After a long illness Greg Dodds died last week in Perth. Kim Beazley will speak at his funeral today (30 April 2020)
Greg and I were friends and colleagues for over 40 years. One particular concern we shared was the ignorance, lack of interest and often racism that many Australians displayed to people and countries in our region. We expressed our concern in a joint article we wrote and published in April 2012. See below. Since then our national ignorance and hostility towards Asia and particularly China has worsened. It is shown most clearly today in our media . Too often our engagement with Asia is one step forward and two steps backwards.
JOHN MENADUE, GREG DODDS. The Asian Century and the Australian Smoko. April 5, 2012
The Gillard Government has commissioned Ken Henry to report on Australia and the Asian Century. Our trade with China, Japan, India and other Asian countries is booming. Our luck is still holding. But our key sectors – business, education and the media – are no more Asia-ready than they were two decades ago.
This may seem counter-intuitive with the superficial signs pointing in the other direction – the number of Asian faces on our streets, staffing in our hospitals, our holidays in Bali and foreign students at our universities. But the quality and depth of our relationship with the diverse countries of Asia is quite superficial. Dig below the surface and we find a worrying situation. We have booming trade but little real engagement.
Reading the submissions to the Henry Review one has a sense of deja vu. The dates and the figures are different, but the concerns raised are substantially the same as those that we ‘debated’ in the 1980s. Lee Kwan Yew joined in the debate and warned that we risked becoming the cheap white trash of Asia. Paul Keating warned that we could become a banana republic
That debate culminated in the Garnaut Report at the end of the decade in 1989 – ‘Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy’. Garnaut pointed to the sustained growth in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and how Australia needed to respond. Rather than seeing Asia as a threat, he argued that we should see it as an opportunity. We needed to reduce trade barriers. We needed to back this with greater efforts in education, language and research. Our immigration policies should also be more sensitive to the region.
The Hawke Keating Government’s opening of the Australian economy forced change. We saw rapidly growing mineral exports to Japan and Korea. The back of White Australia was broken. Government and business responded with more skilled people working in the region. The media became more interested in Asia. Exchange programs with the region were established. Asian students flooded into our universities. Protection was reduced. Productivity growth lifted to 2.1 pa in the 90’s
But in the mid-1990s we went on smoko, even as we continued to dig up more of our ores and coal for export. We are now less dependent on Japan but more so on China and India. Today, 48% of our exports are fuel and mineral products, a proportion way ahead of most comparable countries. Coal, our second largest export (19% of total exports), is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses. We are dependent on a few markets and a few exports.
The economic changes of the Hawke-Keating years, whilst beneficial, were painful for some. On top of these changes there were considerable social and ethnic changes brought about in part by the Fraser Government’s successful Indochinese settlement of 240,000 people. Some populists saw it as a chance to take us back to what Garnaut had warned us about – fear of Asia. Today the populists continue to promote fear of Asia but now call it border protection.
The Queen of England continued as our Head of State and we remained at the beck and call of faraway and fading empires at the expense of attention to our region.
John Howard gave us permission to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’, to have a break from the Asian challenge and opportunities.
In the two decades since Garnaut, the performance of our businesses, universities, schools and the media has been disappointing. DFAT and Austrade have done better and have more Asia trained staff in the region, but nowhere near enough.
Let us look at the performance of key sectors in this Asian readiness.
Business is still male, pale and stale.
Only four Australian companies in the top 150 bothered to put in a submission to the Henry Review. They were ANZ Banking, ASX Group, IAG and Rio Tinto. BHP didn’t make it! That says a lot.
Far too many Australian businesses see Asia as customers rather than partners. In the long term trade and investment is about relationships of trust and understanding.
