It's outmoded to refer to Australia as ... part of the Anglosphere

Richard Woolcott, Asia-Pacific community could be Rudd's golden legacy

In discussing an Asia-Pacific community, the region cannot be a community, in the capital-C European sense, which would imply a common currency, customs' union and possibly a single market.

This is why we have approached the Asia-Pacific community in a small-c sense ...

I believe that an Asia-Pacific community, in one form or another, is an idea whose time has come ...

It is completely outmoded to refer to Australia, as the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, has done, as being part of the ''Anglosphere''.

The Asia-Pacific community concept merits wider public understanding and bipartisan political support... which will increasingly be the focus of our national foreign and security policy interests.

So Rudd wanted a small-c community? Rubbish, he was and still is thinking big ...

Kevin Rudd, Asia Society AustralAsia Centre Annual Dinner

The European Union of course does not represent an identikit model of what we would seek to develop in the Asia Pacific.

But what we can learn from Europe is this – it is necessary to take the first step.

In the 1950s, sceptics saw European integration as unrealistic.

But most people would now agree that the goal of the visionaries in Europe who sat down in the 1950s and resolved to build prosperity and a common sense of a security community has been achieved.

It is that spirit we need to capture in our hemisphere.

Our special challenge is that we face a region with greater diversity in political systems and economic structures, levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures, than did our counterparts in Europe.

But that should not stop us from thinking big...

By thinking big, capturing the spirit of the EU, and failing to rule out any capital-C sense, Rudd showed his hand. He wants the whole capital-T (for totalitarian) world governance. And no-one should trust him or Woolcott when they put a small-c badge on the same totalitarian monster. That's why Rudd still talks about the age of globalisation of everything.

Over to Nigel Farage ...


File under: small-c or capital-C ... tell em where to go.