Nice thoughts here.
We seem to be accelerating back into the anglosphere
with our new foreign minister performing
like a bimbo in a china shop

What an excellent article. But to forego our "misplaced confidence in the unearned privileges that came in the past from being part of the Anglosphere" and instead act on our "aspirations to be part of the political and commercial dynamics of an Asian future", we will require a new mind-set in Canberra.
I worry that we may not get it with Abbott and Bishop. They both seen determined to put Asia second in preference to the US. Witness that when the recent phone-tapping was at its height, Bishop was in the US putting the final touches on an agreement to allow US Marines into Darwin. Or our recently announced changes in future UN voting on issues relating to Israel and the Palestinians, a move surely prompted by the US and its Zionist lobby. And to top it all we have bought into China's air-defence zone in the East China Sea, as if our interference could accomplish anything other than to annoy China.
Abbott and Bishop seem locked in the past and delusional about our future. I just hope they show themselves to be quick studies, because we will need to re-think some of our priorities soon. We are an English speaking Asian nation. That is where our future is, and the sooner we grasp that, the better.

A good article.
I have no doubt there is the talent and ability in the Coalition to meet these challenges but unfortunately the front line as it currently stands are not the leaders we need.
Privileged, white, anglo, royalist thinking should be a thing of the past. It has served its time and served us reasonably well but we are well overdue to move on.
SD

"...one can only hope that a Prime Minister of Tony Abbott’s outstanding personal qualities and integrity can provide the necessary leadership," opines our Reg.

Reg, Abbott is little more than a political buffoon and a mediocre intellectual. Barbie Bishop is little better.

Reg, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear! Get it?

Yes a good essay.
Tony Abbott et al are very much locked into the presumed superiority of the Anglosphere world-view - the presumed "triumph" and even "victory" of one-dimensional left-brained anal-ytical "reason" and its tribalistic religion Christian-ism. The details of which are elaborated in the IPA Western Civilization website. Summed up too in books with titles such as The West Versus the Rest.
Of course I much prefer to live within the current Angloshere paradigm because there is still a slim chance of something completely new emerging. Such would be almost impossible if the Chinese, the Russians or the Islamics ruled the world.
Because of the legacy of colonial exploitation etc the Chinese, and almost everyone else too, have no reasons to be particularly nice to us Westerners.

All these difficulties that are going to confront the Abbott government in its FIRST YEAR.

Did these ‘difficulties’ suddenly appear this year, or were they there during the past 12 or so months of the socialist Labor government.

I’m no fan of Abbott and most of his ministers, but all this ‘Abbott will have to watch out for this; Abbott will have to do/not do this, when the previous socialist government was not told what it had to do very much at all are glaringly biased.

Why do people expect so much more from a ‘conservative’ (debatable in Abbott’s case) government than they do from the socialists? Particularly the people who are anti everything except socialism, and have no time for Abbott anyway.

“A comfortable sense of Anglosphere superiority….”tells us much about the lecture from Reg Little that we are in for.

Then comes the bit about how brilliant the non-Westerners/Asians have become.

We have to trade with any ‘sphere’ that wishes to trade with us. But, sucking up to Asians is not necessary.

The decline of all things Western, referred to by Mr. Little, is fairly and squarely down to the slack and cowardly attitude of Australian politicians. It is NOT because of the rise of Asia (which no one should begrudge) but because Australian politicians have rushed into globalisation and so-called foreign investment (read buy outs by the Chinese government), and stupidly believed that other countries (Asian) would play by the rules of trade, particularly in the area of tariffs and trade balances.

Other countries have not played by the rules; but weak little old Australia has, and we are now paying for our gutless mustn’t-upset-China-or-anyone else-for-that-matter cringe.

Our lack of defence capacity is, of course, a disgrace.

But, we do not want an “Asian future”; we want better Australian politicians. And telling Abbott – who is no better than other Australian politicians, what he should do – is not going to make a damn of difference