At most there would only be a handful of Chairpersons or CEOs of any of our major companies who was born and educated in Australia, who can fluently speak any of the key Asian languages? This failure is stark. It is remarkable. It is obviously too late for them now, but it is not at all clear that they are recruiting executives for the future with the necessary skills for Asia. It is hard to break into the cosy club.Senior executives of Australian companies select people with the same limited backgrounds as themselves. A recent survey by The Business Alliance for Asian Literacy, representing over 400,000 businesses in Australia found that ‘more than half of Australian businesses operating in Asia had little board and senior management experience of Asia and/or Asian skills or languages’. There are now tens of thousands of Australian-born citizens of Asian descent at our universities. But they are likely to be recruited for their good grades and work ethic rather than their cultural and language skills.
Maybe we don’t need an Asian language or indeed much business sophistication to dig up and sell iron ore and coal to very willing buyers, but we certainly do to sell wine, elaborately transformed manufactures and services, particularly tourism.
Some Australian expats in Asia have developed Asian skills and sensitivities, but there are downsides. Coming home for an expat is often harder than going offshore. His or her world has changed, but the culture of head office has not. Some join foreign companies or leave Australia. We know of many such instances.
Tourism boomed but we did not get enough repeat business. We skipped from one new market to another – first Japan, then Korea and now China. Not surprisingly, the Australian Tourism Export Council told the Henry Review that we needed to improve our tourism product.
Success in Asia requires long-term commitment, but the remuneration packages and the demands of shareholders are linked to short-term returns.
Asian Languages and Education Funding
In the 1980s Professor Stephen FitzGerald and several others of us campaigned for a national language policy. In October 1982 the department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs organised the first National Language Conference. In 1985, the Senate Committee on Education endorsed the need for a national language policy. In 1987, the Hawke Government adopted a national policy on languages. This was followed in 1994 by a COAG commitment to fund Asian languages in Australia. Later Kevin Rudd supported this, but the renewed interest and commitment was short-lived. Asian language learning in Australia is in crisis again today as it was in the 1980s.If anything the situation is worse.
This is spelled out in spades in the submissions to the Henry Review. The Australia-China Council advised that ‘for the last 20 years successive Australian Governments attempted to boost Asia literacy and particularly the study of Asian languages in schools… these attempts produced limited results’. In its submission, the Australia-China Council quoted from the Business Alliance for Asian Literacy 2011 ‘50% of schools teach very little about Asia, only 6% of Year 12 students study an Asian language and just 3% pursue these studies at university, and only 2.5% of Year 12 students study Chinese.’
Many young Australians did become fluent in Asian languages and familiar with Asian societies but could not find employment with Australian companies. Invariably they left Australia for work in Hong Kong ,Singapore and Tokyo. What a loss!
Tertiary education funding is also a key to Asian competence. As Ian McAuley has pointed out, our public funding of tertiary education fell sharply between 1995 and 2000, and has stayed low ever since. The shortfall has been covered by income from foreign students. Teaching and research has suffered. Instead of adequately funding education from the budget, we have diverted public funds to middle-class welfare e.g. superannuation and private health insurance subsidies. This has crowded out funding for our future preparedness in Asia.
Media
Australia’s media relationships with the world are embedded in our history of relationships with UK, Europe and then the US.
Our TV news, commentary and entertainment are heavily dependent on the BBC, CNN, et al. Media programs about Asia shown in Australia are often recycled UK or US material. An outsider looking at the Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off New York and London. Our media is full of it. Just compare the current coverage of the US Republican primaries and the much more critical National People’s Congress in China. Japan, except for disasters, India, Korea and Vietnam are covered intermittently, almost as an after-thought. It will require a real wrench to change the nature of Australian media that history has laid down.
The ABC was the hope of the side, but no more. It is as parochial as the rest.
People exchanges
The first working holiday agreement in Asia was with Japan in 1980. We didn’t have another one in Asia until the 1996 agreement with the ROK. In the last 10 years there have been another six working holiday agreements with Asian countries, but most of them have caps of 100 persons per annum. We still have no agreements with China, India or Vietnam. Outside the four key North-east Asian countries identified by Garnaut in 1989, fewer than 1% of working holiday makers to Australia come from the new and rising developing countries of Asia.
