RECONCILING CULTURE, HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY
“We do not, and cannot, aim to be ‘Asian’ or European or anything else but Australians.” – Paul Keating, 1994, Prime Minister 1991-1996.
Who we are as a country and how we present ourselves to the world are questions Australia has grappled with ever since Sir Henry Parkes first articulated the idea of federation.
As Paul Keating spoke to the Asia-Australia Institute in 1994, he was speaking to an understanding that had been slowly crystallising over the 20th century to address those very questions. The understanding was that Australia must reconcile our colonial history, and everything that encompasses that, with the reality that we are in the Asia-Pacific and that Australia, going into the 21st century, represented a more expansive collection of different cultures and identities than ever before.
We are a country of multitudes.
A continent of Indigenous peoples whose cultures span back tens of millennia. A landmass that had been invaded and claimed by the growing British Empire for itself. A nation that is now also called home by people hailing from all corners of the world, who speak different languages and don’t look at all like the British invaders or the Indigenous custodians of the land. This is where the story of Australia has lead us to now.
This is the truth that has perplexed Australian foreign policy for more than a century, made more complex by the fact that every year Australia grows more diverse, with more people settling in our country, becoming our neighbour and calling this country their own as well. New Australians, who 70 years ago were from Europe, are primarily from Asia today, as such Asia has been a growing region of interest and concern for Australians themselves, including Asian Australians.
Over the course of this history as Australia moulded into what we can see today, a series of policies and programs were enacted to shape the ‘race’ of Australia—from the White Australia policy which permitted only white Europeans to emigrate to Australia to the entire framework of governance used to subjugate indigenous communities and effectively commit genocide.
One of the products of this coordinated effort to control the racial narrative of Australia has been how we have conducted our foreign policy.
For the better part of the 20th century, allegiance to the Empire had been the central component to our foreign policy, acting as another outpost for the imperial endeavours of London and not seen as a country in our own right. Prime Minister Menzies, the longest serving prime minister and renowned for being the most anglophilic one, went so far as to say Australia had a ‘blood relationship’ with the United Kingdom.
Both World Wars have contributed to the Australian story as well. As the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, so too did Australia follow suit, whether we were sent to the trenches and quagmires of Belgium or the cliffs of Gallipoli Australia was carrying out its duty to ‘King and Empire’. However, things began shifting as Prime Minister Curtin gave the order for Australian troops in the Middle East to return home to bolster defences against the advancing Japanese forces rather than be diverted to South Asia to protect British territory there.
Australia was finally fully realising that we weren’t another European nation or just another dominion in the British Empire—we were a country on the other side of the world, straddling Asia and the Pacific, and that London would, of course, prioritise itself over Australia.
So how well is our geographic reality and the changing face of Australia reflected in how we interact with the world and how have our leaders attended to these questions that fundamentally ask who we are as a country?
It’s difficult to answer these questions just because no metrics exist to measure these undertakings. Nonetheless, there have been ebbs and flows in Australia’s foreign policy—where we recognise the need to engage with our neighbours and build robust regional frameworks for partnerships and relationship-building or where we retreat back into the security and safety of what we have been familiar with through the 20th century and neglecting the transformations Australia has made since immigration became a larger part of the Australian story.
One is not necessarily ‘better’ than the other, but what Australia must do, and what Keating pointed out as becoming ‘Australian’ is that we balance both persuasions of foreign policy directions.
As mentioned above, the central plank for Australian foreign policy in the early and mid-20th century had been the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth.
The Anglosphere varies depending on who you ask. Technically, it is inclusive of all countries which officially speak English, such as Ireland, India, South Africa, and other former British colonies. More popularly, it consists of the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—the core Anglosphere. The only formal relationships they share with each other, as a group, are a series of agreement encompassing security and defence, such as AUSCANNZUKUS (naval agreement), ASIC (air force agreement), ABCANZ Armies, Five Eyes and the UKUSA Agreement (intelligence Sharing).
