Australia and Japan in the period 1976 to 1980 found life as ’mature adult partners’ (as went the metaphor of the day) far from sedate. The two governments consulted actively, there was a little innovation and rather more frustration. Many of the policies towards Japan of the new Liberal-National Country Party government under Mr Malcolm Fraser reflected some of the aims of the previous Labor government in managing the impact of Australia’s foreign relations on the domestic economy. But the accent of the Fraser government was deliberately placed on stability, continuity and reliability. On some issues foreign policy choices were not clear, since several underlying problems – mainly of domestic political institutions and constraints in both countries – were close to the surface. In 1980, several of the same problems remained – notably iron ore and coal pricing, and access to the Japanese market for Australian agricultural products – although confidence was buoyant on both sides.

Relations between Australia and Western Europe can now be seen better in analytical than in narrative terms. Few decisive events occur, apart from periodic complaints from Australian Ministers about the trading practices of the European Community. Yet the connections between the two areas are of greater importance than the formal connection with the Community, because of the long-standing social links between them.

Short of war, public interest in foreign policy would seem negligible. A national poll taken in October 1980 found that only 3 per cent of those surveyed viewed foreign policy as a major issue. Of course, had the term foreign policy been substituted with overseas debt, Japanese investment, Asian immigration, the greenhouse effect or disarmament, the response may well have been different. On the whole the media, too, has adopted an uneven approach to foreign policy. ABC television and radio and most of the so-called quality newspapers have specialist reporters covering the area. However, tabloid papers, commercial television and commercial radio devote little attention to serious foreign policy analysis. Aside from periods of major international crises, such as the war in the Persian Gulf, even a cursory glance at the Australian media’s daily output shows foreign policy coverage very much lagging behind domestic politics, sport and entertainment.

A radical is one who recommends fundamental reform. Since change of an essential sort can be effected by those who stand on either the right or the left of the political spectrum, radicalism is a diverse calling, descriptive of very different doctrinal positions indeed. However far apart we think these endpoints might be, they also possess certain characteristics in common. In this respect the left/right continuum is not linear, but circular, the extremes bending back like a key-ring to where they lie parallel, though still of course separate and opposed.

These five years fall politically into two clear divisions . Superficially the dividing line might be marked by the death of Harold Holt in December 1967, but more realistically by the departure of Mr Hasluck in February 1969 when Prime Minister Gorton announced Hasluck’s elevation to the Govemor-Generalship. The resignation of Sir Robert Menzies on 20 January 1966, after being continuously in office as Prime Minister since 1949, was in itself a watershed. Harold Holt, the favourite son who had long been forced to wait in the wings, succeeded unchallenged to the prime ministership with William McMahon as deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Mr Holt’s cabinet showed little change with Mr McEwen as deputy Prime Minister, Paul Hasluck as Minister for External Affairs, and Allen Fairhall as Minister for Defence in succession to Senator Paltridge who had died in January 1966.

Australia and New Zealand have long constituted a “pluralist security community”– an association containing such ingredients as mutual compatability of major values, unbroken links of social communication affecting all levels of society, a multiplicity of transactions and mutual predictability of behaviour among decision-makers. It is an association comparable with, but perhaps even stronger than, the partnership of three Scandinavian states, that between the United States and Canada or the special relationship between Britain and Ireland.

This chapter is concerned to set Australia’s immigration policies in the context of her international relations in the years 1971–75. It will deal primarily with those aspects of the policies which affected, or were affected by, the outside world. Factors of substantially domestic nature will not be emphasised. Four areas of policy seemed particularly important. The first was the traditional immigration of settlers from Britain and Europe. Long founded on the “populate or perish” belief, there was now a very different emphasis. The second concerned the settlement of non-European peoples. The White Australia Policy might have been dead, but it refused to lie down. The third area encompassed the entry of visitors, students, businessmen and other temporary immigrants. The fourth was Australia’s policy on political asylum and the acceptance of political refugees. This last has been particularly emphasised because, of the four areas of policy, this was growing to be one of the most significant internationally and most in need of longterm consistency.

