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.

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.

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.

In the 35 years since the Second World War successive Australian governments have all participated actively, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm, in the multilateral diplomacy of the United Nations, its ’Specialised Agencies’ and regional and other commissions, and the Commonwealth of Nations. Their policies in this environment have extended the scope of Australian relations through fully international cooperation while at the same time reflecting the imperatives of bilateral and regional relations.