6 - Reflections on Australian foreign policy

Summary

Foreign policy has not been a matter of continuing concern in Australia: the professionals have given constant attention to it, but the public has normally been involved with it only when it was a matter of war or of problems involving allies. Raising the public temperature has been possible in such matters as the Vietnam War or the US alliance, but the disputes have not been of great importance in the body politic, though it matters greatly at times for such bodies as the Democratic Labor Party in its heyday, or the fringe leftist groups which are always a vocal part of the Australian political scene. Such a state of affairs is not accidental, but arises from the situation of a country which has no land-based boundaries with others, and so is not excited by territorial disputes or by the presence of its people as persecuted minorities in other countries; which is relatively homogeneous in its society, though multicultural to a certain degree; and which is greatly concerned with domestic issues. There is not much scope in such a situation for the quarrels with other countries (especially neighbours) which have traditionally provided elsewhere the stuff of an absorbing foreign policy and fuelled the fires of political indignation.