Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia needs to dramatically improve its relationship with Indonesia and stop being subservient to the United States.
Mr Keating delivered the Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last night, with a speech titled "Asia in the new order: Australia's diminishing sphere of influence".
Before making the speech, he spoke to Lateline, and said Indonesia should become Australia's most important strategic relationship. He said the current relationship had no structure or coherence and was full of transactional issues like live cattle exports and refugee management.
"Our natural stamping ground is South-East Asia," he told Lateline. "The effort we should be making is with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In fact, I'm suggesting in the speech we should be a member of ASEAN.
"We should be redoubling our efforts on the bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Where Indonesia goes strategically, so go we, in which case the rise of that great state is centrally important. Our strategic bread is entirely buttered in the Indonesian archipelago.
"This is at our neighbourhood, this is at our doorstep – rather than simply trying to second guess the Americans and the Chinese about the South China Sea or North Asia."
Mr Keating says Australia will always be friends with the United States, but the strategic power of the west is diminishing.
He argues that Australian acquiescence to US foreign policy demands during the governments of former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has damaged Australian independence and hurt relations with Asia.
"I think that we are far too deferential to what we see as the proclivities of US foreign policy vis-a-vis our own," he said.
"Not knowing when to strike out on your own, not knowing when to map out your prerogatives and where the lines are all blurred with their own. Howard described himself as a deputy sheriff, remember this, in Asia.
"In the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
"And of course we had President Obama make an aggressive anti-Chinese speech fundamentally in our parliamentary chamber, the so-called pivot speech.
"We're in the lee of the great whoosh of American policy making for good or for bad – we have been. Now, we're entitled to pick the eyes out of it. but we should not expect to be taken for bunnies."