ABSTRACT
Since the demise of the Keating government the lively debate about whether Australia is a part of Asia has largely ceased. This is in part because the Howard government stepped back from the intensity of the Keating engagement policy and made it clear in a variety of ways that, while engagement with East Asia was still an important feature of Australian foreign policy, it did not imply or require modification of other long-standing loyalties and links, or any reduction of emphasis on those loyalties and the attitudes of mind and habits of thought with which they were associated. The fading interest in whether Australia is a part of Asia may also show that proponents of that view became discouraged and saw no prospect of convincing their fellow-citizens of their case. A third and more recent factor may be the rejection of Australia's efforts to win acceptance in the emerging East Asian institutional architecture. And a fourth factor may be the sharp decline in the attraction of East Asia with the ending or interruption of the ‘economic miracle’ in 1997-98 and then the collapse of the relationship with Indonesia and the exposure for all to see of the death and destruction in East Timor prior to Indonesia's withdrawal in 1999. We shall look in greater detail at these factors in Chapter 7.
