Facing North Volume 1

By David Goldsworthy

Facing North is the first substantial history of Australia's relations with Asia since Federation. Volume 1 chronicles Australian-Asian relations from 1901 to the 1970s and Volume 2 (in preparation) will carry the story through the last decades of the century just ended. Both make extensive use of official government sources and of the private collections of ministers and public servants.

Debate about engagement with Asia is not a recent phenomenon. Ever since Federation, Australians in public life have expressed diverse views on our foreign policy and on areas with major domestic consequences, such as immigration.

In this volume, Australia faces up to many changes in Asia. Japan, an expanding military power during the 1930s, becomes an economic partner during the 1950s. The Pacific war and decolonisation open Australia's regional horizons - and the Vietnam war necessitates active engagement with Southeast Asia. Failure to recognise China during the 1950s and 1960s shifts after 1972 to a vigorous search for relationship. Other key developments include the initiation of the Colombo Plain in the 1950s, and gradual abolition in the 1960s and 1970s of the White Australia Policy.

The story is not a simple one of smoothly evolving engagement. The challenges presented by Asian realities have evoked complex responses, which this history analyses and clarifies. It explains the major changes in official Australian policies towards Asia, together with the broader cultural challenges.

Facing North tells us what was done in the past, and why. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand Australia's present relations with Asian countries, and our future choices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Nov 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9780522862935

Book preview

Facing North

Facing North

A Century of Australian

Engagement with Asia

Volume 1: 1901 to the 1970s

edited by

David Goldsworthy

DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND TRADE

Foreword

IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE to welcome the publication of the first volume of a history of Australia’s engagement with Asia during the twentieth century produced under the auspices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as the portfolio’s contribution to the celebrations of the Centenary of Australia’s Federation.

I announced on 11 February 1999 the decision that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should produce a history of Australia’s broad political, strategic, economic and people-to-people links with Asia over the century since the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901.

The project has been researched and written by a team of historians based in the Department’s Historical Documents Project Section. It was decided during the course of the project to present the history in two volumes: the first covering the period from Federation to the 1970s and the second volume taking the story from the 1970s to the present. The principal reason for doing this was that the story could not be adequately compressed within the bounds of one manageable volume.

This fact itself bears out the value of the project as a whole, which aims to inform Australians about an important dimension of our history. In doing so it gives due regard to a basic principle of Australian diplomacy that my father once stated thus: ‘If we earnestly desire peace in the Pacific we must try to take the long view and look at the picture in its totality, in historical perspective’. This work should help to broaden our perspectives.

This first volume amply demonstrates Australia’s long history of engagement with the countries of Asia. In the first two decades after Federation, relations with the rising naval and military power in Asia, Japan, became increasingly important despite the Commonwealth’s having adopted a ‘White Australia’ policy. During the 1930s increasing trade with Japan and China helped Australia overcome the ravages wrought by the Great Depression on a small trading economy. By the end of that decade Australia had established its first diplomatic missions abroad, largely in response to events in Asia.

One effect of the Pacific War was to make the future of Asia centrally important to Australian foreign policy. This was reflected in the policies of both major parties, with the Chifley government supporting the Republic of Indonesia’s attempt to wrest independence from the Dutch, and the Menzies government working actively to promote regional stability and economic development through the Colombo Plan and by coming to terms with an economically resurgent Japan. These issues are carefully analysed in this volume, together with Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asian conflicts.

It is fitting that the first volume concludes with a chapter tracing the profound bipartisan policy and attitudinal changes towards Asia in the period from 1966 to the 1970s that created a foundation for later policies of engagement. This chapter covers, among other things, the ending of the White Australia policy, the establishment of political relations with the People’s Republic of China, the signing of a friendship treaty with Japan, and the establishment of positive relations with ASEAN states.

I am pleased to acknowledge the support of the Advisory Committee established for this project: Professor Kym Anderson, Dr Ann Capling, Mr Paul Kelly, Professor Alan Rix and Mr David Sadleir AO. I am pleased also to acknowledge the leadership of the Secretary of the Department, Dr Ashton Calvert, in this project. His very strong conviction that the Department has a vital role in informing the public about the history of Australia’s external relations, and its long history of engagement with Asia, has driven this project forward.

I look forward to the publication of the second volume of this project in 2002.

Alexander Downer

Minister for Foreign Affairs

Contents

Foreword

Alexander Downer

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

David Goldsworthy

1  A British Outpost in the Pacific

David Dutton

2  Towards Diplomatic Representation

Shannon L. Smith

3  War, Decolonisation and Postwar Security

Christopher Waters

4  Indonesia’s Independence

David Lee

5  The Cold War across Asia

Peter Gifford

6  The Postwar Expansion of Trade with East Asia

Roderic Pitty

7  Southeast Asian Conflicts

David Lee and Moreen Dee

8  Reorientation

David Goldsworthy, David Dutton, Peter Gifford and Roderic Pitty

Conclusion

David Goldsworthy and Roderic Pitty

Appendixes I-VII

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Photographs

A Chinese Arch at Federation, Melbourne, 1901

National Library of Australia

Australian naval brigade officers and men serving in China, 1900–1

Australian War Memorial

The Indian contingent to Federation celebrations in Sydney, 1901

National Library of Australia

Chinese citizens of Melbourne and their dragon, 1901

National Library of Australia

Chinese-Australians picnic in Emmaville, NSW, c. 1908

State Library of New South Wales

Alfred Deakin

National Archives of Australia

William Morris Hughes

National Archives of Australia

Sydneysiders view the Australian Fleet in Farm Cove, 1913

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Officers of the Japanese escort ship Ibuki in Fremantle, September 1914

National Library of Australia

Edmund Leolin Piesse

Margaret Piesse/National Library of Australia

Conference on Eastern Trade in Sydney, 1933

State Library of New South Wales

J. G. Latham with the Mayor of Tokyo, 1934

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

J. G. Latham entertained by the Sultan of Yogyakarta, 1934

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Indian hockey team members at the Sydney Cricket Ground, 1938

Hood Collection, State Library of New South Wales

William J. Liu

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Dr Pao Chun Jien at a Chinese antique exhibition, 1937

