Three decades, you're entitled to think, is a long time in politics. But cabinet papers revealed to the public for the first time today are a reminder, too, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Take Indonesia and sensitivities over East Timor, for instance. And uranium mining, the US alliance, budget deficits, boat people and immigration versus job protection – governments grappling with the same problems, with differing degrees of success.

In Hawke Labor's case, of course, there was the added complication of a supposedly inviolable party platform, a collision course that the foreign minister, Bill Hayden, had to deal with in the first month.

"Misgivings remain in part of the Australian community about Indonesian actions over East Timor and Indonesian intentions towards Papua New Guinea and Australia," Hayden told a cabinet meeting in March 1983.

"These sentiments have been aggravated by the death of five Australian journalists in East Timor [on October 16, 1975] and the less-than-convincing 'act of self-determination' in East Timor. The memories, and strength of feelings of groups and individuals who espouse one or more of these causes, are enduring."

Sound familiar?

"On the other hand, certain sections of the Australian community would deprecate the government's inability to handle relations with Indonesia in a sensitive and positive manner, and would criticise any steps which had the effect of closing off trade, investment and other economic openings in Indonesia."

Familiar again to those who watched with dismay the unfolding debacle of an export ban on live cattle to Indonesian abattoirs.

And so Hayden began the delicate task of tempering the attitudes of a government bound by its platform denunciation of Indonesia.

While it was "understandable and proper that uncompromising statements of opposition" should follow Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, "we are now a government and have to sensibly assess" how to accommodate "our understandably strong feelings" with international acceptance of Indonesian control and with the need for an Australian relationship with Indonesia.

"I suspect it is often overlooked that a full-blooded attempt by Australia to change this situation would not only be certain to fail but would also guarantee tough and punitive retaliatory measures," Hayden said. Indonesia would become more isolated from Australia, would stymie negotiations on a seabed resources treaty, might jeopardise aircraft and ship movements through its territory and cease co-operation on refugees.

Bob Hawke said Hayden's was "a very sane, practical analysis". "One had to be practical about the fact that this had occurred seven years before. We couldn't undo history."

Credit for shifting the government on uranium mining, however, was Hawke's to claim. "We had inherited a platform that was founded on a lot of prejudices, but our approach [of keeping operating mines going] was a practical one," he said.

Commentary by Clinton Fernandes - January 3, 2012

This is the usual "world will come to an end" mantra that is always trotted out when policymakers want ward off democratic challenges to foreign policy. It is typically used in conjunction with phrases such the "arc of instability" and the "fragmentation of Indonesia".

Recently, when former PM John Howard realised (through the results of an opinion poll) that more than 75 per cent of Australians supported the right of West Papuans to self-determination, even if that meant independence from Indonesia, he said that "the last thing Australia would want is a fragmenting of Indonesia", "It's a very complex and difficult issue. A comment on the poll – it depends a bit what question do you ask. If you said to people: 'Do you want Indonesia to disintegrate?' you'd probably get an overwhelming majority of people saying no... If you really want a problem on your doorstep, have a fragmenting Indonesia. So it is in Australia's interests that we keep a united, unified Indonesia."

As for Hayden, he had to give the Left in the ALP a reason to cave in. His Top Secret cabinet briefings are in fact almost identical to his published memoirs, Hayden: An Autobiography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1996.

In his memoirs, Hayden writes that the earlier policy was "retributive" and "unambiguously confrontationist" (p. 395). "There are ways, other than bellowing through a bull horn, to register our concerns on human rights, and in the case of East Timor we adopted sensible procedures and effective measures" (p. 397). He writes that there were many positive aspects to the Indonesian invasion and occupation:

"East Timor has benefited from more social and economic development in the past twenty years under Indonesian administration than it received through four centuries under the dead hand of Portuguese colonialism. In fact much of the dissidence occurring in East Timor today is a product of exaggerated expectations of what the new economic order could provide and not of sympathetic responses to Fretilin's sporadic and limited insurgency activity. None of this is to ignore abuses of human rights when they occur, some of which have indeed been grave violations. It might, however, serve the cause of fairness to acknowledge that considerable advances have been made in an attempt by Indonesia to curb such abuses and punish offenders, while recognising more needs to be done." (pp. 397-8)

He says that the media were "the cause of the greatest strains in bilateral relations" (p. 399). In his view, the media had a responsibility to avoid 'unnecessary damage to our national interests with other countries' (p. 398).

Then comes the "world will come to an end mantra":

"Imagine that Indonesia, for whatever reason, were suddenly cast into fissionable, internal turmoil, with the potential for heading towards social breakdown. At the very least the flow of boat people to our shores... could dwarf anything we have seen before." (pp. 399-400)

The potential dangers of Islamic fundamentalism:

"Would we remain indifferent if an aggressive, zealous, proselytizing strain of fundamentalist Islam spread like a contagion in Indonesia?" (p. 400)

Human rights advocates were "noisy groups in the community who, unlike government, can afford to behave with indifference to the broader national interest" (p. 400).

He called for greater understanding of social and economic rights, as opposed to the "paramount priority given to individuals' human rights by Western countries". He "accept[ed] the simple maxim that first comes bread then comes morals" (p. 418). After all, he argued, "the notion of universal human rights is relatively new and it is not universally endorsed... Much of what has been defined as morality over the centuries has been Eurocentric in its values and origins... there are, relatively, only a few democracies in the world... [Democracy] is a complex and difficult system... culturally a great many nations are incapable of embracing it successfully at this stage, or may not want to at any stage, of their development.' (pp. 419-420)

So it goes...

CF