“In the National Interest”: Australia's Approach to Nuclear Proliferation in a Changing International Environment

In the context of the ongoing international debate concerning the efficacy or otherwise of the NPT and IAEA in preventing or managing nuclear proliferation, Australia's undertaking to enter a nuclear cooperation agreement with the People's Republic of China (PRC), once identified as a “strategic competitor” of Australia's major alliance partner the United States (US), suggests that Australia's approach to proliferation issues is being re-evaluated. This paper argues, utilising an analysis of the relationship between the evolving US approach to nuclear issues and Australian policy, that the Howard government's evolving approach to nuclear issues can be characterised as an attempt to balance the competing imperatives of maintaining Australia's reputation as a nuclear non-proliferation standard bearer, regional strategic and economic considerations and the weight of the Australia-US alliance.     

US Extended Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Order: An Australian Perspective

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how US extended nuclear deterrence might endure in a shifting Asia-Pacific where the traditional nuclear order underpinning the credibility of US security guarantees is deteriorating. The Australian case study demonstrates how periods of nuclear order and disorder can inform a state's attitudes toward the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence. Australia's interest in a nuclear weapons capability from 1956 to 1972 was symptomatic of a period of nuclear disorder. This interest declined from the early 1970s due to changes in both the global and regional environments where the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons was relatively contained. This emerging, recognizable nuclear order diminished the interest in an indigenous nuclear weapons capability and led Canberra to rely on US extended nuclear deterrence. This order has remained fairly robust for more than 30 years. However, beyond 2012, we may yet witness a breakdown in this order. This will generate a much greater interest by US allies in the operational aspects of US extended nuclear deterrence.     

“Rediscovery”, “Reinvigoration” and “Redefinition” in Perpetuity: Australian Engagement with India 1983–2011

For the past twenty‐five years Australia's bilateral relationship with India has been typified by an ongoing process of “rediscovery”, irrespective of whether Labor or Liberal administrations have steered foreign policy. This article explores the reasons why this might be the case by analysing Australia's foreign policy approaches to India spanning the period 1983 to 2011. It interrogates various Labor and Liberal strategies that have been mobilised to “reinvigorate” the relationship and searches for reasons why they have only been partially successful in strengthening Australia's rapport with India. The authors draw upon discussions with strategic affairs editors of India's major daily newspapers and current affairs journals to gain insights into Indian impressions of Australia from a political and foreign policy perspective.     

State vs Federal Government in the “Barmaids” Case: Regulating Australia's Second World War Home Front

Australia's National Security Act of 1939 authorised the federal government to make emergency regulations “for securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth [of Australia]”. Further, it instructed the government to decide for itself what might be “necessary or convenient” for the “more effectual prosecution of the present war”. 1 This article examines the authorisation of the civilian leadership through one set of emergency regulations, the National Security (Women's Employment) Regulations, and analyses their functioning through one operational decision, the decision to permit women to serve in South Australian hotel bars with the intention of releasing male bar workers for essential industrial or military employment. Managing the home front proved complex. Sectional interests continued to jockey for positions of influence, even in war conditions. In this case, the state of South Australia sought to protect its “rights” against federal control of employment: a contest fuelled by an ideological squabble about what were then known as “barmaids”. I argue that Australia's centrally‐determined national war goals were undermined by its federal sovereignty‐distribution mechanism, which allowed sub‐national elements such as South Australia to impede national policy, and conclude that even with extensive defence powers to draw on, the federal government's war goals were obstructed by non‐war interests.     

