FIRST STEPS

The role of Australian foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s was summed up by Robert Menzies as Australians saying ‘useful things at the right time to the Government of the United Kingdom’.
[CPD vol. 157 p. 429]

Department of External Affairs

It was not until 1935 that a Department of External Affairs was established under its own permanent head, Lieutenant Colonel W R Hodgson. In 1937 (Sir) Keith Officer was appointed as Australian Counsellor attached to the staff of the British Ambassador in Washington to provide some direct feedback to Australia. Also in 1937 the External Affairs Department prepared its own memorandum on the international situation for use by Australian delegates at the Imperial Conference that year.

The Australian Department of External Affairs was established under its own permanent head, Lieutenant Colonel W R Hodgson, in 1935. By 1937 the Department had progressed to attaching an Australian Counsellor to the staff of the British Ambassador in Washington to provide some direct feedback to Australia. This letter is from George Pearce, Minister for External Affairs.

JCPML. Records of Dept. of Foreign Affairs. Historical Documents Project. Japan (Selections), 1937-1938. JCPML00870/6.

Foreign Policy Under Menzies

In In 1939, with war looming, Prime Minister Robert Menzies made a reassessment of Australia's foreign policy. In a broadcast to the Australian people he said:

What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north…little given as I am to encouraging the exaggerated ideas of Dominion independence and separatism which exist in some minds, I have become convinced that in the Pacific Australia must regard herself as a principal providing herself with her own information and maintaining her own diplomatic contact with foreign powers. [Watt, The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy, p. 24]

While Menzies did qualify this statement by asserting that Australia should not act in the Pacific as if it were 'a completely separate power' but rather as 'an integral part of the British Empire', it was a step towards recognising Australia's interests.

THE FIRST LEGATIONS

By 1940 Menzies was under pressure to establish a Legation in Washington and Richard Casey was appointed Australian Minister in March. Australia’s second diplomatic appointment was Sir John Latham, a former federal politician and Chief Justice of the High Court, as Australian Minister to Japan. Next, Sir Frederic Eggleston, lawyer and Commonwealth Grants Commission Chairman, was sent to China as the Australian Minister.

At the suggestion of the Canadian Government Major-General Sir William Glasgow was appointed in 1940 as Australian High Commissioner to Canada and subsequently high commissioners were sent to India and New Zealand and representation was established in the Soviet Union, Noumea and (briefly) in Singapore.

By 1945 there were 26 Australian diplomatic staff based in Canberra and 25 overseas.

View some of the documents which support this section of the exhibition and which reveal the foreign policy directions of the Australian government in the 1930s and early 1940s, when the nation was beginning to establish diplomatic posts abroad and reduce its reliance on Britain in this sphere. Most of these records are from the Department of Foreign Affairs Historical Documents Project working papers used for the compilation of Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, 1937-1949.

VIEW THE DOCUMENTS - FIRST STEPS: Foreign Policy Under Menzies.

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