Hood Collection, State Library of New South Wales

A Japanese wool buyer, 1937

Hood Collection, State Library of New South Wales

Australian waterside workers loading scrap iron for Japan, 1934

Hood Collection, State Library of New South Wales

Sir Frederic Eggleston

Australian War Memorial

The SS Neptunia during the Japanese attack on Darwin, February 1942

Australian War Memorial

The Australian flag being hoisted at Kokoda

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

John Curtin with General Douglas MacArthur, March 1942

National Archives of Australia

The Burma-Thailand Railway, c. 1943

Australian War Memorial

H. V. Evatt, and Lieutenant General H. C. H. Robertson in Hiroshima, 1947

Evatt Collection, Flinders University Library

Commonwealth Talks on Japanese Peace Treaty, August/September 1947

National Archives of Australia

An Australian soldier with a Japanese artisan, 1947

Australian War Memorial

H. V. Evatt laying a wreath in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, 1949

Evatt Collection, Flinders University Library

Arthur Calwell with Bertram Ballard, 1947

National Library of Australia

Proclaiming the Republic of Indonesia, August 1945

Australian War Memorial

Australian servicemen and striking Indonesian seamen, Sydney, 1945

ScreenSound Australia

Australian 7th Division troops landing in Balikpapan, Borneo, 1945

Australian War Memorial

Major General E. Milford accepts Japanese surrender, 8 September 1945

Australian War Memorial

Lieutenant Colonel T. W. Cotton hands over copy of surrender, October 1945

Australian War Memorial

An Australian aircraftman shares chocolate with a baby, Borneo, 1945

Australian War Memorial

Dutch Technical Battalion trainees in Casino, NSW, 1945

Frederick Daniell Collection, ScreenSound Australia

The Manoora, used to repatriate Indonesians to Republican territory

National Library of Australia

Sutan Sjahrir, Sukarno, R. C. Kirby and Mohammed Hatta, 1948

National Library of Australia

Sukarno receiving T. K. Critchley, 1948

National Library of Australia

Committee of Good Offices members welcome Sukarno, 1949

National Library of Australia

J. D. L. Hood presents his credentials to Sukarno, 1950

National Library of Australia

The Inaugural Ministerial Meeting of the Colombo Plan, 1950

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Colombo Plan delegation leaders with Sir Garfield Barwick, 1962

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

A Malaysian Colombo Plan student in Australia, 1965

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

John Burton in the Philippines, 1950

J. W. Burton

Australian soldiers and Japanese war brides arrive in Australia, 1956

State Library of New South Wales

Royal Australian Engineers sappers with children in Malaya

Australian War Memorial

R. G. Casey in Manila for discussions to establish SEATO, 1954

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

A Thai student at the SEATO military technical school in Bangkok, 1962

Australian War Memorial

R. G. Casey and Sir Arthur Tange with Lal Bahadur Shastri in New Delhi, 1965 207

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

A. M. Morris, M. Quinim Pholsena and Sir Garfield Barwick in Laos, 1962

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

P. C. Spender and Sukarno discuss West New Guinea, 1950

National Library of Australia

R. G. Menzies meets Sukarno in Indonesia, 1959

National Archives of Australia

Sir John Crawford

National Archives of Australia

J. B. Chifley with the Allied Council for Japan in Tokyo, 1946

Australian Picture Library/Corbis–Bettman

R. G. Menzies and Kishi Nobusuke in Tokyo, 1957

Kyodo News Agency

John McEwen and Kishi Nobusuke sign the Agreement on Commerce, 1957

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

R. G. Casey wih Kishi Nobusuke and Sir Alan Watt in Japan, 1959

National Archives of Australia (Victoria), courtesy Japanese Foreign Ministry

R. G. Casey and Maie Casey in Japan, 1959

National Archives of Australia (Victoria), courtesy Japanese Foreign Ministry

John McEwen with the organiser of the Japan Trade Fair in Sydney, 1959

State Library of New South Wales, courtesy Japanese Consulate, Sydney

Chou En-lai with Trade Commissioner H. C. Menzies in Peking, 1956

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

W. A. Westerman welcomes the 1953 Indonesian Trade Delegation

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Sir Garfield Barwick and Tunku Abdul Rahman during Malaysia celebrations, 1963

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Searching for Indonesian infiltrators into Sarawak

Australian War Memorial

Nguyen Cao Ky welcomes Harold Holt to Saigon, 1966

National Library of Australia

Harold Holt at a Council meeting of SEATO in Canberra, 1966

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Paul Hasluck, Harold Holt and Jesus M. Vargas at SEATO ceremony, 1966

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Harold Holt with Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington, 1967

National Library of Australia

Nguyen Van Thieu with John Gorton in Saigon, 1968

National Archives of Australia

Vietnam moratorium crowd in Melbourne, 1970

National Library of Australia

Arrest of a protester at a march-past of returned troops from Vietnam, 1966

State Library of New South Wales

Harold Holt with Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Phnom Penh, 1967

National Library of Australia

John Gorton with Indira Gandhi in Canberra, 1968

Canberra Times, 22 May 1968[?]

Harold Holt with Chiang Kai-shek in Taipei, 1967

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Signing the Joint Communique on recognition of China, 1972

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

E. G. Whitlam with Mao Tse-tung in China, 1973

National Library of Australia

Malcolm Fraser and Miki Takeo sign NARA in Tokyo, 1976

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

J. F. Cairns and the Trade Mission to China near Anshan, 1973

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

E. G. Whitlam with Chou En-lai in China, 1973

National Archives of Australia

E. G. Whitlam with Abdul Razak bin Hussein in Kuala Lumpur, 1974

National Archives of Australia

Malcolm Fraser with Lee Kuan Yew at Nareen, 1976

National Archives of Australia

Suharto with E. G. Whitlam and Richard Woolcott in Townsville, 1975

National Archives of Australia

Maps

The maps have been prepared specifically for this volume using a variety of sources. The map of Federal Indonesia is substantively reproduced from vol. XIII of DAFP. The others are based largely but not completely on various previously published maps or, in the case of Timor, on a map sent to the United Nations. Significant additions have been made so that these maps are not substantive reproductions of the source maps acknowledged below.

