By Michael Hickey and James Fitzgerald*
Australia hasn’t been truly sovereign in its own right since 1788. The head of state remains a foreign monarch. Generations of Australians have been lulled into forgetting this reality by the cultural familiarity of the Anglosphere. Australia only exists within a postwar rules-based order, and, conversely, without Pax Americana, Australia as we know it wouldn’t exist. Concerns about loss of sovereignty arising from AUKUS are illusionary. We’ve never really had it. (Australian Security and Policy Institute.)
