America is back in East Asia

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/america-is-back-in-east-asia-20090219-8col.html?page=-1

February 20, 2009

THE choice of East Asia as the first destination for the new United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, promises a fruitful new era in American foreign policy, after the erratic treatment of the region during the George Bush years.

Most notable is Mrs Clinton's announcement in Jakarta that the US would begin the process of acceding to the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation among the 10 member countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, which commits signatories to refrain from force in settling their disputes and from interference in each other's domestic affairs.

It will be remembered that under John Howard, Canberra long resisted joining that pact, giving rise to suspicions that Mr Howard's remarks about strikes against terrorism threats forming in the region were no mere hypothetical musings but a version of the Bush unilateralism.

In the end, Mr Howard signed the treaty in 2005 as the entry price to the new East Asia Summit meetings.

No clearer signal could be given that unilateralism has been dumped than President Barack Obama's willingness to join this pact. This does not mean, however, that Washington will take a hands-off approach to problems of human rights and tyranny in South-East Asia.



The ASEAN grouping itself is redefining its notion of non-interference by putting human rights obligations on its members. This opens the diplomatic channels for harder regional pressure on regimes like the military government of Burma. It is likely to be more effective than the unlikely possibility of regime change effected by US military force.

Indonesia is shaping up as a test-bed for Mr Obama's efforts to engage with Islamic countries. It is, after all, the one he knows best, from his childhood years in Jakarta. Mrs Clinton has made much of the balance of religion, democracy, and modernising forces in the country with the world's largest Muslim population - progress still not sufficiently appreciated here, let alone further afield in the West. The new American interest may be uncomfortable for some Indonesians: if it is well applied, these will be the militarists and the religious obscurantists among them.

Mrs Clinton's first stop, in Tokyo, gave proper reassurance to the key ally in the post-1945 security architecture of the Western Pacific, as Japan undergoes economic and probably political transition this year.

However, this seemed aimed not at bolstering Japan as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" dominating East Asia, the concept so beloved of its own and American conservatives, but to draw Japan into the slowly emerging new regional structure of co-operation including China, the two Korean states, and Russia. This is something Australia can only welcome.

The boomlet doesn't rule
SUDDENLY, a whole lot of little children have started school. Hardly surprising at the start of the school year, you might think. But in fact, as the Herald has reported, the numbers seeking a place are at or near a record, and they are little children - younger on average than previously. A combination of factors has produced a big enrolment in kindergartens across the state, and the trend is likely to present problems for the State Government.

One cause pushing children into schools is the collapse of ABC Learning, and the resulting doubts over the future of about a quarter of its 961 centres across the country. Nearly 90 centres in NSW are only operating with government support until buyers can be found.

Many parents have decided not to risk further disruption to their children or themselves by seeking alternative care in a tight market, but to start them at school a year early. For others, the motive for early enrolment will have been to avoid the expense of child care - a necessary cost when the economy is booming, but too much like a luxury in the present downturn.

The conventional wisdom - bolstered by some studies of children's performance in later years - has recently been that it is better for children to start school a little older. The author Steve Biddulph has long argued that boys in particular should start later, because they develop fine motor skills - used for, among other things, writing, drawing, buttoning and tying - later than girls. That preference appears to have been swept away by economic necessity.

The third reason for the rise in numbers is the mini-boom in babies which has been noticed since about 2004, as parents have taken advantage of the former Howard government's incentives to have more children. Such booms have entirely predictable results: larger classes, and pressure on an education system that is already facing a teacher shortage as those who were born in the previous baby boom start to leave the profession in big numbers.

That trend alone would be enough to worry governments - particularly the NSW Government - but it is allied with another: the low status and low pay of the teaching profession. The NSW Government is already struggling to meet competing needs. Something will have to give. Parents will hope it is not the needs of the children of the baby boomlet.