Australia's focus on Asia

MELBOURNE (JP): Jamie Mackie, retired professor of politics at Australia National University, believes that Australia's turn towards Asia did not start with former prime minister Paul Keating and his foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans.

An attempt to prove the point was made at a conference here titled New Directions in Australian Foreign Policy, Australia and Indonesia 1945-1950.

The conference, held at Monash University from May 31 to June 1, was dominated by what Mackie terms as the Golden Oldies: J.E. Isaac, retired professor of economics of Monash University, T.K. Critchley, former Australian ambassador to Indonesia, and J.W. Burton, former secretary of the Department of External Affairs, who was not able to attend in person and communicated via video.

While there were also younger speakers, still up and coming in their academic professions, the "Golden Oldies" stood out because they had been active players and participants in the role played by Australia in Indonesia's struggle for independence.

Isaac accompanied the then professor William Macmahon Ball on his goodwill mission to Indonesia in 1945, Critchley was Australian representative for the Good Offices Committee (Komite Tiga Negara) in 1948, and Burton was Departmental Private Secretary to Minister for External Affairs H.V. Evatt, before becoming Secretary of the Department in 1947.

These speakers not only set the scene, they told their stories in the first person, in "history as it happens" style, which later made the papers of the younger speakers a little dry by comparison.

The 1940s was an era of Australia looking toward Britain and the United States, where the concept of Europe as the center of culture and civilization was prevalent throughout the nation.

It therefore must have been an indication of significant foresight for the then prime minister Ben Chifley and his external affairs minister to show support for, and their subsequent involvement in, the nationalist movement in Indonesia. The name Asia was not even used at the time. Various places in the region were referred to as the "Orient" or the "Islands".

Two aspects stood out as the stories flowed from the Golden Oldies: the unusual awareness of Australia's policy makers in seeing that the nationalist movement in Indonesia had to be taken seriously and Australia's reluctance to share a national border with this nation. The legacy of this personality split survives, to a degree, until this day.

When he accompanied Macmahon Ball to Indonesia in 1945, J.E. Isaac recalled, they were on a fact-finding mission to see what role Australia could play. Australia was keen to raise its profile, while the sole concern of the British was to win the war. Isaac revealed that External Minister Evatt was increasingly disillusioned with Britain and the U.S. then. Isaac and Macmahon Ball made friends with nationalist leaders such as Sukarno and Hatta.

This friendship would later distinguish them from the British, who kept referring to these leaders as "natives".

According to Jamie Mackie, there was then an element of parallelism between Indonesian and Australian nationalist sentiments. The Australian officials, mostly younger than their British counterparts, often found themselves being lectured and patronized by Dutch officials for being "too idealistic and easily influenced".

No doubt this was aided by Prime Minister Chifley's sense of fair play. Though he denied the allegations that the Waterside Workers Federation dictated the policy -- when they banned Dutch ships from sending arms to Indonesia -- Chifley quietly went along with the ban.

Burton recalls that Chifley was initially quoted as pro-Dutch. However, he said, he was also a person of sharp intuition. "At that time there was not much information about Southeast Asia in general. Chifley and Evatt realized that Australia was dealing with a new nation," said Burton. "Chifley quickly became annoyed when he discovered that the Dutch were sending arms to Indonesia."

Burton did not see a turnaround in Australia's foreign policy. There were, rather, attempts at new directions. "Australia at the time hadn't come to terms with the fact that it was in Asia, and it was still very much under the UN and U.S. umbrella," he said.

This refusal to accept the geographical reality, it appears, translated into the discomfort of being too close to an Asian nation. Australia did not support Indonesia's claim on West Irian, preferring to have the Dutch colonial presence as a buffer.

Critchley, on the other hand, working in the Good Offices Committee, recalls that while they were dealing with invisible boundaries, it was clear that the nationalists would not be satisfied without West New Guinea.

According to Critchley, while the Netherlands tried to prevent Indonesia from forming the republic and obtaining the UN's support, if failed because it did not anticipate the strength of international reaction to its second Police Action, and it underestimated the strength of Indonesian nationalism and determination to form the republic.

"While they went ahead with the December military action, they were continually harassed by guerrilla movements, which they thought would have died down quickly.

"The Sultan of Yogya refused to cooperate, and the Federalists increasingly resented the Dutch's pressure and appreciated the support of the nationalists," said Critchley, whose fervor for Indonesia has not died down.

Australia has grown into a more mature nation, a far cry from the heady days of the 1940's idealism. It has progressed a fair way in the new direction of its foreign policy. There is no doubt that Keating and Evans added a significant push, which appears to follow the same direction as that taken by the present Howard- Downer team.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne.