The participation by the Commonwealth of Australia in international affairs requires it to enter into relations with other states and international organisations which are regulated by a body of law that is in many respects imperfectly defined and interpreted in divergent ways. Since the close of the Second World War, numerous concerted attempts have been made to settle more definitively the content of the customary law applicable in important areas of international life, and to amend that law to take account of changing political, economic and technological conditions.

Perhaps the most important question to be examined in a review of Australian defence policy during 1971–75 is how much fundamental change occurred. There is a strong prima facie case for holding that the period was the most consequential five years for Australian defence policy since the Second World War. The change of governing parties in late 1972 marked the end of an era when foreign and defence policy issues played a significant part in determining the outcome of the seven successive general elections won by the Liberal and Country Parties between 1951 and 1966. Even in 1969, Australian involvement in Vietnam was not sufficiently unpopular to unseat the Gorton Government which was troubled on many fronts. Because defence was an important electoral issue throughout the 23 years of Liberal-Country Party rule, it seemed only reasonable to expect marked changes in this area following their loss of office.

Australian policy relating to the United Nations falls into two well-marked periods. The first is that of the Labour Governments of Mr. John Curtin and Mr. J. B. Chifley, from the Dumbarton Oaks Conference of October 1944, when the foundations of the United Nations Organisation were laid, until the defeat of the federal Labour Government at the general election of December 1949; throughout that period, Dr. H. V. Evatt was Minister for External Affairs. The second period is from December 1949 until the time of writing (April 1956), when a coalition Government of the Liberal and Country parties has been in power under Mr. R. G. Menzies as Prime Minister; until May 1951, the Minister for External Affairs of that Government was Mr. (later Sir) Percy Spender, and subsequently it has been Mr. R. G. Casey, but Sir Percy Spender resigned from the Government only to become, for the rest of the period, Australian Ambassador in Washington and a frequent member, often leader, of Australian delegations to the United Nations.

Australian foreign policy during these years (1966–70) was formulated in the shadow of the powerful figure of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies who resigned as Prime Minister in 1966 after a record term of 17 years. His successor, Mr Harold Holt, followed in the Menzies tradition until his tragic death in December 1967. Mr John Gorton, a dark horse candidate for Prime Minister, held office from 10 January 1968 until his defeat for the leadership on 10 March 1971. A large measure of continuity in foreign policy was given by Mr (later Sir) Paul Hasluck who succeeded Sir Garfield Barwick as Minister for External Affairs in 1964 and held office until he became Governor-General in 1969. A professional in this field, he was succeeded by Mr Gordon Freeth whose brief tenure as minister ended with his defeat in the federal election of 1969. His successor, Mr W. McMahon, a very experienced professional politician, retained the portfolio until succeeding Mr Gorton as Prime Minister in March 1971.

A.C. Palfreeman, writing on immigration to Australia, 1971–75, in an earlier volume in this series, said: “There still existed, in accord with the classical definitions of sovereignty, the belief that the nation state should retain absolute control over the composition of its population … This showed very little erosion, either through international contractual obligations or through tacit international consensus. It remained one of the most jealously guarded powers, by the older states, by the Third World and by socialist states alike. Australia’s policies should be seen against this background.” In April 1976, a small boat containing Vietnamese refugees slipped almost unnoticed into Darwin harbour. It was just one of the flotilla that had left and has continued to leave Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, and it was the harbinger of a number of boats arriving on Australia’s northern shores in following years, bringing some 2000 ’eroders of sovereignty’ to settle here. These ’boat people’ together with those refugees arriving by the more conventional means of an intercontinental jet, numbered (by the end of 1980) some 45 000 new Indochinese settlers.

The capitulation of Japan in September 1945 marked the end of war in which more Australians had been directly involved than on any previous occasion. The Army had fought in the Middle East and South-East Asia against Germans, Italians, Vichy French and Japanese. The Air Force had contributed also to the defence of Britain and the war in Europe. The Navy had been engaged in the North Sea and the Atlantic, the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some 15 per cent of the population had enlisted in the defence forces, and many more were engaged in munitions production and other civilian war work. For the first time in its history, the continent had suffered aerial bombardment and naval shelling, while nearly six thousand Australians had died in the defence of the Australian Territory of Papua, the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, and adjacent islands. In addition, Australia was host to refugees from South-East Asia, to substantial Dutch forces, and to many hundreds of thousands of American servicemen.

