Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the world since 1942
Allan Gyngell
Black Inc: 2021 (Updated edition)
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Australian foreign policy was once British foreign policy. That changed in 1942, when the Commonwealth Parliament ratified the British government’s Statute of Westminster, making the country legally ‘autonomous’. Since then, histories of its independent foreign policy have tended to show that Australians are not necessarily at home ‘in the world’. Alan Renouf’s 1979 history was called The Frightened Country. Allan Gyngell’s title is more nuanced but maintains the sense of dread.

Gyngell is a baby boomer, with training in history. In 1969, he entered Australia’s department of external affairs. Rising to become foreign policy adviser to Paul Keating, the prime minister, Gyngell has had an illustrious career. He has now produced an impressively informed, well-written narrative of Australian foreign policy, in which the fear he understands to be driving it stems from the British colonial settlement of Australia itself.

• Tags: Allan Gyngell, Australia, Greg Lockhart, Issue 27