Fear and incomprehension still dominate our perception of Asia

Eric Ellis questions whether Kevin Rudd’s plan to make Australia the West’s most ‘Asia-literate’ country has anything going for it except geography

An old friend of mine, a self-made corporate tyro embedded at the Big End of Sydney, asked me recently why I bother writing from miserable, crisis-racked places like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Thailand.

Moreover, he asked, why do I return to Jakarta, a city ranked by any measure you like as a corrupt urban hellhole of ocean-going proportions. ‘Mate,’ he emailed after scanning perfunctorily through a Speccie despatch I’d penned from Afghanistan before he rushed to his bucolic hobby farm in the Hunter Valley, ‘no one here gives a flying f**k about these places.’ Then, almost on cue, Operation Slipper — as Australia’s military contribution to Afghanistan’s ‘just war’ is formally known — claimed two diggers in two days after my mate’s message. He looked like a twit; no comfort, of course, to the grieving families of those who’d made the ultimate sacrifice for their country’s security, the official reason why Australian troops are there.