After the Second World War, West New Guinea became an object of bitter dispute between the Netherlands and its erstwhile colony, Indonesia, over the determination of its sovereignty. Holland insisted on retaining the western half of New Guinea within the sphere of Dutch influence and Indonesia claimed annexation of the area into the new republic. For reasons of its geographic contiguity and in recognition of New Guinea's role as a strategic bulwark for its own defence, Australia took a keen interest in the determination of sovereignty over West New Guinea. It opposed the transfer of sovereignty over the western part of the island to Indonesia and sided with the Netherlands. The period 1952-53 saw Australia taking practical action to bolster the Dutch resolve to retain full sovereignty over the western part of New Guinea and emerging Australia and the Netherlands as a de facto joint guarantor of the western half of the island. This article, based on primary sources, discusses Australia's response to the West New Guinea dispute with special emphasis on the period 1952-53, and focuses on the question why Australia embarked on practically sustaining the capacity of Holland to maintain its position as a Pacific power. This article argues that the Australian action was brought about by the worsening internal situation in Indonesia and the Dutch determination to maintain a permanent presence in West New Guinea for an indefinite period.

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Since the economic reforms of the 1980s, Australia has been a strong supporter of multilateral trade liberalization. At the same time, Australia sought to engage itself with East Asia politically and economically. The new Coalition government in 1997 shifted foreign and trade policy emphasis towards an integrated approach of bilateralism, regionalism and multilateralism, urging for the need for policy "rebalancing." In terms of trade policy, the shift meant getting ready for bilateral FTAs but the concrete move towards bilateral FTAs did not come until 2000. The reason for the three-year "time lag" was decent export growth during the period, a legacy of the success of the Uruguay Round and the prospect of establishing a regional FTA, the AFTA-CER FTA. When the latter two petered out, the Australian government seriously started to seek FTA partners. The initial goal of Australia's FTA policy was to prevent disadvantages that domestic firms would face in major trade and investment partners' markets. Thus, the potential FTA partners for Australia basically are major economic partners such as Singapore, the United States, Japan, China and Korea that have, or intend to have, FTAs with other countries. The government also set as its guidelines in pursuing FTAs: the achievement of significant and particular benefits, and gaining quicker results than multilateral liberalization and comprehensiveness. The FTA with Singapore seems to have fulfilled these self-constituted requirements. The pre-negotiation debate on an FTA with United States has been intense because it is an FTA with the world's strongest country both politically and economically. Whether the government can satisfy its FTA principles remains to be seen. In addition, through the argument for an FTA with the United States, the government has raised the concept of "competitive liberalization." It can be seen as a departure from Australia's original attitude towards its own FTAs, but it is uncertain whether its FTAs will induce other countries' liberalization. In any case, the uniqueness of Australia's stance towards FTAs seems to lie in the government's and private sector's readiness to compete with others in foreign markets, if equal conditions are assured. If this still holds, Australia has a potential to initiate the "multilateralization" of its FTAs. In addition, external factors are likely to drive Australia's FTA multilateralization. Australia cannot afford to be left out of recent initiatives in East Asia that might lead to the creation of an East Asian FTA, and community, in the future. To be involved in it, Australia needs to establish formal and closer economic ties with East Asia. Australia can use SAFTA, the currently negotiated FTA with Thailand and the AFTA-CER CEP as a springboard to realize an AFTA-CER FTA, for the purpose of gradually multilateralizing its FTAs and engaging with the East Asian community.

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This article examines the history of the constitutional referendums in Australia. Renewed debate on constitutional reform has been triggered by the Prime Minister John Howard's proposal to amend the section 57. The proposal is to enable the parliament to have a joint sitting of both houses without resorting to double dissolution election. It is possible to say that political ideal and value are vested in constitution in terms of its ultimate role to create simultaneously authority and prevent its abuse. It is also possible to say that this ideal and value can be measured in the history of constitutional referendums where the role and value of constitution is severely debated and argued. There were forty-four proposals to amend the constitution in Australia, however, only eight of them have passed in the history of Australian federation. Almost half of the proposals were to give much more power to the Federal government by inserting new clauses in section 51. Most of them were put to a referendum in the first half-century of the Federation. However, these attempts were not successful except for only two amendments, which had consensus among Australia people. As a result, the extension of the Federal power was sought by way of changing the interpretation of the clauses in section 51. Another major area of proposals was regarding the system of the parliament and election. There were eight proposals, but only two of them were successful to gain majority in referendums. Especially, the government of the day, whether it was the Labor party or the Coalition, pursued to weaken the power of the Senate. The Senate has been continuously hostile to the government because the government failed to obtain a majority and the minor parties have held the balance of power. Therefore, the government had to compromise with minor parties to get important legislation passed, or they had to abandon the bills which could not reach compromise. This is the reason for the repeated attempts to weaken the power of the Senate, however, all of them lacked the Australian people's support in referendums. This is because the Australian people recognise the Senate as a "house of review" to avoid giving the major parties a free hand. A recent opinion poll on Mr Howard's proposal of the constitutional reform shows that a majority of the respondents are against the plan. This history of the Australian constitutional referendum is to give more power to the Commonwealth through amendment of interpretation and actual amendment of key provisions. It is also to prevent give more power to rulers by rejecting all the proposals to diminish the power of the Senate, which is expected to have a role of check and balance toward the government in power. This history of constitutional referendum shows the Australia's political ideal and value which is to give the government certain power to deliver political programs at the same time to prevent the concentration of power.

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