Imperial Powers in Asia 1901

Times Atlas of the 20th Century; History Atlas of Asia

Japanese Expansion

Times Atlas of the 20th Century; History Atlas of Asia

Pacific War

Times Atlas of the 20th Century; History Atlas of Asia

Federal Indonesia 1948

DAFP, vol. XIII

Korean War

History Atlas of Asia; Stueck, Korean War; Grey, Military History of Australia

Decolonisation in Asia 1961

Times Atlas of the 20th Century; History Atlas of Asia

Confrontation

Dennis and Grey, Emergency and Confrontation; Grey, Military History of Australia; Mackie, Konfrontasi

Vietnam War

Times Atlas of the 20th Century; History Atlas of Asia.

Fighting in Timor 1975–76

Map titled ‘Democratic Republic of East Timor: position of invasion forces June 1976’, sent with a letter by Jose Ramos-Horta to UN Secretary-General, 8 July 1976; Jolliffe, East Timor; Dunn, Timor

Preface

THIS BOOK IS THE FIRST of two volumes on Australia’s engagement with Asia since 1901. The choice of 1901 as the starting point of the study is not meant to suggest that Australian connections with Asia began with Federation. Indeed, there were various forms of contact, especially in the commercial and social realms, long before then, as is pointed out in Chapter 1. The significance of 1901 is essentially political and diplomatic. This was the year in which Australia was launched as a nation-state, with a central government possessing constitutional authority in the domain of external affairs. Hence, in this formal sense, 1901 is the year from which Australia’s national relationships with the countries of Asia can be dated. However, the scope of the book goes well beyond politics and diplomacy. The key motif is engagement, and this is a many-faceted phenomenon that the authors of the book have sought to treat in an appropriately many-faceted way. Thus, while the work naturally focuses on the foreign affairs and trade portfolio, it is not intended to be a simple departmental history. Government policies are central to the story, but these are placed in the context of Australian cultural and societal attitudes and of the changing political, economic and social history of Asia.

The genesis of this project was a decision in August 1998 by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Alexander Downer, and the Minister for Trade, Mr Tim Fischer, to adopt a recommendation of the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dr Ashton Calvert, that the Department commission a history of Australia’s engagement with Asia during the twentieth century. In announcing the decision on 11 February 1999, Mr Downer and Mr Fischer stated that the history would ‘trace the development of Australia’s broad political, strategic, economic and people-to-people links with Asia over the century since the Federation of the Australian colonies’. During the course of the project it was decided to publish the work in two volumes. This first volume traces the history of Australia’s engagement with Asia from Federation in 1901 to the 1970s. A second volume will be devoted to the period from the 1970s to the new century. The period covered by the second volume, although much shorter than that covered by this volume, was one of greater complexity and broader activism in Australia’s relations with Asia and therefore was considered deserving of a separate volume. The contents of that volume are outlined at the end of this one.

Mr Downer and Mr Fischer established an Advisory Committee to assist the project. The Committee included: Dr Calvert as Chair; Professor Kym Anderson, Director of the Centre for International Economic Studies, University of Adelaide; Dr Ann Capling, Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne; Mr Paul Kelly, International Editor, Australian; Professor Alan Rix, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland; and Mr David Sadleir AO, Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Documents on Australian Foreign Policy series. The Advisory Committee for the project met formally twice, on 30 March 1999 and on 29 March 2000. Individual members of the Committee reviewed the draft chapters as they were written, offering detailed comments that were of considerable benefit to the authors. The Committee members are in no way responsible, however, for the content of the finished work.

The volume was researched and written by a team of historians employed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and based in its Historical Documents Project Section, with the exception of Chapter 3 and the ‘Socio-cultural Engagement’ section of Chapter 5, which were prepared by external authors (Christopher Waters and Mary Quilty, respectively). The volume was edited by David Goldsworthy of Monash University. Professor Goldsworthy’s editorial objectives were to ensure that the historical account was factually accurate; to take care that the account was written in as much detail as was necessary for a satisfactory exposition of events, issues, decisions and policies; to ensure that the analysis of each historical period reflected a proper understanding of the perceptions and concerns of the people at the time, so that their decisions and actions were not simply considered in terms of later attitudes; to ensure that the historical judgments in the account were consistently well reasoned and fair-minded; to ensure that source materials were used with scrupulous regard to accurate citation and reasoned interpretation; to ensure narrative continuity between chapters; and to improve readability for a non-specialist audience.

While this history of Australia’s engagement with Asia has been financed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and published under its auspices, it must be stressed that the analyses, arguments, opinions and conclusions presented therein are not necessarily those of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade nor of Ministers. Throughout the work, opinions expressed and arguments presented are those of the authors. It needs to be noted that some of the issues discussed in the book were and are controversial. In treating such issues, as in the preparation of the book as a whole, the authors and editor have made every effort to produce a balanced and fair account.

The work is based on both primary and secondary sources. The authors were given access to relevant official records, including recent records that will only become available to the general public under the normal operation of the thirty-year rule under the Archives Act 1983. Among the records less than thirty years old that were consulted during the preparation of this volume, materials from selected Department of External/Foreign Affairs and Trade files and from selected Cabinet files were used in order to provide an informed narrative of particularly significant policy issues (for example, consideration of whether to recognise China in the early 1970s).

The authors of individual chapters are listed on the Contents page. Some short passages by other members of the writing team were incorporated into certain chapters as follows: in Chapter 2, passages by Damien Browne, David Dutton, David Goldsworthy, David Lee and Roderic Pitty; in Chapter 3, passages by Peter Gifford and David Lee; and in Chapter 5, passages by David Goldsworthy, David Lee and Mary Quilty. Chapter 4 is based on Volumes XI, XII and XV of Documents on Australian Foreign Policy: Australia & Indonesia’s Independence, edited by Philip Dorling and David Lee. Four authors were involved in the writing of Chapter 8. David Goldsworthy wrote the introductory sections; David Dutton wrote Excising Racism: Immigration Reform and Multiculturalism, and the first part of Human Rights: Indonesia and East Timor; Peter Gifford wrote Engagement with Southeast Asia, Engagement with Northeast Asia: China, and the second part of Human Rights: Indonesia and East Timor; and Roderic Pitty wrote Engagement with Northeast Asia: Japan and Engagement with Northeast Asia: Trade, and co-wrote Engagement with Northeast Asia: China, Engagement with Southeast Asia, and the second part of Human Rights: Indonesia and East Timor.

