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.

In the decade under review, there were signs of a lessening of outside great-power interference in regional affairs. The regional-security situation and the prospects for regional stability have in this respect provided grounds for optimism, although the situation is not entirely one which traditional Australian foreign policy in the region has sought. The long-perceived threat to regional stability posed by potential communist interference has been reduced not so much because of increased Western influence but more because of initiatives by Southeast Asian countries and, more dramatically, by the implications for world and regional affairs of the moves in the Soviet Union and China towards more open societies and towards economic priorities more responsive to free market influences. Also encouraging have been the indications from 1987 that the rivalry between these two countries was ending, although the Chinese repression of the pro-democracy movement has raised doubts about China’s development along the path to reform.

In the five years to 1970 a few Papuans and New Guineans began to share some of the anxieties of informed Australians about their country’s future place in world affairs; but in general the attention of political leaders, both indigenous and Australian, remained overwhelmingly concentrated on questions of internal development. Some basic uncertainties about Papua New Guinea’s future political status were resolved but greater uncertainties replaced them.

From time to time, the Commonwealth parliament in Canberra hears a formal ministerial statement on foreign affairs in which the minister expresses his government’s view of current international developments and lists the fundamental bases of its foreign policy. Over a period, these lists show interesting priority variations but in the case of one item, the United Nations, variation is not quite the right term. In March 1947, for example, the priorities listed by the Labor government’s Dr H. V. Evatt were: first, full support for the United Nations; second, stronger British Commonwealth ties; third, regional participation; fourth, area security arrangements with the United States and others. His successor in the Liberal-Country Party coalition government, P. C. (later Sir Percy) Spender, in his first statement of principles on 9 March 1950, raised the American security alliance to second place and dropped the United Nations to fourth, and at that hedged by reservations.

Australian policy dealing with the People’s Republic of China between 1961 and 1965 moved in traditional channels. The coalition Liberal and Country Party Federal Government was in power throughout these years and maintained formal external relationships with little innovation. This aspect of policy was stressed in 1962 by the new Minister for External Affairs, Sir Garfield Barwick, when, discussing Australian foreign policy, he referred to ’the continuity of our major lines of policy’, adding that ’If our policies have been wisely conceived and steadfastly pursued, this continuing change [in international life] will not often call for more than slight corrections of the basic policy course.’ Mr Hasluck, in his first speech to Parliament as Minister for External Affairs on 23 March 1965, stressed in turn that ’I am not introducing any change in the foreign policy of the Government. The foreign policy is that of the Government, not of a person.’

Australia has been interested in the South-West Pacific and its many islands ever since the first settlement on the east coast. Their geographical proximity and economic resources particularly attracted Australian attention; the moves of other nations reminded Australia of her defence interests in the area. The determination to protect Australians from the island peoples and the missionary desire to convert the island peoples to Christianity reinforced the pressure on the colonial governments to extend Australian control. Australian interests were maintained after an expanding Europe partitioned the islands. In the 1950’s Australian interests necessitated watching both international and local developments with much the same apprehension as in 1883 when the colonial governments declared what amounted to an Australian Monroe Doctrine for the area.

On first inspection the five years from 1976 to 1980 appear to be a period of little moment in the history of Australian defence policy. No Australian servicemen were engaged in combat, no direct threat to Australia emerged even of a minor nature, no far-reaching organisational changes in the armed services or the Department of Defence took place, and relatively little new equipment found its way into the hands of the Defence Force. Moreover, the Liberal-National Country Party government retained office throughout the period, defence policy being a minor issue in the elections of 1977 and 1980, and Mr D.J. Killen remained Minister for Defence. Nor, despite early projections, did defence spending increase significantly between 1976 and 1980, fluctuating between 2.6 per cent and 2.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

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.

Relations between Australia and China, essentially frozen since 1950 when China’s intervention in the Korean War prevented the Menzies Government from proceeding with any plans it might have had for recognising the Chinese People’s Republic, began to alter in 1970, and by the end of 1972 diplomatic exchanges had taken place and each country’s Government was preparing to send an ambassador to the other’s capital. Recognition took place against a background of rapid changes in the international environment and with other states establishing diplomatic relations with China, but was due in greater part to a change of government in Canberra in 1972. Thereafter, the relationship has been maintained and even extended, so that China has become a point of reference in the formulation of Australian foreign policy. Even so, rather less has flowed from the relationship since formal recognition than might have been expected, given the prominence the China question had assumed over the past 20 years.

The 1970s marked a watershed in Australia’s relations with the world, a watershed which, while less dramatic than that of World War II, may well prove to be more significant and profound. Central to this process has been the reassessment of Australian–American relations and the redefining of the ANZUS treaty which took place in the years 1971–75.