Compare Australia to a real Asian country like South Korea and the difference between trade and integration becomes clear. South Korea's top exports to China are integrated circuits and liquid crystal displays, key components in tight-knit global production networks. South Korea is fully integrated into the Asian economy. Australia is merely a supplier of raw materials to Asia, and if in the future global economic growth shifts to new regions, Australia's raw materials will simply be redirected to where they are wanted. There are no integrated production networks involved in the sale of iron ore.

Christoff may be right to criticise Lowe's nostalgia for 'a more self-contained society and insular economy', but since the publication of The Lucky Country, the preponderance of exports in Australia's economy has only risen from fifteen to twenty per cent of GDP. For the world as a whole, the rise over the same period was from twelve per cent in 1964 to twenty-nine per cent in 2015. Over the last half century, Australia has become more dependent on export markets, but qualitatively with very little integration and quantitatively much less than the world average. Australia may have become an extraordinarily cosmopolitan country in recent years, but in economic terms it is still our island home.

Salvatore Babones, Elizabeth Bay, NSW

Peter Christoff replies:

Salvatore Babones is right to correct my error. I mis-wrote 'exports' where I meant trade. Australia's total trade (not just exports, as I wrote) amounted to 42.3 per cent of its GDP in 2013–14. And it was Australia's trade (not just exports) as a percentage of GDP that rose from twenty-nine per cent in 1964 to forty-two per cent in 2013–14.

However, on other crucial points he is wrong. At the risk of generating a nerd-fest, some details. Of course markets shift over time. That was the point of my historical comparison with Australia's previous relationship to American and European markets.

DFAT's report on Fifty Years of Australian Trade notes that 'by 2013-14, Asia accounted for 83 per cent of Australia's merchandise exports, up from just 32.8 per cent in 1963–64'. For imports, the figures are 21.8 per cent in 1963–64, and 56.8 per cent in 2013–14. As I wrote colloquially, half our exports now go to two Asian countries: China and Japan (here, Babones is wrong: the precise figure, from DFAT data, in 2013–14 was 54.7 per cent ... not forty-two per cent). They also are its largest national sources of merchandise imports. My line about Australia's economy now being 'integrally Asian' stands.

Unfortunately, Babones fails to engage with my core argument. While the growth in Australia's trade exposure is not exceptional, it nevertheless shows we are much more strongly globalised than when Donald Horne wrote. We are less economically self-sufficient now than before, and our increased level of complex global integration is harder to unstitch – economically, politically, and ecologically – than would have been the case decades earlier. Moreover, one has to think carefully as to whether such a path is wise. If we are to make our economy more ecologically sustainable by becoming more autarchic, which of our global connections should go and how could this be achieved? Babones, like Lowe, fails to address this challenge.

Peter Christoff, Parkville, Vic.

The missing conductor

Dear Editor,
In his exhaustive review of two stagings of Così fan Tutte (Arts Update, July 2016), Michael Halliwell notes the conductor of the Vienna performance but fails to do so for the splendid Sydney production by David McVicar. That he and all other reviewers were impressed with the performance surely had something to do with the conductor.

Jonathan Darlington has an international reputation and has collaborated with McVicar: before, both overseas and here in Don Giovanni, and now with Così. In his 2,000-word piece, Mr Halliwell might surely have found a few extra words of praise for the conductor whose contribution to this fine new production, one of the best things Opera Australia has done in years, is at least as worthy of praise as that of the set and lighting designers.

Leo Schofield (online comment)

Michael Halliwell replies:

Mr Schofield is absolutely correct. It was remiss of me to omit mention of the excellent conductor, Jonathan Darlington. The great success of the performance was due in no small part to his excellent choice of tempi and rapport with both the orchestra and the singers.