Minister-Counsellor (Political), Australian Embassy Tokyo is a career diplomat with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Throughout his 20-year career, Mr Miller has seen overseas postings in Japan (twice) and Tehran, and assignments in Australia covering international legal and regional security issues, including, just before his current appointment to Japan, responsibility for Australia's relations with Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. As Prime Minister Howard said during his visit to Australia in April this year "old friends are good friends". Over the past thirty years, Japan as a nation has gone from strength to strength. And Australia has been a close partner, with the bilateral relationship growing stronger and closer each year. The 1957 ratification of a bilateral Commerce Agreement, only 12 years after World War II ended, paved the way for the close and complementary trade and economic relationship that we enjoy today to our mutual benefit. Japan's importance as Australia's largest economic partner remains undiminished. In 2004 Australian exports to our largest market, Japan, were valued at AUD25.6 billion. Japan has been Australia's largest export market for decades. Currently, Australia and Japan are conducting an FTA feasibility study. Even two years ago this was unthinkable. Although it is not a guarantee to enter formal negotiation of an FTA, the study itself is a big step forward. It demonstrates a recognition of the strength of the bilateral relationship. Australia and Japan share a common outlook on many regional and international issues and cooperate closely on them. The decision to deploy Australian troops to Iraq to help maintain the security environment in which Japan's Self Defence Force can continue reconstruction work in al-Muthanna Province is something that could not have been predicted even 10 years ago. It is a practical demonstration of our two countries' common strategic interests and objectives. Australia warmly welcomes Japan's increasingly active role in maintaining international peace and security. During his April 2005 visit to Japan, Prime Minister Howard reiterated Australia's support for Japan's claim for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. There is no single country that has a greater claim to be a new permanent member of the Security Council than Japan. As important allies of the United States, we have a shared interest in maintaining strong US engagement as the bedrock of regional stability. And we are working together to ensure a peaceful resolution of the North Korea nuclear issue, and proper handling of the abductees issue. There is no stronger partner for Australia in the region than Japan Japan has given strong support for Australia's participation in regional forums-including the inaugural East Asia Summit to be held in Kuala Lumpur this December. The bilateral relationship is at a high point and the period ahead provides an opportunity for further growth and enhanced cooperation spanning security, strategic, trade, economic and community linkages. 2006 is the 30^<th> anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, and of the establishment of the Australia-Japan Foundation. It has been designated as the Japan-Australia Year of Exchange. This is an opportunity to enhance further our strong bilateral links, including at grass roots level.

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This article reveals Australian immigration and naturalization policy mainly by examining the law-making process of Naturalization Act 1903, which established federal naturalization system and also by examining each colonies' naturalization policy before the Act. Before the Act, each state had the authority to naturalize aliens to British subject. As rigid immigration and naturalization systems were not established at this stage, criteria and procedures were not so systematic and there were many differences among colonies. In this situation, each colony, especially South Australia, tried to facilitate naturalization of German migrants by reducing the naturalization fee. At the same time, some colonies, especially where there was large population of Chinese migrants tried to restrict their settlement by prohibiting them from applying for naturalization. In this early stage of Australian development, there was desperate need for migrants for development of Australia, but at the same time, the government of the day tried to restrict "unwanted" migrants such as Chinese. These two contradictory elements were symbolically found at each colony's naturalization policy. At the establishment of federal naturalization system, the parliamentary debate on the Naturalization Act 1903 shows that these two contradictory elements were the main reason of contentious debates. One of them was on whether the Commonwealth Government should automatically recognize those who were naturalized under states' legislation as naturalized under the federal legislation. There were two forces in the parliament on this: one was those who, mainly from South Australia, supported the automatic recognition to ensure the legal status of German migrants even though already naturalized Chinese were also recognized. The other force was those, mainly Labor parliamentarians, who supported unconditional application of "White Australia Policy" to use whatever means to restrict legal status of colored aliens and opposed to automatic recognition. As the result of fierce debate between these forces, automatic recognition was legislated and colored immigrants who have already been naturalized under the states' legislation could secure their legal status. However, there was also a contentious debate on prohibition of naturalization of colored aliens and this was eventually legislated. These historical facts at the establishment of federal naturalization policy shows that it might seem that the principle of "White Australia Policy" was confirmed, there were a lot of variables in the actual process and its principle was never unconditionally supported. Rather, the principle itself was mainly derived from economic and political reasons, such as immigration settlement and regional development, not at all from racial hatred or discrimination.

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This paper deals with a contemporary Gothic novel, The White Body of Evening (2002) written by A. L. McCann. Its settings are mainly Melbourne and Vienna from the 1890's to the early 1920's. In it, lives of a father and his son, who create artistic works originating from their sexual obsessions, are described and interwoven with critical events in Australian history. One of the author's aims of the novel is to mythologize the city of Melbourne, and in McCann's mythologized Melbourne, many arcades, represented by the Eastern Arcade, are impressively depicted. This paper will examine how McCann functionalizes the arcades in the story and makes them associated with its characters, which are deeply linked with the author's own conception of modernity. It can be found in McCann's academic essay, "The Royal Arcade and the Empty Time of Fashion." Some of the academic writings of McCann foreshadowed theoretical frameworks for his creative writing. Focusing on McCann's formula of modernity, the paper will investigate intertextual relationships between The White Body of Evening and "The Royal Arcade and the Empty Time of Fashion" and a specific hidden pattern or movement which drives the story.

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This paper examines how multicultural education is presently dealt with, particularly in the faculties of education in universities in Victoria. The author regards multicultural education as an inevitable outcome of multiculturalism, which in turn should be regarded as an excellent response to so-called globalization. In this context, multicultural education in Australia has been considered a model or front runner in this field by those people who should be concerned with education in Japan, where practicing multicultural education has recently been found vital for Japanese society in the new century. First, this paper, investigates the important debates surrounding the concepts concerning multiculturalism and attempts to reveal some essential problems of conventional liberal multiculturalism, focusing on the Australian situation. The paper also examines the public discourses of multicultural education in Victoria, which gives a context to the research later conducted in Melbourne. The findings of this paper are divided into two sections. The first is curriculum analysis, which was collected from the faculties of education of three universities around Melbourne. Then, interviews were conducted between the author and leading academics of these three universities. The outcomes and the analysis of these interviews are detailed in the second part. The results indicate that each institution seems to be struggling in order to promote or maintain multicultural education in very different ways. Nevertheless, these cases can give us some very insightful guidelines, particularly when current social change is so rapid and diverse not only in Australia, but also in the whole world, including Japan.

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