Australian Foreign Policy 1970s

Foreign Policy Essay

Foreign Policy is a strategy that a government has when dealing with other nations. The main ways that foreign policy is used by many nations are by propaganda, secret intervention by the military force, diplomacy and economic pressure. Australian Foreign Policy has changed overtime, by there being many changes made. Foreign Policy has changed since the 1970s.

Australia has strong ties with Britain since World War One, there was friendly rivalry between the Australian and English troops during World War I. in September 1938 the Menzies government announced that Australia also is at war, just one hour after Britain and Germany were at war. Doing so Menzies was convinced that the ties with Britain were out of best interest

This was from 1962 till 1972 there were over 50 000 Australians who served in the Vietnam War. The Menzies Government made the choice of sending Australian troops over to serve in the Vietnam War was because of the fear of communism reaching Australia after it affects other countries in the South East Indochina. Australia became involved in the Vietnam War to prevent there being an outbreak of communism in other countries because it would also effect Australia. Therefore this source demonstrates that this is the reason Menzies decided to send Australian troops to serve in the Vietnam War in order to prevent communism effecting Australia. In his 1969 election policy speech, Whitlam argued

This caused the White Australian Policy to be introduce and a Universal Migration Policy brought in by Gough Whitlam. Many immigrants took over Australian jobs causing there to be rise in unemployment, but there also was a strong economic growth. The Australian Government only approved of immigrants who are skilled or have professional expertise to entering Australia in the 1970s. In the 1970s and 80s Australia did not accept any European immigrants, but accepted refugees that were escaping from war torn Indo-Chinese countries. These countries included Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (Australian Government, The changing face of modern Australia- 1950s-1970s).

Australia was under the Hawke Government from 1983 to 1991. Hawke held an election on the 5th of March 1983 leading the labour party back into office. Business was strengthened for the enterprise in Australia by him as there started to be tensions between Hawke and the sector. By 1938 the labour party came into power and made a $9000 million debit and the restoration of employment and economic growth became a priority due to there being inflation and lots of unemployment (Australian Government, Australia’s Prime