Administrative direction of the project was provided by David Lee in his capacity as Director, Historical Documents Project Section, with assistance in the early stages of the project from Francesca Beddie, and with administrative assistance throughout from Vivianne Johnson.

Debts of gratitude are owed to many in the making of this history. We acknowledge with thanks research assistance provided by Sue Langford and Kimberley Johnstone, editorial assistance provided by Pamela Andre and by Virginia Wilton and Gillian O’Loghlin of Brown & Wilton Proprietary Limited and assistance with the preparation of maps from Landinfo Proprietary Limited, particularly Kath Morris. Determining the content of the maps was the responsibility of members of the historical research team, principally Roderic Pitty with assistance provided by David Dutton, Moreen Dee and Pamela Andre. Comments on the maps were provided by Lieutenant-General John Coates, Mr James Dunn, Mr Gordon Murphy, Mr Jeremy Hearder and Mr Ian Brown. Neither Landinfo’s staff nor those who provided comments are responsible for any errors contained in the maps. Professor Kym Anderson kindly permitted us to reproduce a table published by himself and Ross Garnaut in ‘Australia’s trade growth with developing countries’, in The Developing Economies, vol. XXIII, no. 2, June 1985.

Comments on individual chapters were gratefully received from Ian Hancock, Les Louis, David Lowe, Nancy Rivett, Alan Ryan, Denis Warner and Christopher Waters. In the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Greg Urwin, Ian Wilcock, Roger Holdich AM and Pam Fayle read and commented on several draft chapters. The Department’s library, and in particular Felicity Butler, Jennifer Ensbey and Lorraine Bird, gave valuable support to the project. From the Department of the Parliamentary Library, Frank Frost gave us the value of his expertise on the history of Australia and Southeast Asia. The National Archives of Australia helped the project locate and gain access to source material and generously assisted with the cost of photocopying. Project members also received valuable assistance from the manuscripts staff of the National Library of Australia and from the staff of the Flinders University Library in relation to the Dunstan and Evatt Collections.

Moreen Dee collected all the photographs reproduced in this book. For allowing us permission to reproduce photographs in their collection, thanks are due to the National Archives of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, the State Library of New South Wales (including material from the Bicentennial Copying Project, the Mitchell Library and the Hood Collection), ScreenSound Australia (including material from the Frederick Daniell Collection), the Kobe news agency, the Canberra Times, the Australian Picture Library/Corbis Bettman, and the Evatt Collection, Flinders University Library. Thanks are also due to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Japanese Consul-General in Sydney who kindly agreed to allow us to reproduce photographs over which they had copyright, and to Margaret Piesse who kindly gave permission for us to reproduce a clear photograph of her father, E. L. Piesse.

Finally, thanks are due to the book’s publisher, Melbourne University Press. For their support and for their helpful and efficient handling of this large project, we thank in particular John Meckan, the Director of the Press; Andrew Watson, Assistant Director; Jean Dunn, Senior Editor; Margot Jones, who carried the major responsibility for seeing the book through all stages of production; Jamie Anderson, who prepared the index; and Beryl Hill, who provided invaluable input as the publisher’s freelance editor.

David Goldsworthy

David Lee

Abbreviations

Introduction

David Goldsworthy

AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century a newly federated Australia had few significant links with Asia. Trade took place between Australia and some Asian countries—for example, India, the Netherlands East Indies, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong—but only on a minor scale. Western imperial power was entrenched across the greater part of the Asian region, and most of the political communications of the colonised countries ran vertically within the various imperial systems rather than laterally to third countries such as Australia. Only China, Japan, Korea and Siam were free of Western colonial rule. The first two of these were in different ways important countries. China was by far the largest Asian state, albeit divided, in political decline, and subjected to informal colonialism through Western spheres of economic influence. Japan was both powerful militarily and expansionist within its region, which made it a focus for Australian anxieties. But with its external relations controlled by Britain, Australia had no direct diplomatic ties with either of these independent countries.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century Australia and Asia had both changed enormously, especially in the political and economic realms, and there was an established, large-scale and still evolving pattern of Australian engagement in the region: political, diplomatic, strategic, economic, social, educational and cultural. The aim of this two-volume study is to trace the historical processes by which this pattern developed. Though there have been many studies of Australia’s involvement in the Asian region, no previous work has sought to explore the historical dynamics of engagement over the full period of Australia’s existence as a federal state.

This Introduction has three main purposes. The first is to indicate how the key ideas of ‘Asia’ and ‘engagement’, neither of which has a fixed meaning, are used in this work. The second is to give preliminary attention to some questions about the forces and influences at work in the engagement process during the century just past. How did engagement with Asia fit into the broader matrix of Australian domestic and foreign policies? In what ways did historical developments in Asia and at the global level affect Australia’s approach to Asia? How much emphasis should be given to the contributions of particular governments and policy-makers in explaining Australian policy? These are large questions, and the aim of this Introduction is merely to sketch in outline the sorts of answers that will emerge from the text as a whole.

The third purpose is to indicate some of the major issues that arose in the course of Australia’s ‘Asia debate’, especially in the last part of the century. Politicians, officials, journalists, academics and others debated, inter alia, the merits of the fundamental economic case for engagement; the question of ‘Asian values’; the question of Australia’s ‘place’ in the region; and the matter of Australia’s ‘acceptability’. These problematic issues admitted of no ready solutions. They appear certain to remain in contention into the new century; the debate, in other words, will continue to evolve as an accompaniment to the ongoing story of Australian-Asian relations.

‘Asia’ and ‘Engagement’

The term ‘Asia’ does not signify homogeneity. Rather it refers to a large number of countries of very great political, economic, geographical, ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. There have been efforts by some Asian leaders and governments in recent decades to create a stronger sense of shared Asian-ness among some at least of these countries: to promote what has sometimes been called the ‘Asianisation of Asia’. Most of the more visible efforts have taken place in economic and functional realms, often through the advocacy of new regional institutions: an East Asian Economic Group, for example, or an Asian monetary fund. Yet deep historical differences and conflicts of interest persist, meaning that ‘Asia’ never has spoken with a unitary voice in either local or global affairs. Thus, while the concept of Asia remains an indispensable one for the purposes of politics, diplomacy and scholarship, historical analysis such as is pursued in this work frequently requires that Asia be conceived not as a whole but as a sum of parts. In case after case, episode after episode, it is the particularity of different Asian states and subregions that needs to be grasped if the character of Australian engagement is to be clearly understood. To take a prime historical example: until World War II Australia’s concerns about Japan meant that those who made Australia’s Asian policy were largely (never, of course, entirely) preoccupied with this single Asian country.

