Thousands of students come to Australia each year to study
When Ken Henry’s Asian Century White Paper appears, it can be expected to urge more ‘Asia-literacy’ for Australians, more people-to-people exchanges with Asian countries, less impediments to trade and investment, more collaborative research and development, more transparency in government, and less tape both red and green.
From these relatively uncontentious proposals, it may move on to envisage a region with less corruption and more even distribution of income, liberalised currencies, better public health and disease control, a regional resolution to refugee outflows, an agreement on safer sea-lanes through the region, reconciliation over disputed territories, and more.
All of which are desirable, but not nearly so simple.
Tony Abbott got in ahead of Dr Henry in early July, announcing a ‘new Colombo Plan’ as a policy of his future government that would redress such imbalances, as in the example he gave, of 200 Australians a year studying in Indonesia, as against 17,000 Indonesians studying here.
In mid July Dr Henry told the Asian Studies Association of Australia that studies of Asia would no longer be an optional extra but would be embedded in the school curriculum, not only teaching Asian languages to children but also building closer political and diplomatic ties with our neighbours.
But he said the White Paper was only a ‘framework for policy development’ to take shape over some years (TWA 14-15 July 2012: 2), making it vulnerable to future political vacillations.
At the same time, the Treasurer was telling an audience in Hong Kong the White Paper will propose that more Australian students undertake courses in Asian countries, offsetting to some extent the disproportionate numbers who study in Australia. (SMH, 11 July 2012:5)
Wayne Swann also calculated that with 110 million new middle-class consumers joining Asia economies each year, by the end of the decade Asia will be a consumption zone larger than the rest of the world combined. The implications for education, as well as tourism, consultancy, banking, and airlines were obvious.
He forecast opportunities for Australia to supply complex consumer durables and sophisticated services to the zone.
This time, the Asia-push will not just be about the economy, but everything. Dr Henry will call for Australia to transform itself radically in its approach to Asia. His former colleague, Ian Watt, head of the Prime Minister’s Department, endorses his prediction of how Asia’s transformation process will affect ‘all aspects of Australian society and our institutions, not only the economy. Asia’s growing weight and influence will bring dramatic changes and dramatic opportunities’.
The Australian Public Service, he says, will have to transform itself to become more outward looking and ‘genuinely Asia capable’. There will be a complete ‘departure from previous habits’ as Canberra journalist Graeme Dobell describes it.
Former DFAT Secretary Richard Woolcott advises us to begin consulting Indonesia as closely as we do the United States. (Quoted by Graeme Dobell, ‘All change for Asia’, The Interpreter, Lowy Institute, 10 July 2012)
A lurking issue to watch for in the coming reactions to Dr Henry’s White Paper is Asia v. Asia Pacific. When people in government say ‘Asia Pacific’ (as Kevin Rudd did in 2008, proposing a regional community, or as Bob Hawke did in 1989, launching APEC) they mean ‘including the United States’.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has twice told United States audiences that America is seen as in decline, which is hardly news to them (SMH 14 July 2012: 12), and he says Australia is not part of ‘the Anglosphere’.
Dr Henry is not considering an Asia Pacific Century, and he will certainly not contemplate an Asian Century that does not include Australia.
Is he too anticipating the decline of the US?
When Julia Gillard announced the Asian Century White Paper, she implied no such change. She said Australia can stand strongly in our changing region, with an ally in Washington and respect in Beijing, apparently believing, as Rudd did before her, that we can continue to have it both ways.
Chinese have recently demurred on this point to Defence Minister Stephen Smith. They would recall in 2000 hearing from Alexander Downer in Beijing that Australia’s relationship with the United States in the region was ‘cultural’ while with China it was ‘practical’.
Tony Abbott seemed not to see any difference between ‘Asia’ and ‘Asia Pacific’, saying in Washington that the Asian century was not just a Chinese century but Indian and Japanese as well, then adding that it was ‘also an American century, since the US was an Asia-Pacific power’. (Paul Kelly, Australian 19 July 2012: 4)
The need for Dr Henry to resolve this underlying conundrum, that seems to be about nothing much, but has real significance, may be what’s delaying the White Paper.
©Alison Broinowski, 2012
Dr Alison Broinowski is a senior research fellow at the University of Wollongong