Remembering the family home: emotions,belonging, and migrant men in multicultural Australia

Abstract

The article opens a space in which to discuss migrant men's emotions and their engagement with family life. It focuses on Australia's Goan community to explore the fluidity of ethnic identity and its relation to remembered family and childhood. The article suggests a “family” that is not only a domestic home but is constituted across both time and space. The men's memories of their childhood and family life prior to arrival in Australia are central to their constitution of self within Australia. These memories provide the men with the emotional means to contest their positioning in Australia's multicultural framework. The men's memories of childhood are experienced beyond domestic and multicultural spaces, making remembered families an important part of their work lives and sense of success in Australia.     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

Fifty Years of the OECD and Forty Years of Australian Membership

The Country Party leader Jack McEwen said that Australia would join the OECD “over my dead body” and it did not do so until 1971, the year he retired from politics. Since then Australia has taken part in what is a complex “network of networks” linking over 40,000 senior public servants from many of the most influential states via some 200 committees spanning a wide range of policy areas. Yet Australian scholars have paid little attention to the OECD and to its effect upon Australia. Our essay is a first step in remedying this gap. Using both archival sources and interviews with public servants, we examine Australia's reasons for taking up OECD membership and assess its impact on policymaking since, the most obvious of which has been upon policy learning. We also ask about Australia's impact on the OECD.     

The Reappraisal of the White Australia Policy against the Background of a Changing Asia, 1945–67*

This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian policy‐makers approached the problem of “White Australia” in the years 1945–67. It makes extensive use of original archival material to show how Australia's increasing engagement with Asia in the 1950s and 1960s exercised a direct influence on officials within the Department of Immigration. In response to Australia's changing geopolitical circumstances and the international community's increasing hostility towards racism during this period, Immigration Department officials persuaded the government to introduce a series of piecemeal adjustments which were specifically designed to placate Asian and world opinion. Although cautious, these changes nevertheless involved a corresponding reassessment of the policy's racial assumptions. By accepting in the late 1960s that certain Asians were capable of being integrated into the Australian community, policymakers had discarded the previously inviolable belief that all non‐Europeans were unassimilable by virtue of their race. The White Australia Policy, though not entirely defunct by the end of the decade, was nevertheless crumbling under the weight of Australia's new circumstances.     

“Super” Debates within the Antipodes? Explaining Differing New Zealand and Australian Retirement Policies in the late Twentieth Century

As others have shown, for much of the twentieth century, “although to different degrees in different periods and to different degrees in the two countries”, New Zealand and Australia shared a peculiar approach to social protection internationally. In particular, Francis Castles has published widely on the Antipodean “wage earners’ welfare state”. He has also shown, however, that New Zealand and Australia took quite dissimilar paths in refurbishing each welfare state in the last two decades of the twentieth century, significantly over superannuation. Most commentators attribute the distinction to dominant political personalities. New Zealand's Robert Muldoon's “election bribe” in 1975, meant a compulsory paid‐work based superannuation system, akin to the one Australia came to develop, was replaced by a universal pension scheme. Australia's Paul Keating implemented the compulsory Australian superannuation scheme in 1992 confirming the trajectory begun in the 1970s. In this paper I put the spotlight on the 1970s corporatism and Australasian industrial cultures to explain the varying New Zealand and Australian superannuation pathways. Such an approach emphasizes multilayered historicity, agency and contingency outside leadership‐driven models. It points to variance and its limits rather than convergence, despite, and because of, common origins and welfare foundations.     

“a carefully weighed plan with adequate safeguards for us”: Economic Policy and the Coordination of Australian-US Approaches to Japanese Aggression, 1939-41

The historical narrative of Australia's foreign and defence policy-making during the Pacific War tends to foreground the years 1941–42, characterising them as the turning point when the government realised that Britain alone could no longer protect Australia's regional security interests and turned to the United States of America for its salvation. This article makes a contribution to the alternative view, arguing that Australia was looking to the US well before Prime Minister John Curtin's famous “looks to America” proclamation. It does so with a focus on Australia's thinking and policy towards the engagement of the US in the years 1939-41, arguing that the coordination of its economic policy with the US, rather than seeking insight into high-level strategic planning, offered the nation the greatest opportunity to tie its security interests in the Asia-Pacific region with those of the US. In exploring the role of economic policy in Australia's preparation for war, this article offers new insight into the maturation of Australia's foreign policy apparatus.     

