{"id":60912,"date":"2020-11-30T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=60912"},"modified":"2020-11-29T18:38:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T07:38:21","slug":"fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-as-a-great-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-as-a-great-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty years of Foreign Affairs as a great department"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DFAT\"<\/figure>\n

A retired secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs is fulminating that the department is in a deplorable \u2018crisis\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018The quality and conduct of Australia\u2019s foreign relations are suffering\u2019, he writes. The government doesn\u2019t love Foreign Affairs, he laments. Even as the department loses staff and cash, it has to do more, while other parts of the bureaucracy are jealous of its reach and functions.<\/p>\n

Even worse, the retired secretary says, Foreign \u2018has assisted in its own decline\u2019, with its chiefs focused on management rather than policy:<\/p>\n

The Department has turned back to the old public service tradition of safety, according to which only errors of commission count, not errors of omission. It has stopped thinking and returned to the former pattern of first asking what other countries, notably the US, think and then following.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The despairing diplomat is Alan<\/a> Renouf<\/a>, secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs (January\u00a01974\u00a0\u2013 February\u00a01977), writing in his 1979 book on Oz foreign policy, The frightened country<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>The fulmination offers themes that repeat across the 50-year arc<\/a> since November 1970, when External Affairs changed its name to Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

Renouf joined External Affairs in 1943 and was the first of the diplomatic cadets to rise to head the department. Wounded by a Japanese sniper while fighting in New Guinea, Renouf was in hospital when he received the cadet offer. Using the \u2018colourful language\u2019<\/a> typical of Oz diplomats, Renouf pronounced that Canberra looked a much better deal than where he\u2019d just been (although hacking jungle and dodging snipers is a useful metaphor for bureaucratic wars).<\/p>\n

Renouf\u2019s anger reflected his ambition for Foreign. And whatever sense of crisis may still beset the department (unloved, underfunded), much of that ambition has been realised. The department\u2019s frustrations are framed by the scope of its achievements.<\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs has grown into a great department of state; its impressive headquarters, just down the hill from the House of Representatives entrance to Parliament House, expresses its place and purpose in Canberra.<\/p>\n

Foreign might not make<\/em> foreign policy with the complete power any bureaucracy craves, but it\u2019s always close to the making of<\/em> policy. Foreign has many tentacles. Diverse responsibilities make it a conglomerate, staffed by diplomatic pinstripes, tradies, aidies<\/a> and spooks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a department with a hand in much that matters: international politics and security, economic and trade issues, development aid, espionage and intelligence, and the exploding fields of multilateral diplomacy, from human rights to arms control to climate change, from power to \u2018people-to-people<\/a>\u2019 to passports.<\/p>\n

In the decade of the switch from External to Foreign (when Renouf was writing), the department seized control of key relationships that defined the past and the future: with Britain and Japan.<\/p>\n

Britain was taken from its traditional home in the Prime Minister\u2019s Department. Japan was extracted from the Trade Department, a tough victory helped by the departure from politics of the towering figure of John McEwen, after 15 years as trade minister. Both wins were achieved before the Whitlam Labor government took power in 1972, giving Foreign the public service version of a huge sugar hit.<\/p>\n

The persistent push of Foreign Affairs over five decades has been to coordinate and oversee Australian government policy actions around the globe\u2014coordination being the fallback when the department can\u2019t get direct control.<\/p>\n

The coordinate or control creed was laid down in detail in the 1986 review of Australia\u2019s overseas representation<\/a>, authored by the department\u2019s secretary, Stuart Harris. I\u2019ve often paid tribute to the scope and sophistication<\/a> of the Harris report, which is an extended version of the decline-of-Oz-diplomacy lament.<\/p>\n

Part of the Canberra-flavoured enjoyment of that review was the enormous battle with the Defence Department. Foreign called for big cuts in the number of Defence staff posted overseas\u2014especially to Washington, London and Paris. Defence declared war. Harris printed a blistering letter from the secretary of Defence, with a priceless final paragraph stating that \u2018disagreements on principles as well as practice\u2019 meant there\u2019d be no point in the two secretaries meeting for lunch. Battle is bitter when mandarins won\u2019t lunch.<\/p>\n

The following year, Foreign had a turf victory for the ages: taking over Trade, to create the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Two departments with different personalities and cultures became one. And it worked! Unlike most big bureaucratic marriages, this one lasted. DFAT \u2018is the only mega-department<\/a> to have retained almost all of its 1987 functions intact\u2019.<\/p>\n

Present at that creation, Harris looks back on the forced marriage, ordered by the Hawke government, as delivering<\/a> \u2018better coordination and greater efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness\u2019, improving the management of Australia\u2019s foreign relations.<\/p>\n

By 1992, Professor Nancy Viviani<\/a>, a fine judge of international horseflesh, pronounced that Foreign had grown into quite a stallion.<\/p>\n

A small, elitist institution confined to overseas representation and negotiation, she wrote, had become \u2018a major department of state, with responsibility not only for narrow foreign policy-making, but for the whole range of functions abroad\u2014from social and cultural, the economic, political and strategic to the consular business of looking after Australian citizens in trouble abroad\u2019.<\/p>\n

Compared with other foreign ministries, DFAT is an unusual horse working across diverse terrain. The big nag is kept on a tight rein by its political masters and gets tough treatment from Canberra\u2019s other big beasts. Yet, as always, it\u2019s a smart nag with an impressive record and much potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A retired secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs is fulminating that the department is in a deplorable \u2018crisis\u2019. \u2018The quality and conduct of Australia\u2019s foreign relations are suffering\u2019, he writes. The government doesn\u2019t love …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":22851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[416,294,601],"class_list":["post-60912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-government","tag-diplomacy","tag-foreign-affairs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFifty years of Foreign Affairs as a great department | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-as-a-great-department\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fifty years of Foreign Affairs as a great department | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A retired secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs is fulminating that the department is in a deplorable \u2018crisis\u2019. \u2018The quality and conduct of Australia\u2019s foreign relations are suffering\u2019, he writes. The government doesn\u2019t love ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-as-a-great-department\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-11-29T19:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-11-29T07:38:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/53320747_1b02d60c88_z.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Graeme Dobell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta 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