Getting ready
To take advantage and integrate ourselves in the region will require continuing openness in trade, investment, ideas and people. It will require substantial investment in skills for Asia and a new generation of business leaders who see the opportunities in our own region, and not a region they fly through on their way to Europe. We need to reengage in economic reform alongside reengagement with Asia beyond the superficial.
We are both enriched and entrapped by our Anglo-Celtic culture.
John Menadue AO is Board Director of the Centre for Policy Development. He was Australian Ambassador to Japan, Secretary Department of Immigration, Secretary Department of Trade, and CEO of Qantas
Greg Dodds was Director, Australia Japan Foundation in Japan, Senior Trade Commissioner Japan and Executive General Manager, Austrade, North East Asia
Edited versions of this article were published in The Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald on April 5, 2012
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
9 thoughts on “Vale Greg Dodds”
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Reading through this weeks P&I articles was sad to read this news John, I recall you both being good friends when you were Departmental Head SMOS when I worked with Kim. Sorry for the loss of your dear friend.
Eight years ago! As fresh as yesterday! Thanks, John – and in memory of Greg DODDS.
In the latter 1980s I accepted a challenge from my then secondary school principal to tackle and at the same time teach Japanese (in the Hunter region of NSW) a major push prompted by trade – coal – and the beginnings of tourism from Japan. The inspector appointed to foster the language implementation program across the Hunter had no languages in his CV – so those understanding such things will see the implications – but the teachers who took up the challenges were dedicated nonetheless. The year previously I had implemented some introductory French and German into the school’s curriculum – there being no other languages then taught at the school. A shocking state of affairs when I had just arrived (as a Generalist teacher – at the very bottom of the teaching rungs) arrived from a Head Office Dept of Ed functional directorate – Special Programs (Multicultural/Aboriginal/Disadvantaged Schools)
In 1991 & 1992 I had two years as an official exchange teacher (NSW Dept of Ed support was minimal/parsimonious in fact – compared to the treatment of my Japanese counterparts who came to Australia) from NSW to the western end of Honshu – to the commercial (senior) high school in Matsue, Shimane-ken. I was formerly an English teacher (including of what is now known as EAL). I learnt a great deal about Japanese history and culture and about the generosity of ordinary people to the stranger in their midst during that time – my early 40s. When NSW (Bob Carr) was engaged in a tiff with the Federal Government (John Howard) – it solved the matter by abruptly finishing the exchange – to the consternation of people in Japan. I was back in Japan from 1995 till 2009 – and this cessation took place while I was there – officials finding it incomprehensible that something of such value could be so easily terminated – something they had embarked upon in the belief it would run forever.
I didn’t find it difficult to understand. Ideologues do not like the fact of “ordinary” people learning things – of becoming close – people-to-people contact – Aussies learning that Japanese people (sand vice versa) were – in spite of the different packaging and back stories – were essentially the same human beings – family and community celebrations and schooling and working futures for children very important. And my desire to learn rewarded at every turn with experiences which never leave me. Politicians love to be able to whip up anti “them” as opposed to “us” kinds of divisiveness – as Marise and Scott and Donald Trump together are doing right now!
That politicians stuff-up – that they appoint echo-chambers/yes-people to their staff – look to a warmongering belligerent US for “leadership” and ignore the diversity of linguistic and cultural riches within the population – suggests we need a new system for structuring our society which takes into proper account our relationships to the countries in the general regions in which we are located – the India Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the various seas to our north.
In 1965 my NSW Leaving Certificate Modern History Honours course was Japan – Meiji Restoration 1868~McArthur’s Occupation period 1952. My 3rd year of History at Sydney was Asian (it meant sub-continent India – not China/Japan/etc as I had hoped) and both were important to my future and to the national future/present.
Let’s hope someone in Canberra is taking notice!
