Introduction

A conference of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies seems a good place to say something about Australia and the Pacific Islands, and that is what I will be doing in this lecture. I will begin by taking us back half a century to see how Australia regarded the Pacific in the 1960s, and then I want to move to the 1990s and ask the same question. After that I would like us to consider the present situation in the Pacific compared with 20 years ago. And finally I would like to suggest how Australia‟s Pacific policy should be changed.