest lurch towards our closest neighbours, it laid out a raft of apparently well-funded initiatives, many tied up with the pandemic and its aftermath.

The big problem on everyone’s mind (the steady march of COVID-19 aside) is of course Myanmar. Adamson, who will leave the job this year for the governor’s mansion in Adelaide, rightly described a “security, political and humanitarian crisis”.

Read more about Australia’s attitude towards South-East Asia…

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