Those whose first language is not English are almost compelled to learn it if they want to take part in the culture, business, transport and politics (even terrorism) of the world.

At least they have a fairly easy language to learn enough to get by with. It has virtually no conjugations and no gender for nouns. Even tenses are forgiving: if you say: ''I go tomorrow to airport,'' the meaning is clear.

English is spoken in one form or another by a quarter of the world's population. If a Romanian talks to a Czech, it is in English. If a Japanese talks to a Spaniard, it is in English.

Now that many more people in the francophone part of Switzerland learn English rather than German as their second language, overturning an earlier educational requirement, and that people in the German part of Switzerland are doing a similar thing, English could easily become the main language of Switzerland.

English is the primary second language in the world.

If English is not your primary language, why would you learn any other language before it?

So, the urging by the white paper on the Asian century for more widespread teaching of Asian languages in Australian schools would be a waste of money. If we are serious about making money in Asia, we should concentrate on making better widgets, not speaking pidgin Mandarin, Japanese or Malay. They will order the widgets in English anyway.

In any event, Australia has enough speakers of Asian languages - people who learnt them properly from birth at home - for all of our business needs.

Sure, learning an Asian language might help with a greater cultural experience and in opening the mind but concentrating on pushing Asian languages in schools will not help Australia much in getting the best of the Asian century.

Besides, you would have to learn many Asian languages to cover the field, whereas non-English speakers have only to learn some English for a quarter of the world's people and the vast bulk of the world's knowledge to be open to them. That is why so many of them do so.

English is like Microsoft Windows - everyone has it because everyone has it, no matter its idiosyncrasies and manifold imperfections.

Moreover, translation is easy to come by. Even the white paper has online translations. On this score alone, people in Asia would be mightily puzzled by the white paper.

From an Asian perspective, it might seem bizarre to recommend billions of dollars be spent on communication with Asians when the wherewithal to do so is already in place. But perhaps, more importantly, the white paper displays an exploitative self-interestedness that might be counter-productive.

Its whole tenor is how Australia can make a buck out of the industrialisation of Asia - though it is not couched in that language, of course. Rather, it is delivered in the language of business and bureaucratic euphemism - making the best of new opportunities and the like.

The white paper has been attacked for being too aspirational, grand and prescriptive. It talks of an Australia in the top 10 nations for education and income. It says in grandiose language: ''By 2025 Australia will be a more prosperous and resilient nation fully part of the region and open to the world.''

In fact, its weakness lies the other way. It is too narrow. It misses the great historic point and concentrates rather on Australia grabbing an advantage. It is a bit like some two-bit crook going for a sting on a naive punter who has just come into some money. The broader historic context is that the West, led by Britain and then western Europe and the United States, industrialised, transforming its hand-to-mouth agricultural economies.

As it did so, it exploited natural resources in other parts of the world and polluted the atmosphere and the oceans. In creating great prosperity for itself, it also gave humankind vast amounts of hugely valuable intellectual property in the form of great scientific discoveries and industrial applications.

Now the rest of the world - particularly Asia - wants the benefits of industrialisation, too.

The white paper is oblivious to that aspiration. It assumes it will happen and talks of staking out the ground for Australia to profit from it and, as a result, remain ahead of the newly industrialised Asia in the prosperity stakes. And it has the nerve to call this engaging with Asia.

A true engagement would lend a hand to the development and industrialisation process in Asia in a way that would give us at least the moral middle ground to argue that industrialisation should not come at the cost of environmental degradation. Without that helping hand in the form of high-level foreign aid (especially in education - giving it as well as selling it), the developing Asian countries are likely to say to the West: ''Well, you exploited every natural resource and the atmosphere and the oceans when you industrialised, why shouldn't we?''

And on the white paper's premises, who could blame them?

So let's not get hung up about English as a weapon of cultural imperialism. It is not. The world now owns English. Let's worry instead about a justified (but not sustainable) expectation in Asian nations that they should be able to industrialise as the West did.

And let's make any new relationship with Asia based upon a desire to see the mass of world population lifted out of poverty, not as some base opportunity to make a buck.

■ ■ ■ IT WAS in Brindabella, not Ginninderra as I inadvertently wrote last week, that the Liberals ran four male candidates. My apologies.

But on the subject of proportional representation, what about the Senate? This week the industrial-machine numbers men of the Labor Party in South Australia demoted Finance Minister Penny Wong to the No 2 spot on the Labor ticket under right-wing numbers man Senator Don Farrell.

He later agreed to swap places.

But it poses the question: why do we allow the parties to determine the order on the ballot paper? Why not have the order randomised so some papers have Wong at the top spot and others Farrell, and so on - as we do in the ACT?

At present, the parties determine the order and the preferences of voters who tick the party box above the line - and 90 per cent of voters just tick the party box.

Farrell was concerned about overturning the democratic will of a few pre-selectors when he swapped positions. Well, if you are really worried about democracy, how about a system whereby the voters determine the order in which they would elect candidates in a Senate party list, instead of doing it for them?

www.crispinhull.com.au