At a conference on people-smuggling in Jakarta in mid-February, retired lieutenant general and former trade minister Luhut Panjaitan suggested Australia needed to reclaim “trust” if it wanted to ­rebuild relations with Indonesia. Not surprisingly, Panjaitan, a veteran of the invasion of East Timor, reminded the small audience of the loss of trust Indonesians felt over […]

It wasn’t that long ago that the world was mesmerised by the rise of Japan. I remember well the repercussions in the United States and elsewhere over Japan’s state-directed capitalism. Japan was, in the 1980s, the market to emulate. The Japanese had just-in-time management. Employees were loyal and highly productive. Japanese business models spread internationally […]