For Australians in 1991, the old and traditional answers will no longer suffice. ’Kith and kin’ attachments to the United Kingdom have less and less meaning. Anglo-Celtic migrant Australia, the very basis of foundation settlement and the predominant force in society until well after the Second World War, has been substantially diluted by the great waves of postwar Central European and Asian migration. Australia passed through war against fascism as one of the imperial allies with a relatively monolithic and native born population. In 1947 less than 10 per cent of its 7.5 million citizens were born elsewhere, and many of these were born in the United Kingdom anyway. At the last official census in 1981, over 20 per cent of its 14.9 million population was born overseas, and a minority of that astonishing figure were Anglo-Celtic (7.78 per cent). Australia was indeed becoming a ’new society’ with a vengeance. Combined with tourism, and an increasing awareness of its Asian regional context, Australians admitted to living in a plural society, almost as much indeed as official multicultural policy of government kept declaring.

Despite all the burgeoning ’Institutes of Futurology’, the record of predictions of political events has been, up to date, most unimpressive. Wisdom after the event has been the most ego-preservative role of political scientists. Nevertheless, attempts to foresee at least parts of the future, often in the hope of making preparations to absorb, or even to redirect process of social and political change, seem to be a psychological necessity for man.

Australia’s disparate policies towards Asia’s two politically divided states – China and Korea – remained unchanged after the Liberal-National Country Party coalition government took over from Labor on 11 November 1975. In the case of China, Australia under Fraser continued to maintain official links only with the Communist-led government in Peking; it continued to develop closer bilateral cultural and other ties with the People’s Republic; it continued to avoid having official links with the Nationalist-led government in Taipei; and it continued with the process of isolating the Taiwan government from the international community. These were direct outcomes of the Sino-Australian recognition agreement made by the Labor government on 21 December 1972 by which ’the Australian Government recognised the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China’.

In the previous volume it was argued that a wide area of disagreement divided the Australian from the Indian approach to problems of international affairs: Australia was aligned irrevocably with the western power bloc and looked for her military security to the United States with whose methods of attaining her international ends India fundamentally disagreed. The area of difference had been emphasized by Mr. Menzies’ policy during the Suez crisis, a policy which aligned Australia in Asian eyes with an outworn nineteenth century gunboat British imperialism.

Australian policy towards Japan has changed a great deal since Japan’s surrender. It has passed through three main phases. The first was the period of the early Occupation, from September 1945 to mid-1947. At this time Australian policy was mainly shaped by the emotional aftermath of the war years, by fear and bitterness. The overriding aim was security; to ensure that Japan would not again be able to return to the paths of aggression. This was linked with a demand for retribution, and a desire to make Japan into a democracy, since it was believed that a democracy by its nature seeks a peaceful and co-operative foreign policy. The transition to the second phase in 1947 was a reflection of the outbreak of the Cold War. The old fears of Japan were finding it harder to compete with the quickly growing fears of the Soviet Union and world Communism. From 1947 until 1951, when the Peace Treaty brought the Occupation to an end, Australian policy was ambivalent, or perhaps just inconsistent. How could Japan be made strong enough to be a bulwark against Communism, but not strong enough to be a possible danger again to Australia?

It has been remarked in earlier volumes in this series that the pattern of Australia’s relations with the United Nations to a degree can be categorised according to the personnel principally involved. Thus, one may refer with some validity to an Evatt period and to a Spender- Casey period. The period under review here, 1961–65, does not lend itself easily to a similar identification. Dr Evatt held the External Affairs portfolio in the Curtin and Chifley Governments throughout most of the 1940’s; his successors in Menzies Governments, Sir Percy Spender and (the then) Mr R. G. Casey, were of similar mind and, with Sir Percy later moving freely between his embassy in Washington and the United Nations in New York, they were closely associated throughout most of the 1950’s in the United Nations context.

“Instead of living in a tranquil corner of the globe, we are now on the verge of the most unsettled region of the world.” In these words the Minister for External Affairs, Mr. R. G. Casey, neatly summarised both the main problem of Australian foreign affairs and the changed situation in which any policy framed by an Australian Government must now function. It may also, perhaps, be thought that the Minister’s words convey a hint of that wistful regret for a more simple, clearly defined, situation which is still prominent in the attitude of most Australians towards the complex problems of the New Asia. It all used to be so easy: there was Britain, controlling the seas, ruling in her Indian Empire the main land mass of southern Asia. Holland occupied the regions immediately adjacent to Australia; peaceful, civilised Holland. The French in Indo-China removed that area from any need for consideration. China was weak, divided, and dominated by the foreign powers. There was only Japan, a real but distant menace.