The very boundaries of Asia have been perceived differently in different eras. Early Greek and Roman records describe Asia as extending from the eastern Mediterranean littoral to the Caucasus and the Persian Gulf, beyond which European geographical knowledge did not reach. During the last two millennia the processes of trade, exploration, religious proselytisation, warfare and imperialism opened up knowledge of the enormous land mass spreading from Asia Minor to China and from the Arctic Circle to the equator, and of the islands ranging round the continent’s perimeter from Japan in the northeast by way of the archipelagos in the southeast to Ceylon in the south. A strictly geographical definition based on the continental divisions remained in common use well into the twentieth century. A British map from the 1920s shows the Bosphorus demarcating Asia from Europe, and the Urals dividing oriental Russia from occidental; the accompanying text declares that ‘The great states of the continent are India (British), China, Japan, Siberia and Turkistan (Russian), and Indo-China (French). The minor independent states are Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and Siam’.¹ Through the twentieth century the variable and subjective nature of regional identity was well demonstrated at the continent’s western and eastern extremities. In the west, post-Ottoman Turkey wrestled with a trinity of part-realised identities: Asian, Middle Eastern, and European. To the east lay Japan, a country acutely conscious of its separateness, its distinctiveness, and its unity as a nation and a civilisation. Stemming from this sense of difference was a strand of Japanese thought that resisted categorisation of Japan as ‘part of Asia’; it was simply Japan. Australia’s own changing view of Japan’s regionality offers still further indication of how variable perceptions could be. Conventionally classified by Australians nowadays as an Asian state, Japan was much more often described by Australians in the early decades of the century as a Pacific state.

From around the middle of the century, however, Asia as generally conceived in Australia began to contract in physical size. In effect the western boundary moved eastwards, coming to rest at Afghanistan or perhaps the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, as a strictly geographical definition yielded to a notion guided much more by perceptions of certain cultural and racial commonalities, and also by Australia’s sense of the ‘Asia’ wherein it had developing interests. This shift in understanding was neatly illustrated in Australian immigration statistics, which from the 1980s ceased to classify people born in the Middle East as Asian. Further, in Australian usage many references to Asia meant only the countries of East Asia (that is, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia combined); for the other great subregion, South Asia, was generally seen as less directly important to Australia. It follows from all this that a study of Australian engagement with Asia needs first to state the way in which the Asian region is being defined. The definition used in this work reflects prevalent Australian usage: Asia extends west to Pakistan, north to China and Japan, and southeast to Indonesia. Thus Russia, the Central Asian republics, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and closer to home Papua New Guinea, do not come into this story.

The second concept requiring consideration is ‘engagement’. For some decades now, the concept of engagement has served as the major currency of almost all Australian discourse on relations with Asia. What has to be stressed here is that this concept too is a variable one. In focusing upon Australian engagement with Asia in the latter part of the century, it is possible to imagine a spectrum of meanings ranging from weak to strong, or minimal to maximal. On this understanding, minimal engagement might be thought of as comprising not much more than routine diplomatic and commercial representation in Asian countries. At the other end of the spectrum, maximal engagement might be thought of as the thoroughgoing integration of Australia into the Asian region in all the major realms of national life—political, strategic, economic, social, cultural. But of course debate about engagement is not just conceptual. People not only conceive of engagement in different ways: they also make judgments and express preferences. Many of those who incline towards minimalism in their preference do so because they believe that Australia’s most important interests and associations lie elsewhere: that, as Hal Hill (not himself a minimalist) has put it, ‘as a country of predominantly European ethnic origin, cultural values and living standards, our primary social and economic focus must remain with the Continent and North America (and perhaps Japan) . . . in any case, the two largest and most open markets are still the US and the EC’. Writing in 1990, Hill nominated the Returned Services League (RSL) and such prominent individuals as the business leader John Elliott and the historian Geoffrey Blainey as proponents of this sort of view.² At the other extreme, some enthusiasts for maximal engagement have pushed the idea to the extent of referring to ‘the Asianisation of Australian life’ as an important element of the engagement process. One who has done so is the foreign affairs journalist Greg Sheridan, in whose view, expressed in 1995, engagement has been driving revolutionary change within Australia: not just in material circumstances but in ‘the Australian psyche . . . That is why it is so comprehensive a revolution—it is a transformation of the spirit and the body’.³

It is useful to have such different views articulated, since the contrast between them illustrates how very broad is the terrain for discussion. To put it simply, there is much to discuss because engagement is a large phenomenon that can, and does, take numerous and diverse forms. Pace the minimalists, a descriptive empirical account of Australian engagement with Asia at the end of the twentieth century would necessarily find itself reviewing a remarkably wide range of activities. These would include the conduct of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic relationships throughout the region; the establishment and maintenance of political alliances; the formation of international coalitions on particular issues; and involvement in the building of regional institutions and regimes. They would include much activity in the security domain: regional dialogues, peacemaking, peacekeeping, second-track diplomacy. They would include Australian participation in regional trade, finance, investment and development assistance; in technical and functional realms ranging from the co-ordination of telecommunications to the standardisation of customs regulations; and in multilateral negotiations about all such matters. They would include intergovernmental dialogues on such sensitive and sometimes divisive issues as human rights and political liberalisation. They would include society-to-society contacts: migration, tourism, cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, the work of non-government aid agencies. And in addition to describing all these activities, the review would have to include an account of associated phenomena within Australia: the growth of the Asian component of the population; the study of Asian languages and culture through the education system; the impact of Asian influences on the print and broadcast media, on the arts, on cuisine; Asia-related changes in the operations of the business sector; and the overall impact of all these processes on Australia’s sense of its own identity.

