Asia, Paul Keating once observed, is 'the place you fly over' on your way to the real cultural centres of the world ... in Europe. He's changed his mind since.
But for the person who did a great deal to develop APEC — the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organisation — it was a steep learning curve because for Keating most of his reference points were Atlantic: European and north American.
The report that Ross Garnaut produced in 1989 helped break down the enduring focus on Europe and the US. Garnaut went a long way to describing how Australia could avail itself of the opportunity in Asia in business terms, something that the mining industry had been doing with Japan through its immense growth period.
The Australian Government's white paper Australia in the Asian Century isn't exactly breaking news when it tells us the fastest growing economies and the greatest opportunities for Australia are at our doorstep. But like kids at a birthday party, we seem to focus more on the cupcakes than the host and guest of honour. And there's not a lot of a practical nature that suggests ways the reports content's will become more than aspirations.
Why do we need to be reminded of something we already know? And what does this white paper say about how politics work Australia, where Australia really is in relation to the opportunities and, if it's been so obvious for so long, why do we need rousing exhortations from the Prime Minister to try harder?
Politically, you might appreciate ASEAN nations' judgement that they don't want Australia any closer. From the Asian perspective, Australian approaches to the region are fickle and opportunistic — we're in things where there's something in it for us (like the reduction of trade barriers); then we're not, like when we push back boats of asylum seekers, a policy devoid of multilateral considerations. We engage with the region when it suits us.
This fickle, ambiguous and opportunistic approach leaves Australia with neither the credibility nor the relationships to deliver a better outcome for all parties.
But the real problem is at a cultural level — inside Australia. For a country whose second most spoken language is Chinese, whose immigration quota had more Chinese than English migrants two years ago, you only have