Australia's Northern Shield?

Australia's Northern Shield?
Author: Bruce Hunt
Publisher: Investigating Power
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Australia
ISBN: 9781925495409

This book is the first to draw extensively on the recently released highly classified notes of the cabinet room discussions of successive Australian Governments, from 1950 to the mid-1970s. It details the changing attitude of the nation's leaders towards the place of Papua New Guinea in Australia's defense and security outlook. The Cabinet Notebooks provide an uncensored and unprecedented insight into the opinion of Australia's leaders towards Indonesia under Sukarno, Southeast Asia and Indo-China in general; the changing nature of relations with Britain and the United States; and towards Papua New Guinea. The cabinet room discussions reveal attitudes towards Asia and Australia's place in the region which are more nuanced, varied, and sensitive than previously known. They also illustrate the dominant influence of Prime Minister Robert Menzies and Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen in shaping Australia's response to the critical events of the time. Australia's Northern Shield? shows how, since colonial times, Australia has assessed the importance of Papua New Guinea by examining the ambitions of and threats from external sources, principally Imperial Germany, Japan, and Indonesia. It examines the significant change in Australia's attitude as this region approached independence in 1975, amid concerns as to the new nation's future stability and unity. The terms of Australia's long-term defense undertaking are examined in detail, and an examination is offered of the most recent attempts to define the strategic importance of Papua New Guinea to Australia. (Series: Investigating Power) [Subject: Politics, History, Southeast Asian Studies]

The Embarrassed Colonialist: A Lowy Institute Paper: Penguin Special

The Embarrassed Colonialist: A Lowy Institute Paper: Penguin Special
Author: Sean Dorney
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2016-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1760142557

Forty years after independence, Papua New Guinea is the largest single recipient of aid from Australia. Yet Australians seem to be largely ambivalent about the country. Few Australians know the history of our colonial rule in PNG and our long ties to the country are quickly being forgotten. PNG expert Sean Dorney examines PNG's weaknesses and strengths since independence and argues that, for moral and practical reasons, Australia needs to reconnect with Papua New Guinea. It is time we shed our embarrassment about our colonial past and embrace our relationship with our nearest neighbour.

There Goes the Neighbourhood

There Goes the Neighbourhood
Author: Michael Wesley
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2011
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1459623304

For the first time in history, Australia will be uncomfortably close to the designs and demarches of competing great powers. In the years ahead, we will no longer be too small to make a difference. In his book, Wesley points to the key economic and political issues that we need to be considering right now, as a western country geographically and economically tied to Asia, and urgently calls for a renewed public engagement and debate.

Too Close to Ignore

Too Close to Ignore
Author: Mark Moran
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0522875483

Less than five kilometres from Australia's most northern islands in the Torres Strait lies the southern coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The people living on the PNG side of the border along the South Fly coast live in abject poverty, with a near total absence of services and infrastructure. The disparity in income, housing and health outcomes when compared with their nearby neighbours and relatives in the Torres Strait Islands, is extreme. The border is the focus of a range of interventions by the Australian and Queensland governments, including border protection, quarantine, marine resource management, and infectious disease control, including an alarming outbreak of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Restrictions are increasing on trading, fishing and access to Australian services. However, questions remain as to whether this focus is having unintended consequences, increasing the destitution and frustration on the PNG side, in turn exacerbating the security threat to Australia. And as the Australian border hardens, the Indonesian border beckons. This book presents the results of three years of research into the unique social and political geography of the borderland. The Torres Strait Treaty between Australia and PNG serves to construct a complex institutional layering, a tiered economy and a hierarchy of identities between those South Fly villagers who have rights under the Treaty to travel into Australia, and those who do not. This creates a politics of expectation and frustration that permeates everyday life along the South Fly coast, through which development projects must navigate.

Guarding the Periphery

Guarding the Periphery
Author: Tristan Moss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108190464

Based around the Pacific Islands Regiment, the Australian Army's units in Papua New Guinea had a dual identity: integral to Australia's defence, but also part of its largest colony, and viewed as a foreign people. The Australian Army in PNG defended Australia from threats to its north and west, while also managing the force's place within Australian colonial rule in PNG, occasionally resulting in a tense relationship with the Australian colonial government during a period of significant change. In Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, 1951–75, Tristan Moss explores the operational, social and racial aspects of this unique force during the height of the colonial era in PNG and during the progression to independence. Combining the rich detail of both archival material and oral histories, Guarding the Periphery recounts a part of Australian military history that is often overlooked by studies of Australia's military past.

Australian Foreign Policy in Asia

Australian Foreign Policy in Asia
Author: Allan Patience
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2017-12-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319693476

This book sets out to discuss what kind of ‘middle power’ Australia is, and whether its identity as a middle power negatively influences its relationship with Asia. It looks at the history of the middle power concept, develops three concepts of middle power status and examines Australia’s relationships with China, Japan and Indonesia as a focus. It argues that Australia is an ‘awkward partner’ in its relations with Asia due to both its historical colonial and discriminatory past, as well its current dependence upon the United States for a security alliance. It argues this should be changed by adopting a new middle power concept in Australian foreign policy.