The point here is not to suggest that by the end of the century engagement with Asia was a fully realised objective. Engagement is a process with no obvious or agreed endpoint. Nor is it to suggest that all the forms of engagement just noted were working in well-institutionalised and fruitful ways. Some were but some were not, being much affected by, for example, the waxing and waning of Australia’s various political relationships in the region. And nor is it to suggest that consensus prevailed in Australia about the advantages and disadvantages of engagement with Asia. At century’s end there continued to be disagreements about such matters between minimalists, maximalists, and those in between. Rather, the point here is that there can be no adequate understanding of engagement without an appreciation of the dimensions of diversity and complexity that are intrinsic to it.

Contexts and Influences

But merely to describe the proliferation of forms of engagement is not to explain why and how they came about. Australian policy towards Asia through the twentieth century was not driven simply by some internal or self-propelling dynamic. It needs to be seen and interpreted as one element within the broader matrix of national policy, which itself reflected and expressed an array of national interests and concerns—pre-eminently, economic prosperity and physical security. Among the influences on policy, large-scale developments in Asia itself and in global politics—‘world historical events’—deserve to be given particular attention because of the impact they had on Australia’s economic and security interests, and on the general pattern of regional international relations. Also deserving attention are the roles of individual Australian policy-makers: the historical agents charged with making sense of interests, concerns and events, and devising courses of action. Accordingly, this section will deal in turn with the interrelated themes of national policy, the international context, and the roles of policy-makers.

In the early part of the century the matrix of national policy had a number of well-defined components that rested upon widespread political and community support. There was White Australia. There was protection all round: tariffs to shield the manufacturers against foreign competition, marketing boards for the farmers, an arbitration system underwriting a high-wage economy for labour. And in external policy—which encompassed defence, trade, and the importation of human, physical and financial capital—there was overwhelming reliance upon the imperial patron, Britain. In their essentials these policies endured for several decades. The main point here is that almost everything about this complex of policies entailed a largely exclusionary attitude towards Asia. This did not mean that Asia was ignored; for those of imperial mind the British Empire in Asia clearly had a place in the scheme of things, while all Australian governments from Federation onwards were well aware—and indeed wary—of Japan. Nevertheless, the complex of key policies served to define and reinforce a world view in which Asia tended to be seen as a potential source of problems of one kind or another (non-white immigration, especially from China; economic competition and military threat, especially from Japan) against which Australia needed to protect itself.

From around the middle of the century the complex of national policies began to undergo a prolonged process of change. Many of the policy shifts entailed qualitative changes in attitudes and policies towards Asia—and hence the development of various forms of engagement. The 1940s were something of a watershed decade in that the government of the period not only embraced an ethos of national planning for Australia but also voiced positive support for the nationalist aspirations that were sweeping the region. In the 1950s the growing recognition of Australia’s economic complementarity with Japan, and potentially with other parts of East Asia in the longer run, led to major initiatives in Australian trade policy. Significantly, the conclusion of the landmark Commerce Agreement between Australia and Japan in 1957 saw the government taking a cautious step away from the old policy of near-absolute protection for Australian manufacturers. Then in the 1960s and 1970s the old policy of restrictive immigration was by degrees phased out, to be succeeded by a non-racial immigration policy and an official commitment to cultural pluralism. This policy shift signalled, among other things, an accommodation to some of the social, political and demographic implications of Australia’s geographical proximity to Asia. In the 1980s protectionism gave way to economic liberalisation, a process involving financial and labour market deregulation, the phasing out of tariffs, the privatisation of state assets, and in general the further opening of the Australian economy to the play of global as well as domestic market forces. This policy development too had its regional dimension: for, among other things, it was indicative of Australia’s ambition to become a more competitive trader in what was by this time an extraordinarily dynamic economic region to Australia’s north. As for foreign policy, the old dependence on the European mother country was superseded from the 1940s by a reorientation towards the dominant Pacific power, the United States; subsequently, as both Britain and the United States increasingly focused their attention on other parts of the world, successive Australian governments put much effort into reappraising Australia’s regional role. In these circumstances Australia’s still important relationship with the United States could be, and was, complemented by efforts to develop strong political relationships with the major regional powers—Japan, Indonesia, China; relationships that were increasingly seen as critical to Australia’s future.

These were some of the ways in which the development of forms of engagement could be interpreted by reference to developments in the broader matrix of Australian national policies. In pursuing this line of analysis, however, it would be wrong to think of engagement as a cumulative incremental process running steadily from one end of the century to the other. There are several reasons for rejecting such a view.

In the first place, Australian policy change was irregular in pace. In the early decades it was slow, and in some respects almost imperceptible. In the last three decades it was substantial and multidimensional, but with different areas of policy experiencing different rates of change. Immigration policy, as has just been noted, was non-racial by the mid-1970s; economic liberalisation did not begin to dominate the reform agenda until the following decade.

In the second place, the process of engagement was marked by setbacks and reversals as well as advances. For example, trade with Japan grew promisingly in the early 1930s, but was disrupted by the government’s attempt to redirect trade back to Britain through the trade diversion policy of 1936, and was then wiped out altogether by the Pacific War; not until the 1950s did the momentum return. To take another example: over the first half-century of Indonesia’s existence, the temper of the bilateral relationship varied, seldom predictably, from considerable warmth (the independence years, the New Order period) to considerable tension (the military phase of Confrontation, the disagreements over East Timor at century’s end); and the tensions were such that much diplomatic effort had to be invested each time in restoring the relationship. In short, although the forms of engagement did become more complex and wide-ranging over time, it would be unhistorical to represent the story as one of unalloyed progress in which the problematic features of engagement were sequentially resolved through the century. Problems aplenty remained at the century’s end.

In the third place, and perhaps most importantly, change was driven by different stimuli in different epochs, with consequentially varied outcomes. And this is a suitable point at which to broaden the focus of the discussion to the macro-level, and to make explicit what has so far been mainly implicit: namely, the impact of the great historical tides of the twentieth century on Australian policies towards Asia. Early in the century, as has been stressed, there were relatively few opportunities and incentives to engage with many areas of Asia. But then down the century, tremendous events—two world wars; the Great Depression; nationalism; decolonisation; communist revolution; Cold War; industrialisation; the internationalisation of production; the spread of new information technologies—fundamentally changed the patterns of opportunities and incentives, fed into the developments in Australian national policy just described, brought great changes in Asia itself, and can be said, in short, to have contributed in quite specific ways to the shaping of Australia’s engagement with Asia. To demonstrate this it is necessary to traverse the century once more. A long string of examples could be adduced; a few must suffice.

