When Australia confronted periods of strategic change in the late 1960s with Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez and at the end of the Cold War in 1989, the resulting uncertainty in the international system also prompted debates over the nation’s cohesion and identity.
Out of the 1960s and the end of our accepted and dependent Britishness emerged a consensus among the major political parties about “comprehensive engagement with Asia”. Malcolm Fraser was at one with Gough Whitlam on this, even if with differences in presentation.
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James Curran is professor of modern history at Sydney University.