“Characteristically Generous”? Australian Responses to Refugees Prior to 1951

When Australia pledged to accept 15,000 Jewish refugees from Europe in 1938, it was applauded by the London Times as “a characteristically generous contribution” and an example for others. Australia's reputation for generous humanitarianism was solidified after the war when it absorbed more than 180,000 of Europe's Displaced Persons and committed to international human rights instruments designed to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This reputation has been used to both defend and critique the nation's contemporary responses to asylum seekers. Recent Australian Prime Ministers have invoked Australia's proud record of refugee resettlement to deflect criticism of their tough border control policies, policies which critics charge repudiate the nation's humanitarian traditions. This article critically reviews the history of Australia's responses to refugees and asylum seekers prior to 1951 and demonstrates that contemporary border control policies are neither a deviation from, nor defence of, a proud humanitarian record. Rather, they embody the migration management approach to refugees that provided impetus for Federation in 1901, governed Australia's response to the Jewish refugee crisis in the 1930s, and shaped its conditional acceptance of the Displaced Persons and the position it adopted in the drafting of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: “Rats and Revolutionaries”: The Labour Movement in Australia and New Zealand 1890–1940. By James Bennett John Curtin: Guide to Archives of Australia's Prime Ministers. By David Black and Lesley Wallace Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants. By A. James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia. By Joy Damousi Terms of Trust: Arguments over Ethics in Australian Government. By John Uhr A Trial Separation: Australia and the Decolonisation of Papua New Guinea By Donald Denoon An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and Other Histories of Sumatra. By Anthony Reid Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories. By Robert Aldrich     

The Australian Citizenship Test: Process and Rhetoric

In late 2007, Australia's relatively liberal citizenship eligibility requirements were modified, ostensibly to improve the value of citizenship by restricting access to it. A key change involved the introduction of a citizenship test. This article tracks its development and implementation. We challenge claims of overwhelming support for the test, explore the discourses around the “Australian values” being tested, and outline the process by which the legislation was enacted (during which a number of principles of parliamentary democracy were compromised). Using evidence from politicians' speeches, we argue the citizenship test served to re‐direct the Australian imagination away from a nascent “multicultural” identity, back to one redolent of the times of the “White Australia Policy”, confidently celebrating connections with an Anglo‐Saxon heritage, the European Enlightenment, and Judeo‐Christian roots. As such it was a key aspect of the 1996–2007 Howard Government's retreat from multiculturalism.     

German Assessments of British-Australian Relations, 1901–1914

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Japan's Choices in a Changed Security Environment

China's rise and clear ambition to change Asia poses both tactical and strategic questions, long neglected in Japan. Tactically, territorial challenges can be countered effectively by use of Anti-Access Area Denial [A2/AD] tactics, as Japan is now doing. The strategic issues: how to deal with a hostile nuclear super-power neighbor, counter nuclear blackmail, and so forth, are far more difficult. This author believes that US “extended deterrence” no longer exists. Washington in fact would never use nuclear weapons to defend Japan, whatever promises have been made. The only answer, and one that decreases rather than increases the possibility of conflict, is for Japan to acquire within a decade a minimal nuclear deterrent, too small for war-making but adequate to prevent attack, such as those maintained by Britain and France, who know America best. Without such a deterrent Japan will be defenseless against inevitable Chinese nuclear threats and blackmail.     

Theater Missile Defense and Japanese Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

The development of a joint US-Japan theater missile defense system could have significant ramifications beyond the defense of Japan and of American forces in the region. A growing debate within Japan on its international security position, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and questions about the role of the United States in the region conspire to create conditions for significant changes in Japan's conception of its security status and its long‐term political-military calculations. By upgrading Japan's strategic responsibilities, theater missile defense could inadvertently induce a reassessment of many of its national security policies, perhaps even the decision to forego nuclear weapons.     

