Our relationships with other countries must be focussed on trade. A Classic Liberals government will not impose tariffs on goods from other countries and will not put pressure on other countries to not impose tariffs on goods from Australia. We will however strive to ensure that goods from Australia are not disadvantaged (through tariffs or other) against the goods from other countries. If they shoot holes in their boat, we should not shoot holes in ours.
We must resist the temptation to involve ourselves in the internal affairs of other counties. These are invariably far more complex than may appear from afar, and our involvement would probably have unintended consequences. While first order consequences are predictable, second order consequences far less so, and third order consequences are beyond the capacity of humans to predict. Some refer to this as the butterfly effect.
For example: Our current (2026) government debt of almost a trillion dollars is due to the actions of a 19-year-old in 1914. Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria brought the major European powers into conflict, and to fund their war machines they abandoned the gold standard. This resulted in hyper-inflation that in turn gave rise to the Russian revolution and the rise of Stalin and to Nazism in Germany and World War II. Forty-four countries tried to stabilise currencies and reignite global trade through the Bretton-Woods system in 1944 but that broke down through the US increasing their money supply to fund internal programs and the Vietnam war, resulting in President Nixon in 1971 abolishing the right of foreign central banks to convert USD to gold. Thereafter we’ve had (floating) fiat currencies, enabling governments to print money to meet funding shortfalls and politicians becoming demogogues – offering and providing more and more welfare and other benefits and in so doing destroy the buying power of their country’s currency. As a result, Australia is almost $1 trillion in debt and has nothing to show for it – nothing to speak of was built or bought with that $1 trillion.
Another example: The Soviet Union’s support of Afghanistan Marxists in 1979 is the cause of the current European hostility to immigration from North African and Arabian countries, and the cause of immigration from those regions to our shores, which in turn has brought Middle East conflict on to our streets. That could not have been predicted by anyone in 1979.
Third example, one closer to home: Australia under the leadership of Malcolm Frazer played a critical role in Zimbabwe’s transition to independence and majority rule in April 1980. This led to the election of Robert Mugabe who became a despot responsible for the country’s economic collapse from being the breadbasket of African to the basket case, the murder of more than 20,000 Ndebele people during the 1980s and his forced displacement program in 2005 affecting 700,000 people and causing widespread death and malnutrition. Were those outcomes anticipated by our government at the time? Probably not! By the Australian people? Certainly not!
We must also do our best not to get caught up in conflict between other countries. Where tensions are rising and conflict brewing, we should endeavour to remind both sides that while first order consequences are predictable, second order consequences are less so, and third order consequences are impossible to predict. Did any of the four empires in 1914 predict that coming to the assistance of their allies would result in their collapse? Probably not! Did any predict that it would cause astronomical government debt around the world over 100 years later? Certainly not!
It is nevertheless in our interests to have friends and just as we would expect them to come to our aid, we must be prepared to go to theirs. We will be stronger together than standing alone.