Well, what do you know! Out of the blue, Australia suddenly has a very credible and thoughtful outline for a strategy to properly engage with our Asian neighbours, which came in speech by shadow treasurer Chris Bowen to the Asia Society on September 29.

Along with this strategy — pitched as “FutureAsia” — Bowen delivered an honest and forthright assessment of where we are (or rather where we are not) today with our most important relationship.

The speech has quickly gained plenty of kudos among former diplomats and bureaucrats frustrated with the jibber-jabber of successive governments “rediscovering” Asia.

Sure, it had its fair share of motherhood statements, as these things do, but one seasoned newspaper editor described it as the best speech by Labor in 20 years and, to these ears, it was certainly a step up in a debate that has been dizzied by its own tail-chasing for too many years to count.

It is certainly the most comprehensive description of the failure of Australia’s approach to Asia — chock full of smart, very doable policies and ideas — since the halcyon days of Paul Keating.

Australia’s Asian policy has been in “cruise control”, Bowen said, adding that we have only been paying “lip-service to the Asian century”. He is spot on in this assessment of the attitude of the current government (and the ones before it, stretching back to 1996) to Asia.

A quick glance at Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s recent woeful speech in Bangkok illustrates this perfectly. And Australia’s soulless non-response to the horrific humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Myanmar has been beyond embarrassing.

[Will a visit from Pope Francis compel Aung San Suu Kyi to act?]

“Australia has derived great economic benefit on the back of Asia’s industrialisation. This brought a thirst for Australia’s natural resources like iron ore which has helped underpin our record run of economic growth. But the pattern of economic growth in our region is changing rapidly,” Bowen said.

“Increasingly, growth is coming from other consumption rather than investment. Private consumption in China is now higher than Germany’s entire GDP.This growing Asian middle class is hungry. They are a hungry for a protein rich and safe and healthy diet, but for much more besides.

“Competition will be immense, including growing competition from Asian economies themselves. If we don’t get this right, the price will be significant and the benefit of getting it right will be substantial.”

That such a speech came from an Australian Labor Party, whose only recent contribution to the debate that Australia refuses to have was an apparent wrongheaded determination to dust off the relatively lightweight and highly politically compromised (by way of a significant rewrite) Australia in the Asian Century white paper prepared by former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry for the Gillard government, is most encouraging.

As limited as the white paper was, it had some decent practical recommendations. To wit, the recommendation that Australia reverse its shocking, economically illiterate and arguably racist record in teaching Asian languages. This was something Bowen addressed with some force, made far more potent by the revelation that he is learning Bahasa Indonesian. You can bet Scott Morrison is not.

It is a measure of the unfathomable disjunction of the Australian Parliament that the white paper was promptly parked in a filing cabinet to gather dust and removed from government websites — taxpayer money wasted. Sensible recommendations were ignored by the Coalition government, replaced by nothing much at all except a few free trade agreements. It is an(other) indictment of Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop that nothing from this has been resuscitated past the Tony Abbott era. Are we really so stupid? Are we destined to an eternity of politics triumphing over policy?

We now have the unedifiying sight of Trade Minister Steve Ciobo, who has yet to display any signs of original thought, working on free trade agreements with Hong Kong and Great Britain — the former falling increasingly within Beijing’s orbit (someone should tell him), and the latter two years away from being able to execute anything at all.

[China crisis: Australia hurtles blindly toward an immigration calamity]

Importantly, Bowen promised to end the “white man goes to Asia” approach to the region. What a relief.

Bowen’s speech was cleverly followed four days later, in what looks awfully like a neat piece of strategy, on October 2, by a matching piece by Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong, on the environment — an address she prefaced with a hearty endorsement of her colleague’s speech that could well be seen as a landmark in Australian policy in the years to come.

Taken as a pair, the two speeches suddenly give Labor the policy high ground: Bowen’s covering the gamut of foreign affairs, trade and education, and Wong’s on foreign affairs and the environment while the government drowns in the kind of battles most often found in developing countries: on electricity, marriage equality and coal-fired power.

As the dead-cat bounce in the mining sector begins to fade fast, Bowen’s final words are worth repeating:

“We have been too complacent for too long. We have paid lip-service to the Asian century whilst other countries have forged ahead with policies designed to complement the economic changes under way.

“We have no time to lose, and the next Labor government intends not to waste a second. I’ve outlined today the first stages of our ‘FutureAsia’ agenda. Today I’ve made the opening salvo of announcements. There will be more to come in areas including, but not limited to trade, agriculture, tourism and importantly, the arts. I look forward to implementing it and providing annual updates to Parliament. And we’ll build on what we’ve announced so far and do more.”

He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers right now, but it’s a fine start.