Managing an outpost at the end of empire

Australia may be slightly better prepared psychologically for an Asian Century than others outside Asia, including a neighbour like Russia that draws increasingly on a close alliance with China. Nevertheless, if Australia is to aspire to anything approaching literacy in the financial capitals (Beijing and Shanghai) of the emerging dominant civilization, numbers of non-Asian Australian children will need to undertake rigorous rote learning of the Chinese classics from a very early age. This is the emerging fashion in "Communist" China today.

It will then take three decades before these young people can inject any true insight into Australian policy development. If we had had understanding and action rather than pure rhetoric over the past half century we would already have such skills today.

It will be instructive, if painful, to see how long Australians continue to respond to these realities simply and solely with shock, revulsion and rejection.

Sadly, it is likely to be some time, and perhaps too late, before there is any readiness to address these emerging realities. Australia urgently needs diplomatic leadership and a domestic awareness that works and prepares for an as yet poorly imagined, but nevertheless clearly definable, future.

In the meantime, dedicated new leaders like Tony Abbot and Julie Bishop will flounder, lacking access to advice with any depth or realism in its comprehension of this future. It is essential to go beyond the failing stereotypes that still inform Australian public and private sector leaders, educated in certainties that once served a now rapidly declining Anglo-American global order.