Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Extended Essay – fyw899

Hughes was a realist in foreign policy and knew that the vast continent of Australia and its

small population meant that security was problematic. Hughes therefore reasoned that

Australia’s security lay in the potency of Britain’s navy to come to Australia’s aid. The best

way to ensure British naval superiority was for the empire to the strong and subservient to

Britain. Thus, the racial equality proposal was a threat to the imperial defence of Australia and

therefore Hughes was justified in countering it.

The final nuance to stress is the geo-strategic proximity of New Guinea and the potential threat

to Australia should Japan possess it. Hence, not only did Hughes diplomatically fight for New

Guinea as a mandate, but he also deported the Japanese settlers under the authority of the White

Australia Policy and the concomitant legislation. This was not a popular objective, and Hughes

undertook the annexation of New Guinea with little publicity. In the greater scheme, this

diplomatic manoeuvre in ousting Japanese influence in New Guinea was of greater benefit to

Australia than the denial of racial equality. Hughes’s secretiveness on the issue only serves to

illustrate its strategic importance.

In conclusion, I see the need to apportion different weight to Hughes’s motives to sabotage the

Japanese proposal of racial equality in the creation of The Covenant of the League of Nations .

On the one hand, Hughes was impelled to act given the pressure of racist attitudes entrenched

in Australia. On the other hand, Hughes’s first duty as Prime Minister was the strategic security

of the nation, and that meant aggressively thwarting Japanese objectives in the South Pacific.

Which was the stronger motive? The evidence is inconclusive and it would be conjecture to

argue for either motive to be paramount. Therefore, we must accept that William Morris

Hughes, the man often feted as Australia’s greatest Prime Minister, was both motivated by

parochialism, populism and opportunism as well as strategic foresight and determination to

keep the nation secure.

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