For me at least our ham fisted approach to engagement with Asia and our genuflection to the United States is what has helped "distort" our domestic politics. Apparently Mark Arbib spends his days leaking our secrets to the US embassy - when he should be on his bike across Asia.
Why is it that neither our Prime Minister nor Opposition Leader has a history of engagement with Asia? How does either of them expect to be an effective leader of a nation whose future is so intertwined with the region - when neither of them can be bothered to engage with it?
Their only serious regional engagement is by cheering on the decade old war in Afghanistan - where the US is spending $10 billion per month invading a country with a total annual GDP approaching 4/5ths of 5/8ths of SFA. I don't get it.
Our domestic politics are so badly broken because our current political leaders and their parties have no frame of reference across our region. They take their cues from a sick and broken US ideology. But as Andrew Bacevic has pointed out :
employing ideology as the basis for policy is a recipe for disaster.
They actually don't know how poorly we are viewed across Asia because they don't have any long term experience or relationships with the people who live there. They view it as a place to stop over and do some shopping on their way to somewhere else.
Or they view it as a never ending source of fodder for our imaginary "world class" universities where we spend years training Asian students - so they can end up driving our cabs and serving in our convenience stores.
And anyway how is it that insular and opportunistic local politicians can actually get to be Australian political leaders when they have so little international experience?
Beats me too. But it doesn't seem to bother anyone else.
Perhaps that is why Lee Kuan Yew so famously called us "The poor white trash of Asia".
No comments:
Post a Comment