As the successor to Greg at the Australia Japan Foundation in 1983 I benefited from, and was able to build on many of the initiatives and ideas Greg instituted. While Australia’s attention to the Asian region has waxed and waned over the intervening years, many of the interpersonal exchanges promoted by the AJF and other programs have endured. Corporate memory within our governments is fitful at best and attitudes subject to three & four year cycles, but the beneficiaries of those exchanges will be influenced throughout their careers. The surf lifesaving exchange Greg started in 1981 still endures, as do many of the early academic exchanges and sister city relationships which were all kick started through AJF programs. Vale Greg Dodds.
Sad reading John, even sadder is that eight years on, almost to the week, Australia finds itself inside an even more opaque bubble than the one so eloquently set out by you both. The hope has to be that it isn’t catastrophe that resolves this dichotomy between the national culture, politics and the fundamental geography of location.
Sorry about the loss of your friend
“We are both enriched and entrapped by our Anglo-Celtic culture.” This is a good way of describing it. When I first started traveling in the 80’s most people outside tourist areas had little or no English. Nowadays most under thirties can get by with at least the basics. The internet age has really made English the lingua franca. This is good for native English speakers because we don’t have to learn other languages but bad for the same reason. There’s an inherentness to this that will be hard to break. Being multilingual is common (not just with English) is part of regular life in many countries but not here.
Very sad to hear this John. I didn’t know Greg personally but I did read some of his work years ago. I extend my condolences to you and his family.
As an example from only some time ago, Kevin Rudd learnt Mandarin during his undergraduate days at the ANU. I seem to recall that this was somewhat rare, as most were learning either Indonesian or Japanese.
When he joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1981, his first posting was to Sweden !
Sir,
I can feel the pain of the lost of a friend whose mind resonates with ones own. In the wake of this refreshing article, I would like to say something to my fellow Australians that I have been wanting to say for a long time. Do not be afraid that Australia will lose its cultural heritage if its people have closer interaction with the people of Asia. Over more than three decades here, I have overheard concerns expressed about “the death of Western culture and civilization” in the library, fast food joints and public transport (They were spoken loud enough for me to hear. I did not eavesdrop.). Today, the fear rears its head again, marked by the frenetic call by conservatives to teach Western culture and civilization and the response to it by universities over their intellectual independence.
May I assert that Western civilization and culture will never die. If at all, it is strong and getting ever stronger. The evidence for it is everywhere! Most of the countries in the East have adopted Western to a very large degree. Take Japan for example, their Meiji Restoration starting from 1868 was an struggle by Japan to catch up with the militarily and economically stronger Western nations. They emulated, as much as they were able to, Western military structures, government bureaucratic systems, education, trade and even dress modes (top hats and tailcoats). Subsequently, “Westernization” came to be seen as “Modernization” by Japan’s weaker neigbours (Korea, China and Japan) which in turn emulated Japan in an attempt to catch up with the rest of the developed world.
As I see it, cultures don’t die. They evolve. The good aspects of any culture is preserved, often not by the the originators of the culture but by others who realise how precious they are. When Greek civilization declined, it was the Arabic world that helped to preserve the works of the Greek philosophers, especially that of Aristotle.
History tells us that countries decline when they become inward looking. A parochial outlook, like incest, makes people weak and vulnerable relative to others. Australians are in the best geographical and and cultural position to glean the best from the East while retaining the best of its Western heritage. We are indeed a lucky country in ways more than economic.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Teow I agree with you 100%. I do believe this is the Asian century and one in which the world will have many challenges to face. Australia can learn from all its Asian neighbours. My big twin concerns however for Australia are ecological/ environmental degradation and population growth. I am not convinced we can have a long term sustainable economy with current population growth coupled with the type of economic growth we now promote. Despite having an ageing population, we may have to change our economy and our attitudes to prosperity if we want to increase our population. I am not sure if most Australian corporates and Australians understand this urgent dilemma.