Until the tragic events of 4 June 1989 in Beijing, the 1980s saw a substantial broadening and strengthening of Sino–Australian relations, building on the foundations that had been laid in the previous decade and responding to the economic changes taking place in both countries. It was a good working relationship which enjoyed bipartisan support in Australia. While its emphasis was on commercial and economic interests, it was diverse, multifaceted and broadly-based within a cooperative framework, the result of sustained efforts and single-mindedness on the part of successive Australian governments. These efforts, begun by the Whitlam administration in the 1970s, were made on the ground that building productive links with a developing socialist country like China required official initiatives, professionalism and a whole range of skills. Traditionally Australia relied on largely non-official entities to establish and foster its external relations in the economic, commercial and cultural spheres. In the case of China, it was considered necessary to engage Beijing at the official level and to develop strategies with the expectation that this would facilitate non-official contacts.

Physical security, economic well-being and preservation of the political culture remain the first three foreign policy priorities of any sophisticated national government, and opportunities to make sweeping changes to policy in the pursuit of those interests are relatively rare, especially for a minor power.Nevertheless, within a rapidly changing external environment, policy priorities can shift and the quality of a nation’s diplomacy in defending those policies can rise and fall with the passage of Cabinets, foreign ministers and ambassadors. This volume traces changes and continuity in Australian external relations through the 1980s. Some of its authors also attempt evaluations of Australian policy and diplomacy through those years, though success and failure in the arena of current or very recent external policies is not easily measurable – except on such stark and dramatic occasions as a country’s subjugation by a foreign invader or the crippling of a national economy by pressure of external events.

For a time after the Liberal-National Country Party government headed by Mr Malcolm Fraser took office at the end of 1975, it carried on in large degree the foreign policy of the Whitlam Labor governments which had preceded it. The Fraser government did not admit this but it was implicit from its conduct that it was prepared to build upon the foundation which its predecessors had laid when they had brought foreign policy up to date with conditions in the world. Hence, for example, the Fraser government did not attempt to change the new and good relationship which had been established with China, and in fact the first working visit which Prime Minister Fraser made abroad included China.

Foreign aid is given from a variety of motives, not as a rule rationally ordered by the donor governments. Some is, and some is not, treated as of high importance. Thus each national aid offering is likely to be a diverse collection of disparate items, hardly worthy of the name ’programme’, with its own idiosyncratic character. Australia’s aid in 1971 has the superficial appearance of being motivated to an unusual degree by geography. This geographical pattern is not accidental. Since the second world war, Australian foreign policy has been much concerned with proximity. Australian aid has also been subject to little public cricitisim, either in principle of in detail. The magnitude, achievements and failures of Australian aid are therefore very largely the resultant of the efforts of officials in the various interested departments.

Other chapters in this volume deal with some of the many relationships between Australia and other members of the world community. These international relationships are governed by a vast network of international law which is derived from international agreements and customary international law. International agreements may be either bilateral or multilateral and may have as parties to them international organisations as well as sovereign states. Customary international law as its name indicates is formed by the practice of states and other international legal persons.

No foreign policy is conducted in a void. The words themselves imply a definition of relationship: a foreign policy operates within an international framework which is not itself rigid but subject, from the pressure of change, to constant alteration in form. The period of this volume, 1961–65, was one in which Australia, in response to new challenges, achieved a degree of maturity in both the shaping and the execution of policy. In narrow Australian terms, it opened with events which by 1962 had produced a major diplomatic defeat for Australia in the outcome of the West New Guinea dispute; it was to close with a remarkable Australian diplomatic success in the conduct of relations with Indonesia. The basic objective of policy, the safety of Australia itself, was consolidated and indeed secured for a foreseeable time by the United States relationship. But this was coupled with large uncertainties about the extent and nature of the growing political, military, and economic involvement in South-East Asia, and perhaps Asia generally.

South-East Asia has long been an area of major importance in Australian foreign policy, an importance reflected in Australian interest and involvement in the region. In the period under review this interest and involvement was sustained but there were important adjustments.

The international outlook of any community, at any stage in its development, is likely to be determined very largely by the interaction of four overlapping factors: geographic position with its strategic requirements; racial composition and resulting prejudices; economic interests, actual and potential, and, by no means least in importance, traditional policies and ideological trends. The relative strength of these several influences varies from period to period. Their individual content may change considerably under pressure of events either inside or outside the community, including the impact of party politics and of powerful personalities. They nevertheless have much to contribute to an understanding of the involved and complicated behaviour patterns of democratic societies in their relations with foreign states and peoples.

This chapter describes the growth of the Department of External Affairs at home and abroad over a thirty-year period since its reorganisation as a separate Department in 1935,examines its functions and considers its role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy. An outline of its history between 1901 and 1935 is also given.

The principal objective of defence policy is national security. National security is, of course, concerned with far more than the state of the armed forces. The level of military power is dependent on a host of complexities including national assessments about the external environment, the scope for conflict with potential adversaries and the help that might be expected from allies.