This Chapter is not a review of Australian foreign policy since Australia first began groping for its own national and international identity. Nor is it addressed to the policies pursued abroad by the Australian government during the last five years, which are comprehensively dealt with in the preceding chapters. It is concerned primarily with how the foreign policy decisions of the government of the day have been carried out, with or without success, by Australia’s diplomatic service, professional and amateur, since it was established (or perhaps more correctly, born again after having been aborted) some 45 ago as the new Department of External Affairs, with a separate corporate existence and mandate of its own. Rather than attempting a potted history of the Department the aim will be a brief survey of some of the more noteworthy features of its short life, including some of its achievements as well as some of the difficulties it has met and survived in the course of reaching maturity and acquiring a sense not of power but of confidence in its own ability to respond loyally and competently, at home and abroad, to the wishes of the government.