Emeritus Professor Peter Drysdale AO

People before numbers

From Canberra to Tokyo and Beijing to Delhi, his name is known in the highest echelons of government. For 50 years he has contributed to some of Australia's most sensitive and enduring economic partnerships in the Asia-Pacific, earning him such accolades as Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, the Asia Pacific Prize and the coveted Weary Dunlop Asia Medal.

But for modest scholar and economist Emeritus Professor Peter Drysdale, widely acclaimed as the intellectual architect of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), it has never been about the awards.

"Nothing that I have done could have been achieved without my friendships in the region," he says. "They are what matter most to me. Ultimately, it's the people-to-people relationships that cement economic exchange and the delivery of education and tourism. Effectiveness and impact depend on how you relate to others."

Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, who worked closely with Peter from 1988 to 1996, attests to his long track record of influencing policy. "He has been an intellectual driving force for Australia’s engagement with Asia since the 1970s and continues to lead thinking on the very many important issues around that to this day," he wrote.

Noted economist Ross Garnaut, one of 80 PhD students Peter has supervised during his career, similarly describes him as "the most important Australian in the development of productive relations with Japan over the past half century", who has united leading economists throughout the Asia-Pacific and "built bridges across deep cultural differences".

Indeed, Peter had still been travelling to Asia every month or two before COVID-19 severely clipped his wings. Seventeen years post "retirement", he remains an Emeritus Professor of Economics and Visiting Fellow in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, from where he heads Australia’s East Asia Forum. This pre-eminent platform for analysis and research on international politics, economics and affairs is a joint initiative of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (which Peter leads) and its sister network, the South Asian Bureau of Economic Research.

But it all dates back to his childhood on the NSW North Coast and in Armidale during World War II. "As a boy I was very interested, to put it mildly, in where Japan came from and what it was like," Peter says. "I remember the war years vividly and at high school I tried to do whatever assignments I could on Japan, how it had risen as a power, what led to the war and the opportunities that existed for Australia in the post-war reconstruction of Japan.

"I had a cousin in Changi prisoner of war camp in Singapore and my memories go right back to when the midget Japanese submarine blew up the HMAS Kuttabel (in Sydney Harbour in May 1942, with the loss of 21 naval lives). But my family was committed to reconciliation, and respect for the other, and that was part of my upbringing. It was clear to me that we would have to come to terms with Japan's war-time role and that's what motivated my work on Japan."

And that he did. Enrolling to study for a Bachelor of Arts at UNE in 1956, Peter's double major was history and economics, in which he completed an honours year. But he also enjoyed a range of psychology and anthropology subjects and active participation in university life, as editor of Nucleus, President of the Union, and founding President of the Junior Common Room in Wright College, where the Drysdale Room has taken his name.

"Those courses at UNE were inspiring in opening up new ways of thinking about the world and understanding different cultures and societies, which has informed my thinking ever since," Peter says. "I wrote an essay on the Australia-Japan economic relationship in my second year when the Agreement on Commerce of 1957 was signed, and after my honours year that became the subject of my graduate work and subsequent PhD at ANU, where I was recruited by that pioneering agreement's chief negotiator, Sir John Crawford."

In the early post-war era characterised by anti-Japanese sentiment, however, these ideas were visionary.

"I had a concept of how important it was for us to work with Japan, that it wasn't just the bilateral relationship that was important; it was the relationship in a multilateral, global context," Peter says. "The Australia-Japan agreement had helped Japan move towards equal treatment in global trade after the war, and it helped us to establish equal treatment in the Japanese market after US occupation. Those principles later became critical to thinking about how we would manage relations with other countries in the region, like China."

As Australia's economic relationship with Japan deepened, so did the political relationship, boosting travel to Japan, and educational and cultural exchanges. But back in 1964 Peter was one of the first two Australian graduate students to study in the country, while working on his PhD. It was the beginning of a long, productive and happy association.

"I was very warmly received; I had an office in the foreign ministry and an office in the finance ministry and met the captains of Japanese industry and talked about the future of Australian-Japanese relations," Peter says. "I was interested in how Japan's ambitions for recovery were being fashioned, what that meant for how Japan related to the rest of the world, and how Australia could be part of that. At the personal level, Japan has a fascinating culture and learning about it was a tremendous window into how we thought about things and did things. That was a big discovery for me - learning about myself in Japan - and the deep personal friendships and associations I formed now extend over two or three generations."

Inevitably, Peter was asked to contribute to Australia-Japan economic policy-making. This culminated, years later, in the establishment of APEC (in 1989) - a vital regional economic forum but also an important vehicle for healing old wounds. Peter's promotion of APEC has been described as an innovative act of courageous leadership.

"I didn't see myself playing a particularly important role at the time; looking back, I simply feel a sense of gratitude for the trust that we put in each other in pulling it all together," he says. "APEC came into being through the participation and engagement of people all around the region who became not only professional associates but close friends. When this process first began, many of the countries involved didn't even have diplomatic relations with each other and now we have this cooperation and understanding on issues of mutual interest that's vital to the economic and political security of the region."

Having held posts as a Fulbright Professor at Yale University, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and a distinguished associate at Stanford University, Peter was founding director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre at ANU in 1980. In 2016 he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia for "distinguished service to Australia-Asia trade and economic relations, particularly with Japan, to public policy development, to education, and as a mentor of young economists". Most recently, says Ross Garnaut, Peter has brought "much needed clear-headed economic analysis to the difficult debate" around Australia's relationship with China.

Receiving the Rising Sun award in 2001, Peter says, symbolised the growth and success of the Australia-Japan relationship since WWII, where his interest in international economic diplomacy first began. He also highly prizes the award named in honour of Australian surgeon and prisoner of war Edward "Weary" Dunlop because Weary's life after the war was committed to reconciliation, despite the horrific experiences of his fellow prisoners of war."It typifies the understanding of the other, which is the key in knowing oneself," Peter says.

Congratulations Emeritus Professor Peter Drysdale, AO, one of our 2020 UNE Distinguished Alumni Award winners.