A Trial Separation

A Trial Separation
Author: Donald Denoon
Publisher: ANU E Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1921862920

When it came in September 1975, Papua New Guinea's independence was marked by both anxiety and elation. In the euphoric aftermath, decolonisation was declared a triumph and immediate events seemed to justify that confidence. By the 1990s, however, events had taken a turn for the worse and there were doubts about the capacity of the State to function. Before independence, Papua New Guinea was an Australian Territory. Responsibility lay with a minister in Canberra and services were provided by Commonwealth agencies. In 1973, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam declared that independence should be achieved within two years. While Australians were united in their desire to decolonise, many Papua New Guineans were nervous of independence. This superlative history presents the full story of the 'trial separation' of Australia and Papua New Guinea, concluding that -- given the intertwined history, geography and economies of the two neighbours -- the decolonisation project of 'independence' is still a work in progress.

The China Alternative

The China Alternative
Author: Graeme Smith
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1760464171

In this collection, 17 leading scholars based in Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and China analyse key dimensions of the changing relationship between China and the Pacific Islands and explore the strategic, economic and diplomatic implications for regional actors. The China Alternative includes chapters on growing great power competition in the region, as well as the response to China’s rise by the US and its Western allies and the island countries themselves. Other chapters examine key dimensions of China’s Pacific engagement, including Beijing’s programs of aid and diplomacy, as well as the massive investments of the Belt and Road Initiative. The impact of China’s rivalry for recognition with Taiwan is examined, and several chapters analyse Chinese communities in the Pacific, and their relationships with local societies. The China Alternative provides ample material for informed judgements about the ability of island leaders to maintain their agency in the changing regional order, as well as other issues of significance to the peoples of the region. ‘China’s “discovery” of the diverse Pacific islands, intriguingly resonant of the era of European explorers, is impacting on this too-long-overlooked region through multiple currents that this important book guides us through.’ —Rowan Callick, Griffith University ‘The China Alternative is a must-read for all students and practitioners interested in understanding the new geopolitics of the Pacific. It assembles a stellar cast of Pacific scholars to deeply explore the impact of the changing role of China on the Pacific islands region. Significantly, it also puts the Pacific island states at the centre of this analysis by questioning the collective agency they might have in this rapidly evolving strategic context.’ —Greg Fry, The Australian National University

The Language of Hunter-Gatherers

The Language of Hunter-Gatherers
Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 747
Release: 2020-02-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1107003687

Offers a linguistic window into contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, looking at how they survive and interface with agricultural and industrial societies.

Australia & the Pacific

Australia & the Pacific
Author: Ian Hoskins
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
Total Pages: 597
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1742245315

Australia’s deep past and its modern history are intrinsically linked to the Pacific. In Australia & the Pacific, Ian Hoskins — award-winning author of Sydney Harbour and Coast — expands his gaze to examine Australia’s relationship with the Pacific region; from our ties with Papua New Guinea and New Zealand to our complex connections with China, Japan and the United States. This revealing, sweeping narrative history begins with the shifting of the continents to the coming of the first Australians and, thousands of years later, the Europeans who dispossessed them. Hoskins explores colonists’ attempts to exploit the riches of the region while keeping ‘white Australia’ separate from neighbouring Asians, Melanesians and Polynesians. He examines how the advent of modern human rights and the creation of the United Nations after World War Two changed Australia and investigates our increasing regional engagement following the rise of China and the growing unpredictability of US foreign policy. Concluding with the offshore detention of asylum seekers and current debates over climate change, Hoskins questions Australia’s responsibilities towards our increasingly imperilled neighbours. ‘A captivating general history of Australia viewed in a Pacific context … Hoskins’s meticulously researched and well-crafted account of Australia’s place in the Pacific certainly deserves a wide readership.’ — Ross Fitzgerald ‘Ian Hoskins has written a major book. It is a fundamentally important subject, and is timely, original, fair-minded and accessible…a fascinating history that shows how Australia’s relationships with the Pacific have shaped and informed each of our worlds. He reveals the major underlying historiographical and political disputes with subtlety, clarity and power, while always displaying a remarkable fairness of judgement.’ — Iain McCalman ‘It is possibly no secret that I have been a passionate campaigner for Australia – and especially the Australian media – to pay more attention to the island nations to Australia’s North and East. Therefore, I am more than happy to see the publication of Ian Hoskins’s Australia & the Pacific. I spent the majority of my career as a journalist visiting and reporting on these island nations and I believe that today it is even more crucial for us to understand exactly what is going on in our region.’ — Sean Dorney