Six days after the Tiananmen Square massacre, then prime minister Bob Hawke wept with hundreds of Chinese students and other mourners at a memorial service at Parliament House.

Australia had been wrestling with refugee issues since the end of the Vietnam War and its impact on immigration policy.

But Hawke's tears ushered in new sympathy for refugees, one more conditioned by human rights.

But the minister for immigration Robert Ray told cabinet told the sudden influx of 16,500 Chinese nationals to Australia - and nearly half of them "overstayers"- would blow the refugee allocation intake of 14,000 places to pieces.

He anticipated other groups would push to be regarded the same as the Chinese.

"The Kurds, Afghans and Lebanese have already reacted with hostility," he said.

But Hawke's tears carried the day.

The previous year a group chaired by Professor Stephen Fitzgerald to advise on immigration policies stressed the need for a high proportion of skilled, entrepreneurial and youthful immigrants.

It downplayed the importance of multiculturalism and Ray warned cabinet of the likelihood of public criticism of the new approach and recommendations.

Ethnic communities feared the consequences of Fitzgerald's economic thrust,Ray said. The two streams of immigration – family reunion and "a response to economic imperatives" – were not logically contradictory, he said.

The only way  Australia's immigration program could regain the community support that had been ebbing over recent years was if it was presented in terms of a mature economy needing skilled labour, cabinet was told.

That message, however, would not prove to be the panacea required, either with what Fitzgerald identified as the custodians of the values of "older generation Australians" or with the new ethnic communities.

Papua New Guinea leaves home

Cabinet was warned that the triggers for a military coup in Papua New Guinea had been identified as Australia's position as a close friend and adviser was under challenge 13 years after the Melanesia nation gained independence.

Foreign minister Bill Hayden told cabinet in a paper discussing political stability in PNG that in the event of a military coup, Port Moresby could easily fall although it would be hard for the army to consolidate control over the entire country.

"There would be great likelihood of bloodshed," he said.

Superpowers had begun courting the Port Moresby government – the US wanted to develop defence links, Russia sent a trade delegation, Japan increased aid and there had been a visit from Beijing.

In the years before 1988/1989, changes in the political dynamics of the South Pacific in the aftermath of the coups in Fiji and the Kanak independence campaign in New Caledonia brought indigenous nationalism into sharper focus and were perceived by PNG as challenging Australia's leadership role in the region.

In addition, a cabinet briefing in March 1988 showed Hawke government concern at the Gaddafi regime in Libya putting feelers out to Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji.

As a consequence, the Hawke government had been anxious to develop a joint  declaration of principles guiding relations with Port Moresby.

But Hayden told cabinet in July 1988 that in view of "public perceptions of political instability"  it was time to review Australia's interests.

Normally, Canberra was super sensitive about the language used when referring to PNG but foreign minister Bill Hayden told cabinet in July 1988 that the Melanesian nation had entered a period of heightened ambivalence towards Australia and laid it on the line.

"The marked deterioration in administration, law and order, education and health standards is generating frustrations for the government of Papua New Guinea at its seeming inability to manage on its own, leading to a tendency by PNG both to fall back on Australian support and to seek Australian advice. At the same time there seems to be a resentment on the part of PNG that it has to resort to this sort of dependency.

"Australian investment and commercial activity in PNG, while being officially encouraged, is yet often perceived as exploitative, too heavily weighted in Australia's favour, detrimental to national, environmental or customary land owners' interests.

"PNG is diversifying its political contacts, sources of aid and (to a lesser extent) defence links, to assert its independence from Australia. At the same time PNG is coming to realise its vulnerability to the corrupting and destabilizing activities of external powers (notably Indonesia), and the necessity of its reliance on Australia in the last resort."

Hayden said Australia's interests required a stable, well-governed, prosperous and friendly PNG.

"Our overriding objective should continue to be to keep PNG committed to Australia as PNG's primary defence, development, trade and investment partner," he said.

"By maintaining good relations and good influence we aim to keep PNG well disposed to us and alien to those influences which might be a threat of some sort to Australia and might use PNG territory for this purpose if it became available for them."

Australia looks to Asia

Some Canberra greybeards think the most defining moment of the Hawke government in the years 1988 and 1989 was the release of Ross Garnaut's Australia and the North-East Asian Ascendancy✓.

The report locked in place the connection between domestic and international policy realignment and reform and recognised Australia's future lay very much to the north.

Gareth Evans✓ had become minister for foreign affairs and trade the year before Garnaut's report was published.

But according to the National Archives' visiting cabinet historian Nicholas Brown, the cabinet used it as manifesto around which many priorities in micro-economic reform gained coherence, from industry policy to trade liberalisation, education and immigration.

"The political context of the report's release was shadowed by events in Tiananmen Square✓ – requiring some tweaking to Garnaut's central message of working with the distinct processes and strains of modernisation in the economies that defined Australia's future," he said.

He said cabinet deployed the report to drive a tight timetable of action, through the establishment of interdepartmental "officials groups" reporting to the Structural Adjustment Committee and bolstering policies targeting issues including – in transport, for example – the costs arising from restrictions in civil aviation and "travel oriented services"; the need for higher levels of foreign investment in air transport; and flexible airport management landing rights.

Earlier cabinet had considered another prime ministerial initiative on the regional liberalisation of trade and investment.

In March it endorsed a broad diplomatic initiative to build support for an intergovernmental forum flagged by Hawke in a speech in Seoul three months earlier. By November the concept of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)✓ program had taken shape in its first meeting of the leaders of an the initial 12 member countries in Canberra. 

Moscow embassy spy scandal

One of our spies went out into the cold for something that happened in the chancery of the Australian embassy in Moscow.

Most Australians will never know what.

But then minister for foreign affairs and trade Gareth Evans drew cabinet's attention to "Soviet technical security activity" in the embassy.

He told cabinet that classified information at the Australian embassy in Moscow had been possibly ility compromised and the Australian Federal Police should investigate who had placed whatever it was in the chancery.

In a highly redacted October 1989 report, Evans told cabinet the that previous April an unexplained wire had been found during renovation work in the chancery.

He said The area had been thoroughly inspected in 1983 by Australian technical officers, he said.

Evans suggested that two disturbing possibilities emerged:

"First, that the (redacted) ... some time after 1983. Second, that this (redacted) ... or that (redacted) ... was implanted by an A-based member of the embassy staff or an official Australian visitor at the behest of (redacted) ... "

Evans said physical inspection of the embassy in July 1989 indicated that "unassisted covert penetration" was only a remote possibility.

However, he included a chronology of Soviet technical attacks on the embassy since it was built in 1959. They included:

* A 1976 fire was put out by Soviet firemen and something (redacted) was found during plaster repairs two years later.

* In 1986 a door was returned to Canberra and an inspection concluded that "an attack" had taken place.

* Another five penetrations in 1987 resulted in cabinet approving time-delay access systems.

* That same year a technician sent from Canberra to Moscow to investigate problems with a new PABX system was harassed.

Evans also reported a Soviet vehicle parked six metres from the Moscow embassy after communication equipment was removed in 1988.

Evans said other Russian activities included "crypto intercept attacks".