On almost every measure, Australia has gone backwards on engaging with our region, and particularly with China, and it is time to do something about it.

As a settler society we cling to our history with the UK, Europe and now the US. We are fearful of our geography. We have failed so far to reconcile our history and geography.

We remain reluctant to embrace our region. For example, Australian and Chinese histories, cultures and systems of government are different, so we must learn about each other. If we don’t, we will make mistakes again and again.

We need to be much more Asia-literate. Unfortunately, there has been a dramatic reduction in learning about Asia in our schools, universities, businesses and the media.

Our learning retreat from Asia has become a rout. By almost any test, we fail in our learning and understanding of Asia, and particularly China.

Many of the people briefing the government are what Paul Keating calls Austral Americans with views shaped by US agencies, think-tanks, media, the military/industrial complex and even Hollywood. They regard the Americanisation of our country as normal and even desirable.

The voices concerned about our future in Asia are discounted as naïve or even foolish. Let’s cling to the US come hell or high water. Even Donald Trump. Don’t worry, it will all self-correct!

With a lull now in the hostility between Australia and China, we have an opportunity to promote cultural understanding and personal links. Much remains to be done.

Two decades ago, I was pessimistic about our understanding of Asia. The situation has got markedly worse since then, writ large in the unremitting attacks on China stemming from ignorance and parochialism, particularly in our White Man’s Media.

The “Red Alert” series of alarmist articles run by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age just over two years ago was typical of our ignorance and prejudice about our region and China in particular. It reached its peak when the SMH ran an editorial headed _China is the clear and present danger, Mr Keating, so let us call a spade a spade_.

It was a disgrace to any media that even kidded itself that it was competent.Paul Keating correctly described the series as ’the most egregious and provocative  news presentation in five decades"

The editors  and journalists responsible for this nonsense still have their jobs! Tory Maguire the Executive Editor told us that “Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott are two of the country’s most highly respected journalists”.!!!

We are so used to being told and do what Washington wants that we find it hard to make up our own mind on what is in our national interest. And our failure to think for ourselves is going to become even more critical with China, which is growing dramatically in influence.

There is no long-term future for us in our region as the proxy or spear carrier for the US.

We will not find “security within our region”, as Paul Keating put it, without knowing Asia much better. We are over-informed and seduced by American power and influence. For most Australians, Asia is a closed book.

Since our settlement as a small, remote “white” English-speaking community, we have been afraid of Asia and its large populations. We have clung to remote global powers for protection – Britain, and now the United States.

Some are working to find a way out of this fear of Asia, but our fear keeps raising its head and is easily exploited by opportunists.

• We have broken the back of White Australia, but it keeps coming back, particularly since the time of John Howard and Pauline Hanson. Tony Abbott’s and Scott Morrison’s campaign to demonise asylum seekers is really a proxy for a campaign on race.
• The campaign against Chinese investment is really a replay of the hostility to Japanese investment 30 years ago. In the 1980s, our media was full of hostility to Japanese investment. This was even though Japan and, more recently, China has a quite small proportion of the stock of foreign direct investment in Australia.

We have turned our back on Asia in almost all fields

• It seems counter-intuitive when one considers the Asian presence – students, visitors, and trade. But we are probably less Asia-ready than we were 20 years ago.
• In the 1980s and early 1990s, at the time of the Garnaut report, we were making progress in such areas as Asian language learning, media interest in Asia and cultural exchanges, but we have been “on smoko” for the past 20 years.
• The White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century recommended that by 2025 “studies of Asia will be a core part of the Australian school curriculum and that all students will have a continuous access to a priority Asian language – Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese”.
• Asian language learning and education funding at university are in decline. Indonesian language learning at our universities has plunged.
• In March 1982, the Senate agreed to examine all aspects of language learning and use in Australia. This initiative sank without a trace. The national policy on Asian languages adopted by the Hawke Government and COAG also ran into the sand. The Rudd Government did likewise, but to no avail. It is a long story of failure.
• Most Asian language learning is in crisis. French language learning is more popular. It may help tourists reading menus in France, but it is not much help in our region.
• The Australian media is still embedded in our historical relationships with the UK, and the US.
• The ABC does it better than other media, but it is still focused on trivial and legacy issues in London and New York. But we are not an island moored off London and New York.
• The Henry report on Australia and the Asian Century of 2012 was expunged from the Prime Minister and Cabinet website by Abbott. Access to it has not been restored under the Albanese Government.
• The Security Treaty with Indonesia negotiated by Keating was torn up because of differences over East Timor.

