Country Report

A good relationship with its neighbours is essential to ensuring Australia’s peace and prosperity. A strong economy requires long term, secure trading partnerships, open access to markets and dynamic investment arrangements. Equally, regional stability requires that Australia maintains effective national security capabilities in partnership with key countries in the region. In order to ensure our international relations are effective, it is essential that Australia’s government officials and diplomats make sound, evidence-based foreign policy. A comprehensive knowledge of what happened in the past to influence Australia’s present important regional relationships is vital to ensure the implementation of an effective foreign policy for the future. This report task will provide the opportunity to develop your critical reading skills and your capacity to identify and succinctly explain Australia’s relations with key countries since 1945, as well as applying scholarly conventions in your written work.
Assessment Requirements
For this task you need to prepare a 1000 word country report on Australia’s bi-lateral relationship with either the United States, Japan, China or Indonesia.
For the country report you need to provide a report detailing the most important aspects of Australia’s relationship with your chosen country. It is important that you do not write a briefing that is just about the country itself. You will find information on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website which may provide a general guide of what you might include. However, this is an official source, prepared by the government
department responsible for international diplomacy. As such, it will necessarily steer away from controversial issues, or seek to gloss over tensions in the relationship. Discussion on these will be found in the required readings. You may also consult the additional reading resources but this is not essential.