Party Changes And Cyclical Shifts In Australia's Foreign Policy Toward Indonesia (1950-2022

From the history of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and Indonesia for more than 70 years,Australia’s foreign policy towards Indonesia not only has an important impact on the development of diplomatic relations between the two countries,but also has far-reaching significance for the development of diplomatic relations between Australia and China.Since the end of the Second World War,Australia’s foreign policy towards Indonesia has been in a state of "close" and "estrangement" pendulum.Generally speaking,its foreign policy changes are deeply influenced by both the international system and domestic factors,but the author believes that the domestic variables are more important between the two dimensions,and the political party rotation system is its core factor.Australia’s foreign policy towards Indonesia mainly changes periodically due to the change of the domestic ruling party.This paper adopts the perspective of domestic political parties in foreign policy analysis,such as the multiple heuristic theory,and analyzes the current situation of Australia’s foreign policy in the "pendulum" manner from the perspective of political parties rotating in power.It holds that the rotation of political parties is an important factor affecting Australia’s policy transformation towards Indonesia.The Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Party have different class bases in elections and different party ideological preferences in foreign policies,which lead to periodic changes of administration.Therefore,the two parties show very different diplomatic traditions.The reason is that the game and compromise between the two major political parties jointly shaped Australia’s foreign policy towards Indonesia,and the small parties outside the mainstream political parties,such as the Green Party and the One Nation Party,also had a certain impact on the change of its foreign policy,which is mainly manifested that the small parties would attach themselves to the mainstream political parties and play their own roles in party election and government formation.In general,the perspective of political party rotation helps us to understand Australia’s foreign policy towards Indonesia and has a positive effect on our further analysis of Australia’s foreign policy towards Southeast Asia.