Guest contributor
Mon Zin
For years, Canberra has responded to Myanmar with statements of concern while the crisis deepened on the ground. This time, the Australian Senate’s March 2026 report does more than describe the problem. It identifies the regime’s pressure points with unusual clarity.
It recognises that air power, fuel supply chains and financial networks, with the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) at its core, are not abstract issues, but the machinery sustaining violence.
It also signals a shift: Myanmar is no longer just a humanitarian crisis, but a strategic challenge with regional consequences. The policy path is now visible. What remains uncertain is whether Australia is prepared to follow it.
Events on the ground reinforce this trajectory. Min Aung Hlaing, the architect of the post-coup order, has recast himself as its civilian head, through an election in form, but not in substance.
This was not competition, but a manufactured mandate; a pre-engineered outcome masquerading as democracy, with uniforms traded for civilian dress while military power remained intact. Parallel structures only reinforce the point: this is entrenchment, not transition.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), once the country’s dominant political force, has been dismantled and removed from the field.
Its leadership remained detained, with Aung San Suu Kyi held incommunicado, absent not by choice, but by design, and cut off even from her own family. Without its primary democratic actor, this was never a contest; the field was cleared before it began.
The Senate report matters because it cuts through that illusion. It aligns Australia with a growing international view: this process lacks credibility and must not be treated as a pathway to legitimacy.
For too long, ambiguity has worked in the junta’s favour, allowing it to move between condemnation and quiet engagement while tightening its grip on power. But clarity alone is not a strategy. Australia now faces a clearer risk: normalising what it claims to reject.
Not through recognition, but through habit; language, engagement and quiet accommodation. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) must draw a clear line.
Engaging Myanmar as a state is necessary; legitimising Min Aung Hlaing is not. Anything less risks turning stated policy into quiet accommodation.
Because normalisation does not arrive as a policy decision. It arrives incrementally and by the time it is visible, it is already embedded. Avoiding that outcome requires more than restraint; it requires targeted pressure.
The report points clearly to where these pressures should be applied. Airstrikes have become the junta’s primary instrument of control, sustained by aviation fuel flows enabled through transnational supply chains.
Disrupting these flows is not symbolic. It is operational.
But beneath this sits a deeper lever; finance. Recent interventions by the CBM, injecting foreign currency to stabilise imports and manage exchange volatility, reveals its role as a gatekeeper of foreign exchange, shaping access to critical financial flows.
This is precisely what makes it a sensitive but strategic pressure point.
The CBM is not peripheral, it sits at the centre of the junta’s financial system, enabling access to foreign exchange, facilitating procurement, and sustaining its operational capacity.
That no major government has yet sanctioned the CBM reflects not its irrelevance, but its centrality and why targeting it would matter.
The Senate’s recommendation to sanction the CBM marks a potential inflection point, a move beyond incremental pressure towards targeting the regime at its core. Australia has chosen caution where the situation demands escalation.
Sanctions have been applied incrementally, signalling disapproval without fully leveraging the tools available. The Senate report implicitly acknowledges this gap. The question is whether the government is willing to close it.
At the same time, pressure must be matched with a recalibration of support.
Cross-border and locally led delivery mechanisms reflect a reality long understood by those working on the ground: assistance routed through regime-controlled channels will not reach those most in need.
A more flexible approach is not just more effective, it is essential in a fragmented and contested environment.
Equally important is the report’s recognition of the Myanmar diaspora. This is not symbolic. It is a strategic asset. Diaspora communities possess networks, knowledge and access that governments often lack.
If Australia is serious about a more informed and adaptive response, it must treat diaspora actors as partners, not observers.
Myanmar now sits at the intersection of humanitarian crisis and strategic risk. The consolidation of military power under a civilian façade, the continued detention of democratically-elected leaders, and the expansion of transnational crime all point to a conflict that is deepening, not resolving.
For a country like Australia, this is not a distant issue. It is a test of whether middle powers can respond to complex crises with coherence and resolve.
Australia’s history shows that when parliamentary findings align with international momentum, policy shifts follow, from sanctions against apartheid South Africa to pressure during the East Timor (Timor-Leste) crisis.
The current Senate report meets that threshold. What remains is whether Australia will act in step with that precedent, or fall short of it.
It has done the difficult work of diagnosis. It has mapped the terrain, identified the leverage points and articulated a direction of travel. What comes next is less comfortable.
It requires moving beyond calibrated concern to coordinated action, sustaining pressure where it matters, and resisting the quiet drift toward normalisation.
Recent amendments to Australia’s sanctions framework, introduced in the context of Iran, have expanded the government’s ability to target state-owned entities.
In Senate estimates, DFAT confirmed that existing settings already allow for the designation of entities owned or controlled by Myanmar’s military.
The constraint, then, is no longer legal. It is a question of application. This distinction matters. The junta’s resilience is not built on individuals alone, but on state-linked enterprises and financial channels that sustain its foreign revenue.
While partners such as the European Union (EU) have moved to target these structures, Australia’s approach remains comparatively narrow.
Failure to act does not preserve neutrality. It allows the junta to operate under manageable pressure while Australia risks falling out of step with partners and weakening its regional credibility.
It also leaves space for external actors to shape outcomes in ways that may not align with Australia’s long-term strategic interests.
Australia does not lack the tools. It now has the blueprint. The question is whether it has the will to use it.
Mon Zin is a Myanmar-born finance professional and community advocate in Australia focusing on geopolitical and humanitarian developments relating to Myanmar.
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