[lg policy] Australia; Here=?windows-1252?Q?=92s_?=one we prepared earlier: Labor goes back to Asia

[Harold Schiffman]

Here’s one we prepared earlier: Labor goes back to Asia
Bernard Keane | Oct 29, 2012 12:50PM


Labor’s new Asian vision is a lot like its Keating-era big picture,
only with more spin. Labor looks like the party with some vision of
where it wants to go, even if that vision is mainly rear-vision. If
you have distinct feeling of déjà vu from the Asian century white
paper, it’s fine: we’ve been here before, a lot. Take one of the 25
objectives (backed by more than 120 “pathways”) put forward in the
paper, that students will have the opportunity to continuously study
an Asian language.

The first politician to promise access to Asian languages was Susan
Ryan in the Hawke government, when she unveiled the National Languages
Policy. Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian were identified among the
priority languages and students were supposed to have access to at
least one language as part of their education, “preferably
continuously”.

Ever since then, Australian politicians have been committing that our
students will study Asian languages.

Commitments are one thing, of course; delivery is another. The Howard
government axed the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian
Schools program a decade ago, making Tony Abbott’s call for more
students to be studying Asian languages earlier this year somewhat
ironic.

Peter Garrett said that funding for the latest commitment on Asian
languages would be part of the Gonski funding package. Indeed, the
Gonski goals form part of the white paper goals.

For that matter, most of the government’s policy agenda is in the
white paper. The national disability insurance scheme (under the goal
of ensuring “all Australians will be able to benefit from, and
participate in, Australia’s growing prosperity and engagement in
Asia”), the national broadband network, the carbon pricing scheme,
food security, the Murray-Darling, budget surpluses.

Even sport is in there. I kid you not. “The Australia in the Asian
Century white paper highlights the huge potential to use sport to
strengthen Australia’s connections in Asia, Minister for Sport Senator
Kate Lundy, said today,” ran one of the flurry of press releases sent
out yesterday bearing the “Asian Century” title.

That’s because the Asian Century white paper is less about Australia’s
future in the region than about both domestic policy and domestic
politics. The Gillard government now has itself an overarching
framework within which most of its domestic and international agenda
now fits, one the Prime Minister even before yesterday’s launch at the
(taxpayer-subsidised) Lowy Institute was using to frame the
government’s policies. Get used to hearing “Asian century” a lot
between now and the election.

For a government routinely accused of lacking vision, and for a Prime
Minister who has always struggled to get across to voters what her
overall agenda for her time in office is, it provides an opportunity
to put together a coherent message about Labor’s priorities in the
run-up to and beyond the next election, even if much of the contents
of the strategy have only tangential relevance to Asia.

It’s thus a reheat of the Keating years; but whereas Keating, building
on the achievements of Bob Hawke (APEC, relationships with China until
1989), had arrived at a complete world view that coherently linked an
Asia-centric economic agenda with multiple strands of economic,
constitutional, social and cultural policy over the course of decades,
this government has produced a similar strategy (guided by one of
Keating’s key advisers, Ken Henry) as a broad heading under which
pretty much anything on its policy agenda can be shoehorned.

That’s not to deny the merit of the policy objectives in and of
themselves. Henry has used the white paper process to continue to
press the same sorts of issues that he long pushed as Treasury
secretary — productivity and participation, tax reform. But there’s
little of the organic politics of conviction that Keating brought to
his Asia-focused agenda. History is repeating itself — the first time
as passion and belief, the second as rote delivery and press releases
about sports.

The other virtue of Keating’s agenda — until the very “big picture”
essence of his approach to politics began to grate with voters, who
preferred the domestic simplicity of John Howard — was the implied
contrast with the visionless, backward-looking Coalition, particularly
the Howard model, given Howard’s criticism of Asian immigration in the
1980s and his monarchism. “Asian leaders won’t deal with him,” Keating
predicted of Howard before the 1996 election, a prediction that turned
out to be more than a little askew, although deputy sheriff Howard
never quite managed the feat of getting a birthday cake presented by
the Singaporean PM as Keating did.

Undoubtedly Labor is working on the same approach this time around,
and probably feels in Tony Abbott it can have more luck. Abbott looks
even more of a foreign policy neophyte than Gillard, and his bizarre
discussion of what passes for foreign policy in Battlelines will
doubtless be read with hilarity and puzzlement across the region.
Especially in Beijing, given Abbott not-so-subtly suggests China will
give way in the longer-term to India because, well, they speak English
in India. And then there’s the ongoing problem of the National Party’s
deep xenophobia about foreign investment, which Abbott believes is
either politically opportune or is simply too weak to combat in the
way Joe Hockey is prepared to.

The other Abbott weak point on this issue is that he has failed to use
his extended period of polling strength to articulate a positive
agenda, while the government has busied itself putting out the NDIS,
Gonski and continuing to roll out the NBN. At the moment Labor,
unusually, looks like the party with some vision of where it wants to
go. The only thing voters know about the Coalition is where they don’t
want to go. However artificial, the Asian Century white paper won’t do
anything to harm that.


http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/10/29/heres-one-we-prepared-earlier-labor-goes-back-to-asia/

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal,
and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.
 A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman,
Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list