THE Australian Federal elections in December i949 brought into power a Liberal-Country Party coalition in place of the Labour Party administration which had been in office since 194I. On most domestic issues the attitudes of the Liberal and Country parties had been clearly defined prior to polling day, but scant attention had been paid to the no less vital and pressing problems of foreign policy. What will this change of Government imply in the field of foreign affairs? For neighbouring peoples, and to a lesser extent for Australians themselves, the advent of a non-Labour Government introduced a degree of uncertainty into all problems in which Australia was an interested party. There were good reasons why this should be so. Labour's lengthy tenure of office, the dominance of the former Minister for External Affairs, Dr. Evatt, in the shaping of policy, together with the impact made by his personality abroad, and, above all, the fact that Labour had had to take decisions in the formative period following the war, had caused the Australian attitude to become largely identified with Labour's and Evatt's outlook. The Opposition parties, on the other hand, not only had had small opportunity of influencing policy but, on becoming the Government, were confronted with a world so profoundly different from that in which they had previously held office that old familiar approaches were often meaningless. The Government parties have therefore been forced to the unusual discipline of largely rethinking their attitudes toward the underlying issues of foreign policy-national security and the defence of the country's national ideals and interests. Signs have not been wanting in recent weeks that the Liberals in particular have achieved a considerable measure of success in the by no means easy task of remoulding their external policy to meet the changed circumstances of Australia's postwar situation. On many issues the lines of government policy are becoming clear, though on others considerable uncertainty remains, but in