Southeast Asia has never been more important to Australia – and Australia has never been more alienated from Southeast Asia and with so little idea of what to do about it.

For Australia, the region holds the key to our security and prosperity. Yet as a society we have never fully grasped its importance. Our gaze has vaulted over Southeast Asia towards Northeast Asia's industrial giants, and now towards a rising India. Yet Southeast Asia is where the future world order will be decided – the place where China's bid for regional power will succeed or fail.

This illuminating, original essay reveals Australia's blind spot. What do we need to know about Southeast Asia? What has our foreign policy elite's subservience to the United States stopped us from seeing and doing? What do our neighbours, inside and outside Australia, have to tell us, if only we could hear? This is an essay about values, imagination and a new way of seeing ourselves in our region.