Early in the century the Great War (World War I) and its aftermath prompted increased Australian attention to Japan, already seen by many Australians as a potential military threat, notwithstanding Japan’s role as an ally of Britain and Australia in the Great War. But in the early 1930s the Depression encouraged Australia to increase its trade with Japan. In the 1940s World War II prompted greater engagement with those places in which Australians fought—for example, Malaya, Singapore, Thailand and the Netherlands East Indies—and to some extent with Nationalist China as well. The aftermath of war brought increased involvement with the former enemy Japan, through the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in the first instance. In the second half of the decade the rise of Asian nationalism and the processes of Asian decolonisation led to Australia’s early involvement in Indonesia, effectively in support of the Indonesian nationalists—a major step in the history of engagement. Subsequently, as the Cold War developed, Australia became generally more supportive of the policies of Britain and/or the United States on issues of decolonisation and its aftermaths (though not on West New Guinea, where the metropolitan powers felt able to accept the prospect of a transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Indonesia, whereas for several years Australia, driven by security concerns, did not). Later again, in the mid-1970s, Australia faced a policy dilemma with regard to decolonisation in Portuguese Timor, in the end accepting Indonesian incorporation.

In the 1950s and 1960s Australia’s Asian policy was dominated by Cold War imperatives. Antagonism towards communism in general and fear of revolutionary China in particular propelled Australia not only into defensive regional alliances (ANZAM, SEATO) with the United States, Britain and other powers, but also into active involvement in land wars in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. The Cold War also conditioned Australian approaches towards Japan. For several years after the Pacific War, Australia feared resurgent Japanese militarism (and this was in itself a key reason for ANZUS, at least from Australia’s point of view), but by the mid-1950s Japan was seen unequivocally as a Cold War ally.

The final three decades encompassed rapid regional economic growth, the emergence of the Asian tigers, the end of the Cold War and the rise of economic and technological globalism, all of which helped push Australia into forms of Asian engagement built much more upon commercial hopes than upon strategic fears. Here, in essence, was the oft-remarked transition ‘from battlefield to marketplace’; or as some have rather simplistically put it, from a pervasive perception of Asia as an arena of threat to a view of Asia as a region of opportunity. (Simplistic, because there were always some who perceived Asia in terms of opportunity, and there remained some in Australia who still thought of Asia in terms of threat.)

What is being argued here is that the forces giving rise to Australian engagement with Asia operated in both the domestic and the international realms, and did so interactively. One of the tasks of the book is to demonstrate the changing patterns of this domestic-international interaction over time.

But the book does not simply offer an account of abstract and impersonal ‘forces’ at work. For the history of engagement is also a narrative about the ideologies and ideas, the attitudes, decisions, choices and initiatives of particular politicians and officials over the years: the decision-makers who interpreted and responded to events, formulated policies and sought to implement them. The cast of human characters in the engagement story is large, impressive, and in some cases colourful, and it is an aim of the book to provide an account of their key ideas and their doings. Here, once again, a preliminary traverse of the century is in order, offering, Rashomon-like, a further perspective on the subject.

In some instances, to be sure, the effect of individual leaders’ attitudes was to hinder, rather than facilitate, the processes of engagement. W. M. Hughes at Versailles with his deep hostility to the Japanese proposal for a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations, S. M. Bruce with his back-to-the-Empire priorities in the 1920s and Robert Menzies with his resistance in the late 1930s to the notion that Australia might establish its own diplomatic posts in the region might all be cited, though it needs to be recognised that all were reflecting the general temper of their times; closer engagement with Asia was barely on the agenda before World War II. Still, even in those days closer engagement had its apostles: E. L. Piesse in Hughes’s time, for example, or Frederic Eggleston and his intellectual coterie in the 1930s. And to move into the postwar period is to encounter numerous examples of individuals who affected the processes of engagement in one way or another, often—though not always—by departing somewhat from conventional wisdoms. Once again a small number of illustrations must suffice. Australian policy towards Asia in the early postwar years was considerably influenced by the internationalist views of H. V. Evatt as Minister for External Affairs and John Burton as Secretary of his Department. The dramatic expansion of trade with Japan from the 1950s cannot be fully understood without reference to the activist policies of John McEwen as Minister for Trade and his departmental Secretary J. G. Crawford. In the most difficult years of the Cold War, a series of External Affairs ministers from Percy Spender to Paul Hasluck worked diligently to serve Australia’s perceived security interests in Southeast Asia while also, with the aid of such able diplomats as T. K. Critchley and K. C. O. Shann, developing Australia’s bilateral relationships in the region in mostly positive ways.

Richard Casey in the 1950s played an especially important role in fostering Australia’s regional diplomatic network. On the other hand, he was relatively un-influential in Cabinet, which meant that the efforts he made to secure Australian diplomatic recognition of China were unsuccessful. Recognition of China came in 1972 on the initiative of Gough Whitlam, who also completed the process of scrapping White Australia, made unilateral tariff cuts designed in part to open Australia’s markets to various regional exports, and secured the acceptance of Australia as the first ‘dialogue partner’ of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Malcolm Fraser chose to sustain Whitlam’s major innovations, thus giving these policy developments a bipartisan base, and later made the important decision to admit large numbers of Indochinese refugees in the wake of the Viet-nam and Cambodian conflicts. The tenures of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were marked by their strong commitment to regional economic engagement and their efforts to foster multilateral regional institutions, especially Asia–Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC). In the early 1990s the Labor Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans oversaw engagement of quite another kind by casting Australia in the role of peacemaker in Cambodia; a few years later the Coalition Prime Minister John Howard extended this role by agreeing to Australian leadership of the INTERFET peace enforcement operation in East Timor. In such widely varying ways have policy-makers put their stamp on events.⁴

One particular historical passage merits additional comment here, since it has been widely regarded as a time when the theme of an Asian destiny for Australia reached a kind of apogee, both in leadership rhetoric and in policy formation.⁵ This was the period extending roughly from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The key decision-makers of the time were Hawke, Keating and Evans. In these years there was seen to be, as never before, a ‘push’ towards Asia. By 1993 Evans could declare:

