During the decade here under review, basic circumstances conditioning relations between Indonesia and Australia have undergone an important change. This has been primarily the result of the major political upheaval in Indonesia following the abortive coup of September–October 1965. Until the coup, Indonesia tended to be seen as, at best, a source of serious embarrassment to Australia, particularly in relation to Australian policy in New Guinea and Asia, and, at worst, as a positive threat to the security of ’Free Asia’, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Since 1965, Indonesia has come increasingly to be seen as a potential ally, worthy of Australian assistance, although the culmination of this apparent transformation was not reached until President Suharto’s visit to Australia in 1972. During that visit, press headlines provided dramatic evidence of the extent to which Indonesia was seen to have changed: ’Suharto—a seeker of security’, ’New defence link with Suharto’, ’President Suharto meets Aust. Govt, military links with Indonesia discussed’.

For the first time in its history, the Indian Ocean became an area of major international concern during the five years under review. This was due to the combination of a greatly reduced British defence presence, and a Soviet initiative to expand its political and economic interests in the region concurrent with a modest display of naval activity. The United States showed little inclination to match the Soviet presence, so that Australia’s western maritime environment – across which roughly half its trade was carried – seemed less secure than at any time since the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales in 1788.

The decade was one of continuity in Australia’s relations with Western Europe, rather than major change such as had been occasioned by Britain’s joining the European Community (EC) in 1972. It was, however, a time of important developments in the EC itself: in 1985, after a period of disarray, its member governments entered into a major commitment to the completion of the common market, the removal of all remaining internal barriers, by 1992. The prospect of the single European market and its implications for Europe’s trading partners have become a focus for discussions of the international economy and – especially after the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 – of the future pattern of international relationships as a whole. A discussion of the continuities of the 1980s cannot ignore the shadow of the future – the prospect of major changes in Europe in the 1990s, presenting opportunities as well as challenges to established expectations, for Australia as for the rest of the world.

The relationship between Australia and the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe has been characterised by considerable distrust. The isolation and fear of the danger posed by hostile powers was a recurrent theme in the consciousness of colonial Australians, a fear which took a precise Russian focus at the time of the Crimean War, the British–Russian tensions in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the establishment of a Russian Pacific fleet based at Vladivostok. A whole infrastructure of distrust stemming from the 1917 revolution and the perceived expansionist aims of the Bolshevik government was built upon this historical basis. This feeling, shared by much of the Western world, was stimulated enormously by the Cold War and by the effect on public debate in Australia of the large number of articulate refugees from both the Soviet Union and those states of Eastern Europe which were part of the Soviet orbit. This prevailing sense of distrust has structured the Australian approach to the Soviet Union and its allies throughout the postwar period.

The Indian Ocean area does not constitute an obvious natural region, and the states around it cannot be said to form an international subsystem, although the sea’s function as a line of communication has led to connections between countries which might not otherwise have known much of each other. The east coast of Africa, for example, has had a substantial Indian population throughout this century because of the ease of access from Indian ports and the protection which was available to Indians under British rule. Colombo was an obvious stopping-place for liners from Australia to Britain. But, in the main, the ocean is too broad to have encouraged close connections between the countries around its rim. The area exists as an entity only on the map. Strategists can draw lines on it, and plot the sites of possible bases which depend for their utility upon a supposed community of interests between the countries which border the ocean, but in fact the only unity which the area has possessed historically has been in the relatively brief period when Britain was the dominant power in Egypt, East Africa, South Africa, India, Burma, the Malay peninsula and Australia. That period is now over.

Since the Second World War important changes have taken place in the region of the South Pacific. One former territory, Western Samoa, has attained independent nationhood and in several others political development and future status have become subjects of lively interest among the indigenous peoples as well as populations of external origin. More and more the international technical organisations are interesting themselves in the current problems and future prospects of the Pacific Islands. There has been a rapid and extensive development of air communications, both inter-continental through the region and inter-island within it. With these have come more business and tourism and the former characteristic isolation of South Pacific territories has been greatly modified. Sea communications and telecommunications have also developed. Literacy has spread. The cinema has brought to almost all island peoples notions of metropolitan ways of life and of the character, manners and interests of the larger populations of the world and these in turn have suggested comparisons, favourable and otherwise, with their own ways of living. Television has made its appearance in three territories.

To write of the British Commonwealth is to write of things but half-expressed, of intangibles which so often make up the realities of life. At many points the forces and attitudes which operate are not easily susceptible to analysis. The responses are those which cannot be exactly measured. Such a view invites, and usually receives, criticism, especially from those without the Commonwealth. It is dismissed as nonsense or self-deception. No doubt there is not a little of both in the easy phrases of public pronouncement, but even when hedged about by qualification—the existence of material and security gains, divergences between member states and even between groups within a single member state—something remains which cannot be defined satisfactorily in constitutional, procedural, or material terms. The substance of the Commonwealth today is a blending of historical experience, sentiment, material interest and national advantage; and combined with these is the belief that voluntary association on a basis of freedom of decision represents a positive contribution to the defence of the dignity of the individual and to the creation of a more stable international society.

At 5.15 p.m. on 15 September 1975, the Australian flag was finally lowered in Papua New Guinea. Sir John Guise, the inaugural Governor-General, a former Burns Philp delivery boy and police-sergeant, who in his youth had been gaoled twice, not for political dissidence, but for stealing a bowl of rice and for illegal drinking, declared: It is important that the people of Papua New Guinea and the rest of the world realise the spirit in which we are lowering the flag of our colonies. We are lowering it not tearing it down.