Other than those, these five countries share strong cultural ties, and the characteristics of being primarily English speaking countries, and outside of the UK, countries that have been settled by the British and where the majority of the population identify as white and descendants of British settlers.
It is very easy to think about the role that identity might have played in bringing about this partnership of countries. It is not uncommon for other cultures—France leads the Francophonie with French-speaking members, promoting cultural ties and maintaining colonial relationships that France had established.
Today, it is a comforting space for Australia to engage with countries we rely on for security, but also who, for the most part, look like us and speak our language. There is no denying that this core group of the Anglosphere is exclusive, but also just how much they share in common. An argument could be put forward that this construction of the Anglosphere is racist—forging deep ties with countries on the basis that they share the same culture, the same language, and who predominantly look the same, despite the lack of strategic coherence between all members.
While there was an acceptance that our cultural ties, and our security and defence arrangements—with a neighbouring country like New Zealand, a global superpower like the US, and a diplomatic giant like the UK—were needed, it was equally important that Australia embed itself into our region, not as an external observer but as an active and productive actor, because the future of the region will impact us to a higher degree than some other countries in the Anglosphere. To have this undertaking would be to act in the Australian interest.
The first substantial advance made in this direction was under Prime Minister Hawke—a core pillar of Hawke’s foreign policy was the idea of “enmeshing” Australia with Asia. The thrust of this foreign policy was that east Asia was on the rise and the release of the report Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendency provided the platform to transform rhetoric to policy. In 1989, we understood that the future economic powerhouse of the world would be centred around Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and our geographic location could help us in really grasping the opportunities that were presented by growth in Asia.
Of course adjustments had to be made to our trade policy to capitalise on these shifts, but the more crucial proposal by the report was to promote cross-cultural exchange to build a solid foundation for future relationships. This could be done by building Australian knowledge of Asian cultures, economies, and languages, but also opening up Australia to more immigration.
Through this endeavour Australia had laid down the terms of engagement with our Asian region and progress was made on solidifying them by Hawke and Keating.
Nearly 20 years later, after Prime Minister Howard pivoted Australia’s foreign policy focus back into the Anglosphere after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Rudd made ‘comprehensive engagement with Asia’ a core pillar of his foreign policy and his government’s approach to the region. The release of the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper in 2012 entrenched this and reaffirmed what the 1989 report outlined.
Prime Minister Gillard, in the White Paper, recognised that as the “economic weight shifts, so does strategic weight.” Australia’s active participation in our region was now not just to make the most of the economic opportunities provided by a growing Asia but to manage the inevitable strategic challenges and security crises that would grow out of the region.
Whether the White Paper would have fundamentally evolved our foreign policy approach in Asia is a question that might never be answered—incoming Prime Minister Abbott dropped the White Paper from his foreign policy agenda.
By then, however, what we had learnt from the 1989 report was ingrained into Australian thinking and our approach to our region. Many migrants from Asia proudly call Australia their own today while still maintaining cultural and familial links to their birth country and their diaspora. This exchange of people has strengthened informal bonds between Australia and nations in the regions and Australia is richer for it.
What this also means though is that Australia must be sensitive to the developments happening in the region, domestic or international, as events happening across Asia now affect Australia more deeply, and can impact Australians at a level that traditional foreign policy tends to fail to consider.
In 2018, Australia, for the first time, hosted ASEAN for a special summit on the ASEAN-Australia relationship, mobilising all of that understanding and taking strides in actively participating, and shaping the agenda and the future of our region.
Today we entirely accept that the destiny of our country is entangled with the future of our region. To not do so would be to wilfully ignore how Australia looks today and neglect our own history.
The years ahead will be uncertain and turbulent. As we make our way through the 2020s, when strategic challenges and security risks in our region continue to rise and when great power struggles play out once again, it is imperative that Australia understands where we stand at the nexus of culture, history, and geography.
We must be confident in our identity so that Australia may stand resilient in our region and within our relationships with our neighbours and allies.
