How Australia can avoid predictable ASEAN pitfalls

The legacy of race, Australia's occasional indifference to its neighbours (aside from often raucous holidays in Bali and Phuket) and the near absence of our businesses investing in nations which have long been hungry for foreign capital and technology have all been undercurrents in the relationship over decades. And there is the tragi-comic legacy of John Howard and the idea that Australia acts as Washington's "deputy-sheriff" in the region. In 1998, just after his government's intervention into then-East Timor, Howard was asked by a journalist if Australia was the "deputy" to America's global policeman. Howard assented, with the qualification: "In…