There has been a perception in Australia, at least since 1945, that official relations between Australia and the US, similar to earlier relations with Britain the first ’great and powerful friend’, have been smoother under a Liberal-Country Party (LCP) government than under Labor. There is serious disagreement, however, regarding the explanation for the difference. Although it is easy to exaggerate the differences which existed between Washington and the Labor governments of the 1940s and 1970s, US–Australian relations certainly improved when the LCP returned to office in Canberra after November 1975. Yet the material basis for the close Australian–US political-strategic cooperation of the 1960s had withered away following the American defeat in Vietnam and the election of a Democrat administration in 1976. By 1978, the USA had pulled its troops out of Taiwan and Thailand, while promising to leave Korea by 1984. So, despite the resumption of military activity in Southeast Asia in 1979, the region no longer had the global significance of previous years which had made it the venue for American military action and hence close cooperation with Australia.

In an end-of-term address to an ’Australian Business in Europe’ (ABIE) luncheon in London on 18 July 1990, the High Commissioner and a former Labor politician, Douglas McClelland, spoke warmly of the relationship between the two countries and especially of its value to Australia: ’Today, Australia House has an annual budget of over $23 million and the value that Australia gets for that expenditure is immeasurable. For instance, we are drawing from this country some 26 000 migrants annually, and they take with them on a conservative estimate something like $830 million. We also write some 210 000 working holiday visas and those people produce and spend in Australia. On the estimates of the Australian Tourist Commission, these working holiday people earned Australia some $310 million. British investment into Australia is running at the $45 billion mark. Britain has now restored herself to being the largest overseas investor in our country. In turn, Australian companies have invested in Britain something like $15 billion.’

Australia’s relations with Japan were profoundly influenced by the transformation of the international system that gathered momentum during the 1980s, by the changing pattern of US–Soviet rivalry, the deepening socio-economic crises confronting both superpowers, the consolidation of multipolarity, the strengthening of the EC, the emergence of other regional trading blocs, shifts in global comparative advantage, the continued rise of protectionist pressures, and the restructuring of the world’s major economies. The Australia–Japan relationship was also affected by the evolution of Washington’s ties with its major Northeast Asian ally. Between 1982–87, as US–Soviet tensions escalated, the Reagan administration sought to consolidate the United States’ strategic position in the Western Pacific, reverse the prolonged decay of the San Francisco system and reduce the staggering American regional trade imbalance though negotiation of a special relationship with Tokyo.

Australian relations with the United States were broadly peripheral in 1939. Commercial contacts were very old, dating to the beginnings of Australian settlement when Thomas Patrickson put in to Port Jackson with the Philadelphia in 1792. Yet the expansion of Australian-American trade had been gradual, and in 1939 the United States ranked only as Australia’s sixth customer, although substantial American imports made her an important source of supply. Cultural contacts, except for the films, were relatively few, and only a handful of Australians attempted post-graduate work at American universities: the main stream of students was directed towards Britain, following the well-trodden paths of Australian senior academics. Press links were primarily with London: Reuters and Australian Associated Press supplied by far the greatest volume of news, even of the Pacific and North America. American periodicals trickled through by sea mail on direct subscription. Direct cable services and information centres in New York, Chicago and San Francisco were still at the infant stage.

In retrospect, the dominant feature of the period 1966–70 was the virtual withdrawal of one of Australia’s great-power protectors, Britain, coupled with the new uncertainty over the long-term role of the other, the United States. By 1970 it was accepted that Australia faced a novel strategic situation, though there was no agreement on the appropriate response, nor had the debate on the implications of the new situation been very searching.

In pursuit of its economic interests as a growing high income country, Australia continued to play an active part in world economic affairs during the ’sixties. Hitherto largely dependent on the West – particularly the United Kingdom – for much of its development capital and trade, it has increasingly felt negative pressures from Europe fortunately offset by positive opportunities in Asia and the Pacific. There has been a diversion of an increasing proportion of its trade to these latter areas, and a ready acceptance of a growing amount of capital from North America as well as from the United Kingdom.

Australia proclaims to the world that she conducts an independent foreign policy; she has never attempted to maintain, as Switzerland has done, that her status either is or should be one of permanent neutrality. Allowing for the fact that any national policy will contain features which are peculiar to the country concerned, it can be said that Australian policy should subscribe to those general principles which may be applied to test the validity of the foreign policy of any national state which does not possess a neutral status.