Foreign Policy Under Curtin
Until the 1940s Australian governments consistently pursued their foreign policy objectives within the framework of the British Empire. World War Two was the catalyst for creating an Australian perspective in foreign policy.
Essentially, the Curtin Government which took office in October 1941, faced the problem that Roosevelt and Churchill were working to their own framework for the higher direction of the war.
In the Anzac Agreement, signed in 1944, the Australian and New Zealand Governments urged that full-scale negotiations with Germany await the end of the Pacific War and that Australia and New Zealand be represented 'at the highest level on all armistice planning and executive bodies'. Within the framework of a general system of world security they asserted (Article 13) that a regional zone of defence for the South-West and South Pacific areas 'shall be established' and this should be based on Australia and New Zealand. In somewhat more provocative fashion the two countries also stated in Article 16 that the construction of wartime installations (i.e. by the United States) had not in itself 'afforded any basis for territorial claims or rights of sovereignty or control after the conclusion of hostilities'.
World War Two was the catalyst
for creating an Australian perspective in
foreign policy.
(right) signing the proclamation
of a state of war with Japan,
watched by Prime Minister
Curtin and Deputy Prime
Minister, Frank Forde,
December 1941.
JCPML. Records of the Curtin
family. JCPML00376/102
flanked by Minister for External Affairs
Dr Evatt (left) and New Zealand Prime
Minister Peter Fraser signs the Anzac
Agreement.
JCPML. Records of Douglas
MacArthur. JCPML00265/20.
Original held by MacArthur Memorial
Library and Archives: MML&A
20082.
Fraser (standing) addresses Parliament
during the Australia-New Zealand
conference.
JCPML. Records of Robert Menzies.
JCPML00544/10. Original held by
National Library of Australia: MS 4936
Series 31 folder 15.
The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act, passed by the Curtin Government in 1942, provided that in future the Imperial Government could only legislate for Australia at Australia's specific request. The Act applied only to the Commonwealth Government, leaving the States in Australia to relate directly to the Imperial Government on certain issues and vice versa.
Statute of Westminster
Adoption Act 1942.
Courtesy National Archives of
Australia: A1559, 1942/56