I think overwhelmingly the most important achievement over the past decade has been to give real substance to the concept of engagement with Asia, to get this basic shift of focus away from the historical connections to geographical connections and to realise that this reality is where the future is, especially economically.⁶

In essence, what was going on in these years was a large-scale attempt to fashion a whole new policy framework for Australia, especially in the economic domain. Harking back to the analysis above, this effort can be broadly described as an Australian response to the larger historical changes of the period: great economic growth in Asia, the emergence of a globalised economy, the worldwide swing to market liberalism as both ideology and practice, the end of the Cold War. In these circumstances a thoroughgoing engagement with the booming Asian region was perceived by many, both inside and outside government, as self-evidently necessary for Australia. And when, in 1996, government passed to the Coalition parties, the new Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, was quick to affirm that the issue of ‘how Australia can more fully engage with Asia’ remained ‘the highest foreign policy priority of this Government’.⁷ An academic observer based in Japan summarised the prevailing wisdom: ‘Australia is so isolated that it cannot be isolationist. Regional engagement is the solution to this dilemma, the path to salvation from economic marginalization, strategic loneliness and political irrelevance’.⁸

As it turned out, the sense of a concerted ‘push’ towards Asia seemed to some critics to have faded to some degree in the last few years of the century. Already by the end of 1996 a prominent former diplomat was noting that both the ‘pace’ and the ‘passion’ had gone out of the engagement project.⁹ The Howard government, facing challenges in its relationship with Malaysia, and with Indonesia, particularly over the situation in East Timor, stressed the importance of engagement but emphasised practicability. One indication of this was that the Coalition’s leaders declared from the outset that they would concentrate pragmatically on the main bilateral relationships in the region rather than seek to engage with ‘Asia’ in generalised ways.¹⁰ Another was that policy was sketched from time to time as ‘Asia first, but not Asia only’, with the task of renovating the relationship with the United States being also described as critically important. Such intimations of governmental attitude lead us directly back to the points stressed earlier. Engagement is a variable; it can and does take many forms; and engagement-as-process does not follow any predetermined path.

Debating Engagement

The proliferation of forms of engagement in the later decades of the century not only made Asian policy an increasingly complex field: it also gave rise to a lively ‘Asia debate’ among politicians, officials, journalists, academics and others. The debate was both conceptual and prescriptive. In other words, participants sought both to make intellectual sense of what was happening and to devise preferred pathways for future policy.

By the end of the century the debate had spawned a large and still growing literature. The period of the ‘push’ towards Asia was particularly productive of works of analysis and advocacy, of which the following, listed here in their order of publication, provide a representative sample: the University of New South Wales symposium Australia in Asia: The Next 200 Years (1988); Ross Garnaut, Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy (1989); M. T. Daly and M. I. Logan, The Brittle Rim: Finance, Business and the Pacific Region (1989); Garry Woodard, Australia and Asia—A Regional Role? (1992); Helen Hughes and others, Australia’s Asian Challenge (1994); Greg Sheridan (ed.), Living with Dragons: Australia Confronts its Asian Destiny (1995); Richard Robison (ed.), Pathways to Asia: The Politics of Engagement (1996); Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty (eds), Comparing Cultures (1996); Stephen FitzGerald, Is Australia an Asian Country? (1997); James Cotton and John Ravenhill (eds), Seeking Asian Engagement: Australia in World Affairs, 1991–95 (1997); and a little later, Paul Keating, Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia Pacific (2000), and Graeme Dobell, Australia Finds Home: The Choices and Chances of an Asia Pacific Journey (2000).

Two things about this list are of particular interest. The first is the diversity of the authors’ provenances. There are an ex-Prime Minister (Keating), ex-diplomats (FitzGerald, Woodard and Garnaut had all served as Ambassador to China), a vice-chancellor (Logan), a print journalist (Sheridan), economists (Hughes and colleagues, and Garnaut again), a geographer (Daly), a political economist (Robison), historians (Milner and Quilty), political scientists (Cotton and Ravenhill) and a Radio Australia correspondent (Dobell). The second is the way in which the books’ titles bring out the debate’s recurrent themes. Terms such as ‘role’, ‘challenge’, ‘destiny’, and of course ‘engagement’ itself, are extremely characteristic of the literature. To put these two points together is to gain the impression of a high level of consensus among authors from a wide range of backgrounds on the importance of engagement (even if the term is variously defined), together with a commitment (in most cases) to moving the process forward

Yet such an impression would not be altogether accurate. There was, in fact, less than full consensus on some quite central issues (and this, it may be said, is what made the Asian debate a debate). The point can be illustrated by reference to economics. Clearly the economic imperative was the most important factor generating the push towards Asia in the 1980s and 1990s; had Asia been an economic backwater, the thrust would not have been anywhere near as strong. A major report to the government in 1989, Garnaut’s Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, did much to set the tone. The key arguments offered by Garnaut (and others) ran something like the following. Asia, especially Northeast Asia, was emerging as the most economically dynamic region in the world. For its own economic salvation Australia needed to become much more fully involved in trade, investment and business affairs generally in this proximate region. Australia needed also to draw upon key features of the Northeast Asian ‘model’—strong export orientation, capital intensive manufacturing, a sophisticated skills base, high domestic savings rates—in pursuing its own economic reform agenda. The broader Asia–Pacific region already accounted for some two-thirds of Australia’s trade. Yet Australia accounted for only about 3 per cent of the region’s total trade; and although Australia’s trade with the region was growing in absolute terms, its market share was declining. Thus Asia was a good deal more important to Australia than Australia was to Asia. It followed that it was up to Australia to make the necessary moves. There had to be positive initiatives and long-term programmes by government, business and the education and training sectors if Australia were not to lag behind in the worldwide race to become economically engaged with Asia.

These were powerful arguments. Nevertheless, there were some authors who argued for a more circumspect approach. Daly and Logan, for example, argued in their volume The Brittle Rim that East Asian business and finance had some highly problematic aspects, and that it would be a mistake for Australia to commit too many eggs to the regional basket. (Coming out in the same year as the Garnaut report, this book was said to have caused a high degree of prime ministerial displeasure.) By the end of the