Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Securing the Australian subject 1788–1918
- 2 Dreams of Pacific security 1919–45
- 3 Cold War against the Other 1946–69
- 4 Realpolitik beyond the Cold War 1970–95
- 5 Australia's Asian crisis 1996–2000
- 6 The wages of terror 2001–07
- Conclusion: A cosmopolitan future
- Notes
- Index
4 - Realpolitik beyond the Cold War 1970–95
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Securing the Australian subject 1788–1918
- 2 Dreams of Pacific security 1919–45
- 3 Cold War against the Other 1946–69
- 4 Realpolitik beyond the Cold War 1970–95
- 5 Australia's Asian crisis 1996–2000
- 6 The wages of terror 2001–07
- Conclusion: A cosmopolitan future
- Notes
- Index
Summary
All Australians must realise how damaging and dangerous a reputation Australia's present policies produce. We are a European nation on the fringe of the most populous and deprived coloured nations in the world. What the world sees about Australia is that we have an Aboriginal population with the highest infant mortality rate on earth, that we have eagerly supported the most unpopular war in modern times on the ground that Asia should be a battleground for our freedom, that we fail to oppose the sale of arms to South Africa, that the whole world believes that our immigration policy is based on colour and that we run one of the world's last colonies.
E. G. Whitlam, January 1971Anyone hearing Whitlam's words could have been forgiven for thinking a revolution in progress, given their dramatic challenge to longstanding modes of Australian identity, policy and belief. Whitlam made the statement on his second visit to Papua New Guinea as leader of the federal opposition, where he was pressing his case for the early decolonisation of a territory Australians had long seen as absolutely essential to their security. The obsession with New Guinea had been one of the most enduring themes in Australian diplomacy, from the earliest attempts at annexation in the 1880s, Hughes' appearance at Versailles as the living voice of 60 000 dead, to the Kokoda Track in 1942 and the failed attempt to keep West Papua out of Indonesian hands.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Fear of SecurityAustralia's Invasion Anxiety, pp. 126 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008