Australia alone!...And illiterate

These are, of course, inherent in the "universal values" institutionalised in the United Nations system. The Western heritage derived from Greece, Rome and Jerusalem does little or nothing to equip the dominant races of recent centuries to match wits with an ascendant Confucian world. Indeed, it even obstructs the recognition of the qualities of the Confucian communities.

It leaves the West unable to understand that the ideological labels Capitalism and Communism reflect rigidities in Western thought and are more misleading than helpful when seeking to determine Asian political and organisational behaviour.

Unfortunately, Australians have misread their ready acceptance in Asia during a period of American pre-eminence. Their standing has been largely defined as a surrogate of the world's dominant global power. In a region, or world, increasingly shaped overtly by re-energised, if cautious and discreet, Confucian values and pride, the benefits of being a surrogate for a declining imperial centre can only dissipate - quite possibly abruptly.

Indeed, in such a world, identification with bankrupt past imperial centres in London and Washington will only create psychological and political obstacles.

Even worse, misplaced confidence in these past centres of power creates educational obstacles. It obscures the reality that Australia is far from identifying and matching educational standards being established in China and elsewhere in Asia.

This problem is made even more daunting by the fact that Australian leaders have not yet even begun to recognise the imperatives and challenges inherent in developing a national understanding of a reinvented Confucian civilisation.

This renascent Confucianism increasingly seems likely to set future global marketplace norms and overshadow the past certainties of the European Enlightenment.

It is in this sense that Australia is close to being alone, apart from New Zealand, in the region that is economically and politically critical to its future prosperity, security and identity.

It is also in this sense that Australia is in danger of being identified as being illiterate in terms of the region's most pervasive civilisation, its sense of educational standards and its most formative languages.

The notion that Australia can be among world leaders with its carbon tax while the above matters are studiously neglected by political sideshows is both laughable and, potentially, tragic.

The present government fails to see that the environmental and energy problems of modern economies are far from resolution by a scientifically and economically dubious carbon tax. The reality is that economic development and small wars have become addicted to ever increasing consumption of industrial energy.

While the world has been several centuries slow in identifying apparent problems with coal, it is only just beginning to understand the dangers of possibly worse alternatives, such as nuclear, wind, ethanol, coal-seam gas and shale oil, all hyped up for gullible politicians by various sectors of the financial community.