Much Ado about Little: The Whitlam Government and Australia’s Engagement with Southeast Asia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Australian Prime Minister Edward Gough Whitlam has gone down in history as the man who ended two decades of Australian neglect of Asia. Having come to power with the ambitious goal of making a quantum leap in Australia’s regional engagement, Whitlam is widely credited with bringing his country closer to Asia. However, such a representation of Whitlam’s Asian diplomacy does not quite stand up to a careful examination of the historical record. Whitlam’s new course in foreign affairs not only failed to inject new momentum into Canberra’s policy of regional engagement, but it also perplexed – or even frustrated – more than one regional actor. It is no coincidence that he spent nearly half of his prime ministership seeking to dispel the perception that Australia was becoming isolationist. Focussing on Whitlam’s policy towards Southeast Asia, an area of crucial strategic importance for Australia, this analysis provides a corrective, based on recently declassified Australian, British and American government files, of Australia’s regional engagement in the early 1970s.