Why did we retreat from Asia?

• Change is always painful and the end of White Australia, particularly with the Indo-Chinese refugee program during the Fraser period, followed by the Hawke Government’s economic restructuring was unsettling and painful for many.
• An unsettled community provided an opportunity for Howard to reassure us that under his guidance we could be “relaxed and comfortable” again. Fear of Asia was engendered with dog whistling about Asian numbers and then boat arrivals. Howard was the big interruption in the process of Asian involvement and Asian literacy, although he tried to mend his ways in his later years as PM, particularly in relations with China.

But there is not only media failure. Our business sector has also failed us.

The business sector’s failure to skill itself for Asia has been a major barrier to developing Australia’s potential in the region and improving productivity in this country – something which the Business Council tells us about repeatedly. Business has not looked at its own performance – getting its own house in order.

I don’t think there is a chair, director, or chief executive of any of our top 200 companies who can fluently speak any Asian language. They show little interest in upskilling themselves or their staff. They appoint people like themselves.

This lack of knowledge and understanding of Asia in corporations has meant that university graduates with Asian skills have not found the employment opportunities they hoped for.

Julie Bishop’s New Colombo Plan is commendable, but faces similar problems, with Australian companies showing little interest in employing young Australians as they return from their experience in Asia.

Far too many Australian businesses opportunistically see Asia as customers of opportunity, rather than as partners. In the long term, trade and investment is about relationships of trust and understanding. That can’t be done through an intermediary or an interpreter.

The tide of serious interest in Asia by our large corporations is at a very low ebb.

China and the US – running with the hares and hunting with the hounds

As Malcolm Fraser pointed out in his Whitlam Oration in 2012, “unconditional support (for the US) diminishes our influence throughout East and South-East Asia”. Telling the Chinese that they are our most valued trading partner while blocking their investments and encouraging the US military colonisation of Northern Australia to contain their influence is not sustainable. It is quite bizarre and quite contrary to developing sound relations with China that we think that we can run with the hares and hunt with the hounds like this. It will inevitably catch up with us.

Diplomatic initiatives

The Henry Report in 2012 highlighted that “our diplomatic network will have a larger footprint across Asia supporting stronger, deeper and broader links with Asian nations”. It hasn’t occurred. There are very few people in Australia who have the faintest idea what, for example, Indonesia’s interests may be. When is the last time we heard a minister, politician or business leader talking about Indonesia in these terms? Our portrayal of Indonesia is invariably about cattle, drug runners in Bali and asylum boats.

Prime ministers make a priority of visiting Indonesia. The flags are waved. There is a martial parade and warm handshakes, but time and time again there is a lot of show but not much substance.

Improved diplomatic relations in our region is very hard going with DFAT invariably sidelined. What gets the ear of ministers, and particularly the prime minister and minister for defence, are our security/intelligence services that have been effectively colonised by the US agencies, and particularly the CIA which supplies about 90% of the content. No surprise then that US interests through the Five Eyes dominates government decision-making.

Donald Horne in the 1960s said that “Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck”. That is still true.

The key is for Australia to be open… open to new people, new investment, new trade, new languages, and new ideas. And stop deferring to Washington on almost all major issues.

We are both enriched and trapped by our Anglo-Celtic culture.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.