Post‐War Reconstruction and the New World Order: The Origins Of Gough Whitlam's Democratic Citizen*

Gough Whitlam's father was one of Australia's most significant public servants. Deputy Crown Solicitor and Crown Solicitor at a time of great constitutional and international change, Frederick Whitlam maintained an unusually advanced perspective on the use of international instruments to protect rights and to expand powers of nationhood. Gough Whitlam's war‐time experiences in the Air Force, in particular during the referendum campaign to expand Commonwealth Powers to aid post‐war reconstruction, cemented these aspects as central to his developing notions of democratic citizenship. In his 1973 Sir Robert Garran Memorial lecture, fourteen years after his father had delivered the inaugural oration, Gough Whitlam acknowledged the influence of his father as a “great public servant” committed to public service and the developing institutions of internationalism: “I am Australia's first Prime Minister with that particular background”. This paper explores “that particular background”. I have never wavered from my fundamental belief that until the national government became involved in great matters like schools and cities, this nation would never fulfil its real capabilities. ¹ 1 E.G. Whitlam, Sir Robert Garran Memorial Oration, “Australian Public Administration under a Labor Government”, Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, 12 November 1973, < http://www.whitlam.org/collection/1973/ > accessed 31 October 2006.
     

“No Colonial Baggage”: Imagining a Decolonised Australia-Africa Relations

As part of its strategy to win African votes for election to the UN Security Council (2008–12), Canberra sought to leverage its soft power potential by presenting Australia as having “no colonial baggage” in Africa while framing Australia as “a country from the Global North, located in the Global South,” and one that would “work with other small and middle powers.” Ultimately, the campaign was successful, including up to 50 of Africa's 54 countries voting for Australia. This paper considers this framing in the context of a shared but differentiated colonial history, including its contradictions, given that Australians fought several wars on African soil on behalf of the British Empire, supported white minority regimes and anti-communist movements on the continent, and maintained the white Australia policy until the 1970s. The paper deploys decoloniality theory to engage Australia's lack of a neat fit within a historicised articulation of a “coloniser-colonised” relationship between Europe and Africa. We show that, despite this lack of fit, Australia's relations with the countries of Africa reinforce long-standing of patterns of knowledge, power, and being associated with colonialism. Accordingly, the paper makes three recommendations for cooperation and innovative thinking in foreign policy and diaspora diplomacy between Africa and a more independent and multicultural Australia based on the “equality of being.”     

“A Good‐Will Ship”: The Light Cruiser Köln Visits Rabaul (1933)

The concept of loyalty still holds a central space in many histories about New Guinean‐Australian relations, especially during the Second World War, and translates into demands by Australians that New Guineans recognize Australia's political system as “the best”. In this article about the visit of the first German navy cruiser to New Guinea after the First World War, I tell a story not about loyalties, but about contesting colonial claims, namely Australia's insistence on “loyalty”, and Germany's demand for a “return” of her colony. The visit of Köln in 1933 raises questions such as: How did Germans and Australians negotiate living together in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea? How were divisions, grief, tensions, and hostilities after the First World War dealt with? What separated them, what united them, and what role did New Guineans play in this complex relationship?     

Australian Reporting of the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66: The Media as the “First Rough Draft of History”

This article examines Australian press coverage of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66, and considers its legacy for the historical consciousness of events in Indonesia. The Indonesian killings of 1965–66 occurred on Australia's doorstep, at a time when the Cold War dominated the front pages of Australian newspapers. By examining articles from one of Australia's leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, we show that press coverage of the killings was both limited and distorted. Comments made by correspondents reporting from Indonesia at the time suggest reasons why this was the case. In the rush to write a “first rough draft of history”, the killings in Indonesia were treated as background to the story of leadership change in Jakarta and the defeat of Communism.